Tasting notes: A corpus-based study of
olive oil and wine tasting discourse
Belén López Arroyo & Lucía Sanz-Valdivieso
University of Valladolid (Spain)
mariabelen.lopez@uva.es, lucia.sanz.valdivieso@uva.es
Abstract
Tasting notes are professional texts used in different specialized contexts with
the purpose of organizing the taster’s sensory perceptions into attributes. There
have been multiple studies focusing on the linguistic features of tasting notes,
from their rhetorical structure to their use of metaphors; however, they have
never been analysed using a combination of different, but complementary,
linguistic perspectives, genre, and register. Our methodology, by employing these
approaches, will outline comprehensively their features. In this paper, we analyse
the genre and register features of tasting notes in two different specialized
languages using a corpus to find out whether there is a disciplinary variation or
not. Additionally, we will describe, classify, and contrast the way information is
organized at different levels of analysis. Our results will be useful for scholars of
genre, register and discourse studies, and for experts and technical writers in the
olive oil and wine sectors.
Key words: LSP genre, register, rhetoric, terminology, phraseology, corpus
linguistics.
Resumen
Estudio del discurso de la cata en un corpus de fichas de cata de aceite de oliva y
vino
Las fichas de cata son textos profesionales que se usan en diferentes contextos
especializados con el propósito de organizar las percepciones sensoriales del
catador en atributos. Existen múltiples estudios que analizan aspectos
lingüísticos de las fichas de cata, desde la estructura retórica hasta el uso de
metáforas en ellas; sin embargo, no hay estudios que hayan combinado
perspectivas diferentes, aunque complementarias, como son las del género y el
registro. En el presente artículo, analizamos los rasgos de género y registro en un
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corpus de fichas de cata con dos lenguajes especializados, el del vino y el del
aceite, con el fin de descubrir si presentan variación disciplinar. Además,
describiremos, clasificaremos y compararemos la forma en que se organiza la
información de las fichas de cata en diferentes niveles de análisis. Nuestros
resultados serán de utilidad para lingüistas centrados en estudios discursivos y de
registro, expertos en los campos objeto de estudio y escritores técnicos.
Palabras clave: género especializado, registro, retórica, terminología,
fraseología, lingüística del corpus.
1. Introduction
Tasting notes (TNs1) are professional texts used in the wine and olive oil
sector with the purpose of organizing the sensory perceptions for each
product into attributes (Diederich, 2015: 36). They are short standardized
texts in which products are described, evaluated and often rated along a scale
to record the different organoleptic features or components of wine or olive
oil. TNs can be analysed by focusing on different linguistic perspectives in
order to comprehensively describe their features, from the point of view of
both the register and the genre to which they belong. As Biber and Conrad
(2019: 76) suggest, both perspectives are complementary since, “although
the register and genre perspectives analyze different types of language
features, it is often useful to add an analysis of genre features when
undertaking a register analysis, in order to describe the text variety more
fully.”
Even though wine tasting notes (WTNs) have been extensively analysed and
studied from different points of view (Caballero, 2007, 2017; López-Arroyo
& Roberts, 2014, 2016; Paradis, 2010; Suárez Toste, 2017, among others),
none of them have approached these texts using both register and genre
analysis. At the same time, tasting notes are also used in other specialized
contexts, such as the olive oil sector, but few studies exist on the description
of olive oil tasting notes (OTNs) apart from some lexical and lexicographic
analyses of language use (Montoro del Arco, 2012; Roldán Vendrell &
Fernández Domínguez, 2012; Montoro del Arco & Roldán Vendrell, 2013a,
2013b; Roldán Vendrell 2007, 2010, 2013a, 2013b; Santa María, 2013).
We are unaware of any studies that combine register and genre analysis in
TNs or explore these factors regarding wine and olive oil tasting notes. In
this paper, we will thus compare WTNs and OTNs to see whether there is
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variation (Parodi, 2013) or a significant number of similarities between the
TNs in these two different specialized professional discourses. Our
hypothesis is that the structure of the TNs does not vary from one context
to the other. Particularly, we aim to:
1. Describe to what extent WTNs and OTNs share the same register.
2. Analyse if they have the same function and are linked to the same type
of discourse community.
3. Contrast and set up the macro and micro linguistic features they share,
i.e., beyond rhetorical structures.
