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Even though I've learned what it refers to, I still think discussing wine's legs is silly sounding.

I think someone might have forgotten to close a tag in this post. It's affecting all subsequent text. I'm thinking it's the one at the end of the contest rules disclaimer cause it's making text small.

I've heard Cotes du Rhone described as "having a hint of barnyard."

And "Jammy" always gets a giggle from my inner Beavis.

A wine having a "nose". Makes me think of a wine bottle with a big honker.

I once ordered a wine solely because I was told there were 'chocolate notes.'

"noses" of this, and "legs" of that!

"mm... smells fruity." LOL!

when asked what a particular wine paired with, the wine shop owner said, "a chair." awesome.

A wine that is described as "chewy." Can't reconcile chewy with a liquid.

"Unpretentious" and "approachable" reminds me of my single days and the descriptions used when my friends were trying to be matchmakers. Always makes me smirk a little when I see those words in the tasting notes.

Ooh! This looks like a fun read! Personally, I'd love to know a bit more about the "bouquet" of wine and what it's supposed to tell me - it just makes me think I should be looking for a vase of flowers instead!

"Good mouthfeel." Haha whaaaat?

"round"...makes me imagine what a "square" red or a "triangular" white would be like...

the after taste is like "licking an oak barrel and wiping your tougue off with an old leather belt"

I like "concrete" and "tarry." Sounds like a description of a driveway.

How about "a hint of Edam cheese"? (Sideways reference)

+ 1 more for "wet dog"

"Oooo your wine has nice legs!"

Or once as my friend described her new wine she was trying, "It tastes like an oak tree that is addicted to cigarettes..."

Supple.

Drink less?

Stelvin Closure? Gimme a break -- that's a screw cap.

One more for Stelvin Closure, he typed on his aggressively mouthy Jobs-Wozniak Device, which device exhibits a hint of overpricedness and strong notes both snob appeal a quality that can perhaps best be described as overratedness...

"It has a hint of loganberry"-What?? WTF is a loganberry anyway.

The phrase, "Let's give it a sniffy-sniff," has definitely jumped the shark.

Super Tuscan CHianti - Excuse me? That straw covered bottle is going to be in a pizzaria within a week.

Wet tree bark

"yet", as in "fruity yet musky". They almost always contradict each other.

I've always liked "it has a bit of a tang". What? That awful 1970's drink, Tang???

Any of the many terms suggesting that the wine tastes or smells of poo...

omg i have to get this for my sister, the ultimate wine snob

I have to agree with earthy. What does that even mean?

I am a very limited wine drinker since most wines taste like vinegar to me (I'm not odd, it actually runs in the family) The terms I've read on this post have greatly amused me since they're over the top! But I have heard of oaky, earthy and fruity.

Wet horse blanket! HA, what a hoot!

I love wine, and drink it all the time. However, I have never been able to discern "notes" of anything in a wine. It all just smells like wine to me!. As for earthy? Tastes like dirt!

Wine legs
gkstratos@yahoo.com

fresh cut filet mignon

gasoline - I guess some people like the smell, but I don't really want my wine smelling like something that powers my car.

My sister, who is not a frequent wine drinker, describes wine as "easy to swallow" or "hard to swallow." I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I believe she thinks Rieslings are easy to swallow and everything else is hard to swallow... :)

Hopefully you don't hear it much about a wine you wanted to drink, but I've always gotten a kick out of "wet dog."

"Wet river rocks" in a Pinot noir description.

"Earthy". The idea that something smelling or tasting like dirt is a good thing has never made much sense to me.

i always get a kick from when people describe wine as having taste notes from things we do not eat. Ive heard people describe wine as tasting like rubber, leather, and even skunk!! TASTING like these things?!?!

chewy tannins

it sounds so odd :P

Muscat.

have wine snob inlaw

dry is probably mine. Seriously? A liquid is dry?

I LOVE it when they say a wine has a good "nose" or "Bouquet"

Someone once told me that the wine had hints of pencil shavings.

barnyard = poo

".....particularly complex in its flavor spectrum, with greater fullness and structure than is usually found in wines of this appellation" Hmmm, complex, flavor spectrum, fullness, structure,- nope, my taste buds haven't the vaguest idea !

This may not necessarily be considered a phrase or winespeak, but I once overheard a woman say that the wine she was drinking smelled and tasted like the confessional at St. Joesph's Church!

Describing the legs...I only sort of know what that means.

went to a wine class they kept on saying bouquet and notes of chocolate- so flowers and chocolate- sweet

They always make a big deal of the bouquet, but never refer to a hint of a bouquet as a boutonniere. And notes are for music and memos.

Ahh well, this vin has a sublime note of a boutonniere, with dogwood nicotine accents.

"sultry." it makes me think the wine is going to sing a lounge number atop the piano and then slink over to my table.

