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08 March 2003
"thermonuclear fruit bombs" and other wine descriptions
Sean Shesgreen has an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the sometimes over-the-top language used to describe wines and how that language changes with the times. We've come to enjoy this aspect of Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, which is otherwise a pretty bland publication: black type, cream background, stapled and three-hole punched, with small, single-spaced type. Not that the blandness matters, because it's so packed with information that frou-frou would only distract.
And besides, it's difficult not to be curious about a wine that's described as a "thermonuclear fruit bomb" (an actual Parker description from some months' ago), as frightening as that might be to contemplate. (Parker now has a more full-bodied site: eRobertParker.com, but note that many features are subscription-only.)