The best method to test our hypothesis seems to be the Corpus Linguistics
approach since we need to look for regularities. First, we will describe the
genre of TNs. Second, we will focus on their register, namely their
situational context, linguistic features, and functional relationships between
such aspects (Biber & Conrad, 2019: 6) as they are found in a monolingual
English corpus. Finally, we will contrast the results of the analysis of each
corpus of TNs to highlight their similarities and differences. This twopronged approach will provide a comprehensive view of these specialized
languages. Specifically, it will shed light on how communication is established
in these specialized contexts and how the relationships between them are
evidenced by them sharing features of genre and register.
2. The genre perspective
The term ‘genre’ has been defined in a variety of ways, always connoting
sameness in kind, type or form and function (Swales, 1990, 2002, among
others). This term has been broadly used to refer to “language use in a
conventionalized communicative setting in order to give expression to a
specific set of communicative goals of a disciplinary or social institution,
which give rise to stable structural forms by imposing constraints on the use
of lexico-grammatical as well as discoursal resources” (Bhatia, 2004: 23).
Analysing genre implies focusing “on the linguistic characteristics that are
used to structure complete texts” which occurs mainly once in a text and
serves a crucial role in how texts from a particular variety are constructed
(Biber & Conrad, 2019: 15-16).
Several scholars (Bhatia, 1993; Da Cunha & Montané, 2019; Parodi, 2010)
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have noted that, even though certain genres can be viewed as belonging to
specific specialized languages, such as recipes for the culinary domain or laws
for the legal domain, other genres—including research papers, abstracts,
reports, formal letters, or theses—are crosscutting, extending beyond one
specialized context and remaining largely unchanged across disciplines.
Accordingly, when a genre appears in more than one specialized context it is
expected that there will be similar rhetorical structures, such as: the rhetorical
organization of the genre, and the frequency of occurrence of moves and
steps. However, as Parodi (2013) notes, few studies have undertaken such an
analysis. In his article, he seeks to compare the frequency of occurrence of
macro-moves, moves and steps in a corpus of university textbooks from
four disciplines. The main findings of his study show that there are
differences in the occurrence of some discourse moves and steps across the
selected texts. He therefore concludes that disciplinarity plays a major role in
the knowledge construction process and, consequently, in the way in which
organizational discourse patterns are detected.
2.1. The Genre of Tasting Notes
Professional discourses have their own specific characteristics that constrain
their use and interpretation (Bhatia, 2008: 163). In this sense, TNs are
considered to be professional genres that reproduce the tasting event in a
textual form; writers need to describe what a wine or olive oil looks, smells,
tastes, and feels like as faithfully as possible, while, simultaneously, writing in
a way that may be understood by the genre’s growing readership (Caballero,
2017: 69). In this sense, TNs2 are typically organized into three different
sections (moves, according to ESP approaches) which correspond to the
three steps in any tasting procedure: “the assessment of wine’s colour, its
smell (metonymically referred to as its ‘nose’), and its mouth-feel (a stage
that involves smell, taste, and touch, which is metonymically referred to as
the wine’s ‘palate’, and may be ‘de-composed’ into several stages)”
(Caballero, 2017: 69).
3. The register perspective
Register, characterized as the “expression-plane” of genre (Martin, 1985, as
cited in Heid, 1994: 501), is more concerned with typical linguistic choices
within different genres. Furthermore, it functionally connects those features
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to the situational context of the variety; the choices are then seen as resulting
from the contextual variables of topics/actions of language,
participants/relationships, and textual organization (Biber & Conrad, 2019:
22). Because the focus is on words and grammatical features that are
frequent, register analysis is pervasive.
A situation analysis of wine and olive oil tasting notes3 points to three
discourse communities among TNs writers: the professional taster, the
amateur4, and the journalist and/or critic writing for the readers of
specialized magazines (Peynaud, 1987). Peynaud discusses several ways of
talking about the taste of wine depending on the circumstances, training and
the taster’s state of mind (1987: 163):
• Experts seek to express themselves with clarity and precision above all
else. Their style is strict and economical but the comments they make
are reasoned. The experts’ conciseness is not due to a lack of
imagination, but stems from choosing the most precise words, and in
their reports they only use those terms with an accepted and agreedupon meaning within their specialized context. In spite of their skills,
their language should be simple and intelligible to all.
• The two other discourse communities, the critic, “[t]he more
occasional taster”, and “the informed amateur” do not always express
themselves precisely. Their vocabulary is more limited, their style full
of imagery but has less accuracy. They speak in metaphors and
allusions, and not always in good taste. The inventiveness of their
vocabulary conceals its vagueness.