Tastes like tobacco and soil. These are not things I'd want to actually taste. I've had wines described like this but thankfully I didn't taste it.

i heard a wine called dirty- gritty

May I just cast a vote for Pee Pee du Chat? Pretentious yet revolting!

smells like a forest floor

i want to win

I've heard "muddy" in a description of wine.

I took a wine-tasting class once and the teacher told us "shitty" (like barnyard aromas) is a descriptive sometimes used for Sauvignon Blanc...not very appealing!

Round and musky

"Beautifully proportioned and integrated"

"Animal notes"!?!

I hate full-bodied

I hate the way that every red is supposed to have "hints of Jam" and other fruity flavors. Tastes like wine to me.

Stelvin Closure.

OK, not so much the wines - 'cause they all smell the same to me (obviously not a wine drinker), but the wine drinkers... What's the deal with Wine Charms? Give me a break, I don't lose my Diet Pepsi!

petrol mmmm

I had a sommelier once I guess go for "peepee du chat," but translate it as "reminiscent of kitty litter."

"Look at the legs on this wine" As you are holding it up to the light and twirling your glass. Oh HUM

Stelvin Closure, it just sounds obnoxious.

it tastes like dirt!

Anything that does not sound logical, like "legs" and "chewy", or appetizing, like "wet dog", cracks me up.

"Bouquet" sounds like flowers, not food.

my favorite adjective to describe wine is "barnyard-like" .... seriously, who wants to drink something that smells like manure?

From an actual review: "This wine helicopters into your mouth with spinning blades of fruit."

We are fond of Loire wines, and tend to mention how they have "A touch of the barn" "barn AND the horse" or "wet monkey." Until finally, one Chinon garnered "A monkey riding a horse bareback!"

That, and one wine guy, describing the growing season for a Burgundy told the story of the hail that summer, which garnered nods and whispers of "I can taste the hail..."

Pencil shavings, usually paired with leather and tobacco overtones in the description of big, hearty wines. Sounds descriptive of a musty old men's study where guys sit around smoking and drinking scotch, not a cab sauvignon.

In France in the early 90s with my punk rock band, loading out of a bar we had just played, high on wine and making fun of some of the ridiculous things we had been reading in a Wines of France guide we had picked up along the way:"Who wants a haughty Bordeaux when you can have an enthusiastic Cote du Rhone at a fraction of the price?" Indeed, the Cote du Rhone that night was so enthusiastic that a case of the stuff just LEAPED out of the stockroom and into our van...

a friend of mine said 'cinnamon toast crunch'

J'accuse those obsessed with estate soils of being terroirists!

"Assertive without being boisterous"

Chunky. Not sure if this means it tastes like chocolate, peanuts and raisins, or if some oak chips escaped filtering.

Warmed saddle.

A local wine writer once used these Oz-like terms:

Wine with "notes of snowflakes and wet rocks."

Hmmmm....

I am not sure if this counts, but once I was out to dinner with my boyfriend who ordered a bottle of wine. He sipped the "taste" in his glass, and said "nah, I don't like it, bring a new one." The embarrassed waiter explained to him that he was tasting to see iof the wine was corked, or bad, not to see if he liked it or not!

"Pithy" - the motion my tung makes when it says it is about the same one it makes when the wine fits that description-like I'm using an ice scraper to remove it. Also-any wine descriptor made to sell product rather than describe the wine. You find them a lot on the backs of $10 bottles-lots of times i'm willing to buy them even if all they have going for them is a particularly over the top description.

I also am a fan of "big" when used to describe wines without a lot of flavor but a lot of presence.

My vote would have to go for the term: “beeswing" (the sediment found in Port).

There is a Napa pinot that has been described as having subtle hints of "dead animal."....I work in the wine industry. I hear everything :)

A couple of years ago my uncle, brother and I we're in Sonoma. We have since made some of the descriptors we heard part of our tastings of not only wine but most everything we try. Here are a couple that we always use: Sexy like silk pajamas, this tastes like dirt, and I can really taste the tobacco. My uncle used the last one and I shot wine out of my nose. He's never smoked.

Manure pile. I stuck my nose in a certain glass of Chianti and HOO BOY, I was instantly transported back to mucking stalls at the horse stable. This was beyond "barnyard." It had the sickly sweetness of digested grain and grass, plus the mustiness of wet, day-old alfalfa and, of course, the nose-stinging rankness of poo heaped onto more poo. (Luckily, the wine only smelled like manure pile and didn't taste like it.)

My favorite comes from an episode of The Love Boat, in which Gopher proclaims a wine: "Bold, yet not indignant." I can't explain why I remember it, but he did, and I've used the line many times.

The most crazy ones...

