I smell petrichor only once in a very great while. I can recall from my childhood that I seemed to notice it more often then than I do now, even though I had no idea what petrichor was when I was a kid.
I know what it is now because I looked it up after reading some wine tasting notes in Wine Spectator, the popular, highly respected magazine covering my favorite beverage. Over the years, studying wine and its many related topics has significantly expanded my vocabulary, an extra benefit that an interest in wine provides and one which I welcome and enjoy.
Wine also offers many new definitions for words I already used for other, more conventional purposes. “Brooding” for example, usually means forlorn or discouraged. A brooding wine though, has dark color and intense, concentrated flavors, which are positive things. How about “closed”? In the wine world, closed means the wine hasn’t yet shown its full character, with the implication that it will reveal its mysteries given more time.
Then there’s pallet, palette and palate. Not the wooden thing you stack stuff on, not the flat board an artist holds her paints on, nor the roof of your mouth. For wine lovers, palate is the ability to discern flavors. Natural talent or an acquired skill, a “good palate” is the source of much information and enjoyment.
I love ullage. It’s a spatial concept and I’m a spatial guy. It appears in the perfume, paint, fuel and soda industries, as well as many others, but I discovered it from the wine world. Ullage is the unfilled space in a container of liquid. Like that empty space between the bottom of the cork and the top level of wine in a wine bottle.
Dry and sweet are opposites? Where’d that come from?
We’ve looked at ullage, palate, closed and brooding. Who’s going to look up petrichor?
Ernest Valtri of Buckingham is a sculptor, painter, graphic designer, and a former member of the PLCB’s Wine Advisory Council. Please contact Erno at ObjectDesign@verizon.net.
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