A comparison of the three different types of TNs reveals differences (see
López-Arroyo & Roberts, 2016) in the knowledge the participants share on
the topic, the social role they play, and the communicative goal. Therefore, it
seems obvious that such a variety of writers would produce different types
of TNs, especially in terms of their micro and macro linguistic features. In
this sense, and as Ishizaki and Kaufer (2012: 276) state, “the micro (surface)
linguistic choices of a text contribute to the textual overall features”; hence,
if the different type of TNs writers use different language resources where
different communicative goals may be assumed, and differences in the
overall organization of the genre may be found out.
In this sense, López-Arroyo & Roberts (2016: 373) argue that WTNs written
by authors with different profiles show macro and micro linguistic
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differences. However, all three groups face the same problem: to understand
the meaning of and express, in words, the subjective sensations of smell and
flavour evoked when tasting wine or olive oil.
In a previous study, Sanz-Valdivieso & López Arroyo (2020: 31) found the
same three profiles in OTNs. That means that specialized languages of wine
and olive oil tasting notes share the same genre, regardless of author-type.
However, to what extent do they share register features? To answer this, this
paper will define the linguistic features of the TNs in these two specialized
languages in order to be able to compare them and prove our hypothesis.
3.1. Register analysis of TNs
The linguistic analysis of a register is based on register features from all
linguistic levels: words, grammatical characteristics or syntactic constructions
that are: “(1) pervasive (distributed throughout a text from the register), and
(2) frequent (occurring more commonly in the target register than in most
comparison registers)” (Biber & Conrad, 2019: 54) in a text variety and that
are associated functionally with a given situational context in order to
identify the language features that are typical or characteristic of the target
register. A basic concern, therefore, is how to determine whether a linguistic
feature is “typical” in a given register. Biber and Conrad (2019: 52) describe
what they call “three major methodological considerations” to determine
typicality: (1) the need for a comparative approach; (2) the need for
quantitative analysis; and (3) the need for a representative sample of texts.
One approach to studying register is to focus on a particular aspect of
language use and compare it across registers.
4. Genre and register analysis in wine and oil tasting
notes
In this paper, we will compare and analyse one of the essential keys to the
study of specialized languages: Phraseological units (Pus). Pus are word
combinations or multiword units—lexical collocations involving verbs,
nouns, adjectives such as verb + noun, adjective + noun, noun + verb, etc.—used
in specialized discourse (L’Homme, 1995: 143). Since it is difficult to agree
on a suitable definition of these units, as they cover different realities for
different linguists, we will not be engaging with this because it is beyond the
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scope of this paper. We understand that Pus is an umbrella term that covers
a range of subtypes ranging from idioms and compounds that present a high
degree of semantic and syntactic fixedness and are institutionalized to
collocations and other units identified as lexical bundles, colligations, etc.,
which present some degree of lexical restriction but little fixedness and are
not usually institutionalized (López Arroyo & Moreno-Pérez, 2019: 36). The
flexibility of this concept provides ample opportunity for the study of
phraseology of the wine and olive oil tasting specialized languages. By
analysing Pus in wine and oil TNs, we will cover different register features
varying from lexis to grammar and syntax.
López-Arroyo & Moreno-Pérez (2019) describe the form and function of
Pus, which they call lexical chunks, in WTNs and distinguish between five
different categories based on recurrent patterns on the grammatical, textual,
functional and collocational level: text organizing patterns, grammatical
patterns, term forming patterns, term embedded collocations, and lexical
collocations. It can be deduced that in that previous paper, it was not
distinguished between genre and register features nor were they associated
with the functional or situational context in which the TNs were produced
and one of the purposes of the present paper is to cover that gap.
In this paper we will examine some genre features, as repetitive structures
prescribed in writing TNs—text organizing patterns. Additionally, we will
also describe register features at a:
1. grammatical and syntactical level: recurrent grammatical structures,
e.g., passive voice.
2. Lexical level: term-embedding collocations, which are verb-based
structures that denote “what one can typically do with (or to) the
object denoted by the base noun” (Martin, 1985 as cited in Heid,
1994: 238), such as to coat the mouth or to linger on the finish; term-forming
patterns or multi-word terms, which are described as “collocates of a
generic term” that add a higher degree of specificity, such as full body
or zippy acidity; and lexical collocations, which are routine formulae
that are not constructed around terms identified thorough recurrence,
such as in the aftertaste or with hints of.
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5. Materials
5.1. Corpus and corpus design
As Biber and Conrad (2019) suggest (see Section 3.1 above), the best way to
describe linguistic features is through a representative sample of texts; in
other words, a corpus. Corpora are known to be valuable resources to carry
out quantitative and qualitative analyses of real utterances of a language in
the context in which they are produced.