A hint of chai, a whiff of sherbet, a smoked apple hookah, and a roof-top sin

I recall vividly my first wine-drinking-at-business-meal experience. On our side, only my boss was there (she knew I was 19), and the other side had no idea or didn't let on. The host asked me if I drank wine, and I said I'd only had it here and there, so he described this wine as "very lovely and BUTTERY" - to a novice as myself who had possibly only had sips here and there of wine, I really thought this meant the wine would be slightly thick, coat the tongue, and, well, buttery. Oily even.
It took all of my willpower not to spit my sip back into my glass, not to make a face, and simply swallow that chardonnay (which I now presume it was) and say politely "Oh, that's quite interesting," and leave my glass untouched for the rest of the meal.

My new favorite, however, was when I took a class a few months ago and the instructor told us that this particular wine smelled very ammonia-like, very much like... CAT PEE. I won't be drinking that anytime soon...

Hearing about the "nose" and "legs" of a wine always makes me laugh ... more so now because I know what they mean and feel like an idiot when I try to explain.

One of my favorites is "wine diamonds" aka the sediment in the bottom of an unfiltered bottle. My dad always says (for a red wine) "If you don't know what you're smelling, just say 'pepper!'" I do not agree.

Other favorites include, jammy, wet towel, tobacco, rock fruit, subtle earth, and style.

Best wine descriptor I ever read (by a British wine writer, for a red wine):

"Hairy fruit, nicely slicked back."

My brother, who likes wine a lot but is far from any kind of expert, attempted wine speak once by exclaiming, "Check out the FINGERS. This wine has nice fingers!" I broke it to him easily that the word was "legs." Another amusing one I've heard is "leather dipped in chocolate."

At an unnamed but well known Park Avenue store, a simple question "do you like this wine" was answered with "it doesn't accurately reflect the terroir."

And from self to the young befuddled waitress, who was struggling with the cork screw, "you do realize that you don't use a cork screw with an aluminum screw on cap?" "I've never opened a bottle of wine before." (at a chain steak restaurant.)

Was drinking wine with a guy who was being very annoying. He was going on about how great this wine was, blah blah, apples and raisins, blah blah, and clearly sucking up to the guy who had brought it. So I told him "no no you're wrong - it's definitely pears and dates" (totally lying, I couldn't tell you what you're tasting in wine if my life depended on it) at which point he agreed with me, and began rhapsodizing about the pears and dates.

I am partial to this description:
"Dense, brightly-hued boysenberry red with a richly fragrant aroma of earth, concentrated fruit, smoke and mint, and a rich, full-bodied palate with a spicy, peppery backbone, grainy tannins, succulent brambly fruit, and a creaminess to the long savoury, purple fruit finish"

I also like the sheer audacity of the flavors described here, followed by the single worst sentence to end a review:

"Bright light gold. Smoky apricot and citrus aromas and toasty, mealy, melon and honeyed oak flavours with a bright, tasty full-bodied finish with a grassy nuance and lemon peel as it lingers. Dried tropical fruit too. Has the richness and weight of chardonnay but of course it is not."

"tincture of vomit" (yum!)

True story: I was first exposed to Wine in a Grown-Up Way when I took Cornell University's wine course via the hotel school. It was there that I heard one wine that had gone somewhat off (mercaptin-heavy) described by the professor as "having notes of devil farts."

Yes, Devil Farts.

The only stranger one I've heard was when someone at a wine tasting described a particularly funky red as having notes of "motor oil and new-car smell," and he meant it in a GOOD way (was trying to push a new vintage that was selling for over $200/bottle)!

My husband says drinking his favorite wine is like "licking the wall" because it's so dry.

When describing a Chateauneuf du Pape:

"Prune, licorice, spice in the mouth. The mouthfeel is smooth and dense. It fills the whole mouth, it 'builds a fort,' as my roommate said. 'It’s like oak, like a wood frame,' he continued. We pondered this observation for a while. Yes! It’s like a crate of plums–the crate made from really old wood, the kind that’s white and weathered with age–if the whole crate (plums, crate, and all) had been crushed and made into wine."

from my wine blog, http://vinicultured.com

A wine critic once described an Australian Shiraz as conjuring up the sensation of frolicking through blueberry fields. When I drink wine, I’m generally too uncoordinated to frolic, but, in any case, the poetic imagery stuck me as a bit snobbish.

My husband and I have a laugh when he ordered a care-a-fee of wine.

Barnyard of course, ick :)

Bold, yet smooth

earthy, peaty notes as those wafting from a water treatment plant....

I have learned that when trying to make friends with alleged wine snobs, "it tastes like a fruit roll-up" is not the best way to describe the taste of the wine on your palate. I never heard from those friends again and I am forever shunned from their wine circle.

My wealthy uncle once stuck his nose deep into a glass of expensive California Cabernet, slowly exhaled and said in a clam voice, "Mmmm... Tanya from 8th grade."