Someone asks what kind of wine you like and you hear yourself say "something smooth, not too dry, maybe around five hundred dollars." You know as you say it that you have not given them anything. They know it too, and they will now guess — and if the guess is wrong, both of you will privately conclude that wine recommendations do not work. The problem is not that you lack vocabulary. It is that the wrong kind of information is being offered. Here is what actually helps.
The single most useful thing you can say
Name a bottle you liked. One specific bottle, with the producer and the year if you have them, or a photograph of the label if you do not.
That one data point outperforms every adjective, because it carries dozens of variables at once — grape, region, alcohol, oak, acidity, sweetness, age, style of winemaking, price band — without you having to identify any of them. Someone who knows wine can locate that bottle and move sideways from it. That is a solvable problem. "Something smooth" is not.
Take photographs of labels at restaurants and dinners. Not to remember the name, but so that the next person trying to help you has somewhere to start.
The second most useful thing: name one you disliked
People are reluctant to do this, and it is often more informative than the positive example. Dislikes are sharper. "I had a Napa Cabernet that felt heavy and sweet-ish and I couldn't finish the second glass" rules out an entire quadrant immediately, and tells the person you are talking to more about your alcohol tolerance and ripeness preference than an hour of general discussion.
The four dials that do most of the work
If you have no bottle to name, describe yourself along these instead. You do not need wine words for any of them.
- Tannin. The drying, grippy feeling on your gums and tongue, like over-brewed black tea. Do you like strong black tea without milk? Then tannin is probably fine for you. Does it make your mouth feel scoured? Say that — it points straight at softer, Merlot-led or lighter reds and away from young Cabernet, Nebbiolo and Tannat.
- Acidity. The thing that makes your mouth water. Do you squeeze lemon on everything, and do you like green apple over ripe mango? High acidity is refreshing to some people and sour to others, and it is the main axis separating white wine styles.
- Oak. Vanilla, toast, coconut, a creamy texture. If you like bourbon, or you like the buttery style of Chardonnay, say so. If oak tastes like woodchips to you, that is a crucial instruction and rules out a lot of expensive wine.
- Body and alcohol. Does a big red leave you feeling heavy after two glasses? Then you want wines at 12.5% to 13.5%, not 15%, and saying "I find big reds tiring" is a complete and useful brief.
Words that mean the opposite of what you think
"Dry." Most people use it to describe the drying grip of tannin. Wine people use it to mean the absence of sugar. So "I don't like dry wine" gets heard as "I want sweet wine", and you get handed something off-dry when what you meant was you dislike tannic reds. Say "it made my mouth feel dry" or "I want a bit of sweetness" and the ambiguity disappears.
"Smooth." Usually means low tannin and low acidity. Sometimes it means a touch of residual sugar. Sometimes it means soft, ripe and oaky. It is not useless, but pair it with a bottle name or it will be interpreted three different ways.
"Full-bodied." Often means high alcohol. People who ask for full-bodied and then find the wine hot and tiring have usually asked for the wrong thing.
"Not too sweet." Nearly every red on the shelf has no perceptible sugar in it, so this phrase gives away nothing. What people usually mean is that they want less ripe, jammy fruit character.
The other half of the brief, which people forget entirely
Taste is only part of the question. Say the situation, because it changes the answer more than your palate does.
- How many people, and are they seated or standing?
- What is the food? "Cantonese seafood" and "braised beef" lead to opposite recommendations.
- How soon are you opening it? Tonight in thirty minutes is a different bottle from Saturday with time to decant.
- Will you finish it, or is it two glasses on a weeknight?
- Does it need to be recognisable — a gift, a boss, a client dinner — or is it purely for drinking?
A budget is fine and useful, but on its own it is not a direction. "Around five hundred dollars" describes a shelf, not a wine.
The advice you have been given that is wrong
"Just learn the vocabulary and you'll be able to ask properly." You will not need to. Professionals do not describe their own preferences in tasting-note language to each other either; they name bottles. The vocabulary exists for describing a wine in the glass, not for describing a person's taste.
"Trust the staff, they'll know." Only if you give them something to work with. Nobody can read a palate from a budget.
A brief that works
"Last month I had a Chablis and loved how crisp it was. I tried a big Australian Shiraz and found it too heavy and sweet-tasting. Four of us, steamed fish and some roast pork, eating in an hour, up to about six hundred dollars, and we'll finish the bottle."
Forty-five seconds. No wine words at all. That is enough to get it right on the first attempt, and it will be right far more often than any amount of adjectives.
Where to start
A brief that works starts with one bottle you can name, so the genuinely useful purchase is a reference point rather than a bargain. Two bottles at opposite ends of the acidity and tannin dials will teach you more about your own taste than a year of adjectives.
- Chablis — the high-acid, unoaked end of the white scale, and the exact example the working brief above uses
- Rioja — the soft, resolved, low-grip end of the red scale, for testing whether tannin is really what you dislike
- Domaine Bernard Defaix Chablis 2022 — a specific bottle worth photographing, so the next person trying to help you has somewhere to start