Since there were no pre-existing corpora for this study’s chosen genre and
specialized languages, we built an ad hoc domain-specific monolingual corpus
(Corpas & Seghiri, 2009: 78). That is to say, a representative, reliable
compilation (Seghiri, 2015: 142) of WTNs and OTNs originally written in
English. Another criterion considered when designing this corpus was to
include samples from the different communicative situations in which TNs
are produced, that is to say, by the different types of writers described above
(see Section 3).
Texts written by amateur tasters were taken from blogs in which enthusiasts,
newbies, influencers, and general consumers exchange their opinions about
wine or olive oil. Specifically, we took these texts from, for instance, Olive Oil
Online Forum, Wine Spectator, and Wine Follies; the writers of the samples in
this sub-corpus will be referred to as Bloggers. Texts written by wineries or
olive oil press companies were taken from the websites registered to official
and institutional wine and olive oil webpages such as the California Olive Oil
Council or Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) of Ontario, just to name a few
examples. This type of writer will be referred to as “Producers”. Finally,
tasting notes written by Critics were taken from international contests or
reputable critics like the Wine Advocate, published by Robert Parker.
Our sub-corpora (see Table 1 below) consist of 620 olive oil and 251 wine
TNs. The difference in the number of samples is due to their length, wherein
olive oil TNs are much shorter than wine TNs. Our aim was to design a
balanced corpus regarding both the number of tokens (21,105 and 19,899
respectively) and, particularly, the number of samples by each type of writer.
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Corpora size
OTNs corpus
WTNs corpus
Type of writer
Samples
Types
Tokens
Type of writer
Samples
Types
Tokens
Producers
250
1,223
8,933
Producers
90
1,414
7,056
Critics
230
720
9,779
Critics
90
1,754
7,487
Bloggers
140
559
2,322
Bloggers
71
1,282
5,356
TOTAL
620
1,726
21,105
TOTAL
251
3,097
19,899
Table 1: Size of OTN and WTN corpora.
It was important to assess whether the a priori design criteria had been
effective as to achieve representativeness—a notion that still remains
controversial among corpus linguistics experts (Flowerdew 2004: 18). To do
this, two tests were performed: the first consisted of two statistical and
sampling formulae, allowing us to verify the quantitative representativeness
of our corpus according to the quantity of samples and tokens in each
one—the Confidence Interval (CI) of the Mean and the Standard Error of
the Mean (SEx̄)
- Our OTNs sub-corpus’ CI was calculated through the formula x±z
s/√n, where x̄ is the mean (33.47191011236 in our corpus); Z is a
value from 80% to 99.9%; chosen to calculate the desired value; s is
the standard deviation according to the variable of text-length
(18.391563599078 in our corpus); and n is the number of
observations (620 samples). The resulting number was 33.47±2.43 for
a 99.9% CI, from where it can be calculated that the Standard Error
of the Mean (SEx̄) equals to 0.737 in our OTNs sub-corpus.
- In the case of the WTNs sub-corpus, x̄=80.776892430279, z is
chosen to be 99.9%, s=35.178033258049 and n=251, in which case
CI=80.776892430279 ±7.306 and SEx̄= 2.220.
These results can be interpreted in sample sizing as showing the corpus to
be highly representative in quantitative terms. In fact, Biber (1993: 248)
states that “the smaller this interval is the more confidence a researcher can
have that she is accurately representing the population mean.”
Secondly, in order to ensure the quantitative representativeness of our
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corpus we used Recor, a software developed by Corpas et al. (2007) which
performs an N-Cor algorithm-based quantitative analysis, using the
type/token ratio to determine the representativeness of the corpus in terms
of its size and lexical density (Seghiri, 2016: 386). The application generated
two graphs5:
• graph A shows the number of files on the horizontal axis, and the
types/token ratio on the vertical one. It shows how many texts are
needed for a corpus to be representative.
• graph B displays the number of tokens on the horizontal axis. This
graph can be used to determine the total number of tokens that are
needed for the minimum size of a collection.
Both graphs show an exponential decrease as the number of texts selected
increases (Seghiri, 2015: 127). The corpus is determined to be representative
at the point where the red and blue lines stabilize. It is here that we can
observe the number of texts to include (Corpas & Seghiri, 2009: 127-128).
According to our analysis using Recor, our corpus starts to be representative
when there are 390 OTNs notes totalling approximately 12,500 tokens, and
at 130 WTNs totalling 11,300 tokens.
