Wine descriptors are colorful and interesting. Wine writers keep creating new ones. This book analyzses them and shows how to make sense of metaphors, like brawny, intellectual, and masculine. The author's experiments show that although there is little consensus on the meaning of use of wine words, it is possible with training for people with sensitive palates and good aroma and taste memories to learn a shared vocabulary.

Adrienne Lehrer is Professor of Linguistics (Emerita), University of Arizona. Lehrer has written on many aspects of lexical semantics: the structures of vocabularies and how words in a language are semantically related to one another. She has used wine descriptors and cooking words to test semantic theories. Recent woek has focused on creative neologisms, especially blends and the meaning of affixes.