5.2. Corpus Annotation
Figure 1: OTNs representativeness graph output by Recor.
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Figure 2: WTNs representativeness graph output by Recor
Tagging and labelling a corpus implies adding its respective linguistic and
extralinguistic information so that queries and data retrieval can be carried
out quickly and accurately, otherwise the process “would be almost
unimaginable” (McEnery & Hardie, 2012: 27-31).
When labelling the samples, we followed the basic criteria by adding
extralinguistic information so that they could be easily identified (see
example 1 below).
(1) “0108_OT_PR_OPR_Mz_18_EN” where 108 is the ID number; OT is
the genre, in this case olive oil tasting note; PR the (Producers) sub-corpus;
OPR the writer (California-based mill The Olive Oil Press); Mz the type of
olive variety (Manzanilla); 18 the year of publication (2018); and EN
(English) the language.
We also tagged our samples grammatically, using a part of speech (POS)
tagger designed for our purposes by the ACTRES (Análisis Contrastivo y
Traducción English-Spanish/Contrastive Analysis and Translation EnglishSpanish) team.
6. Methodology and results
6.1. Genre perspective: Methodology and results
All the texts contained in the corpus were tagged using pertinent rhetorical
labels (moves and steps, according to Swales, 1990, 2002) to allow for a more
in-depth analysis. According to Swales, a move is “a discoursal or rhetorical
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unit that performs a coherent communicative function in a written or spoken
discourse” (2002: 228-229); a step is a division of a move. Move analysis is a
cognitive task which cannot be automatized. First, the “big picture” needs to
be established by determining the overarching rhetorical purpose of the
work. Second, the functionality of each section of the sample should be
examined to determine its local purpose (Biber et al., 2007: 33). To describe
this big picture, we identified the basic functional-semantic purposes of the
tasting notes and grouped them together to reflect the moves and steps
within each move (2007: 33). We took the three main sections—colour,
smell, and mouthfeel (see Section 2.1 above)—of the tasting process and
their function in the text as a starting point of our analysis (Caballero, 2017:
69). At this point, we referred to previous rhetorical studies on OTNs (SanzValdivieso & López-Arroyo, 2020) and WTNs (López-Arroyo & Roberts,
2014), where a rhetorical structure was identified for the tasting notes in
both contexts. These structures were checked against our corpora and
helped us narrow down the information sections we intended to identify;
thereby, making it easier to create additional tags for steps of each move.
This analysis was performed for both TNs and the different types of writers
(see Table 2 below).
However, some moves and steps occurred more frequently than others
(López-Arroyo & Roberts, 2014) and, consequently, we decided to apply
Suter’s distinction (1993) of obligatory and optional information. Suter
(1993: 119) divides these types of information, based on the frequency of
semantic units, into five categories: obligatory information (80-100%); high
priority optional information (60-80%); medium priority optional
information (40-60%); low priority optional information (20-40%); and
occasional information (20% or less). Below, Table 2 shows the rhetorical
structure. The moves are marked one, two, three, etc., the steps are identified
as a, b, c, etc., and compulsory and high priority moves are in bold. Steps
which are compulsory and high priority, given that the move they belong to
occurs in a TN, are underlined. Percentages were calculated after quantifying
all items referring to each move and step, as in the following rhetorically
tagged OTN: [It is a strong and robust oil <Intensity>] [that is characterized by a
soft green entry <Entry>], [aromas of freshly cut grass <Aroma>], [slight bitterness
<Bitterness>] [and is mildly pungent <Pungency>]. The tags from all the subcorpora were counted, aggregated, and normalized on a base of 100 to know
the percentage of each move and step present in our samples.
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OTNs
WTNs
Prod.
Critics
Blog.
Prod.
Critics
Blog.
1. Colour
10.80%
13.47%
11.43%
24.44%
46.67%
54.90%
a. Hue, depth
92.59%
96.77%
93.75%
100%
100%
100%
b. Clarity
3.70%
64.52%
25.00%
50.00%
43.90%
21.43%
c. Density
14.81%
3.23%
25.00%
4.55%
19.51%
0%
2. Aroma
47.60%
79.13%
44.29%
71.00%
55.56%
73.24%
a. Aroma
89.08%
93.96%
83.87%
100%
96.00%
100%
b. Intensity
17.65%
20.33%
29.03%
28.13%
28.00%
9.62%
c. Maturity
17.65%
15.38%
6.45%
34.38%
0%
0%
3. Taste
99.20%
99.57%
100%
100%
100%
98.59%
a. Flavours
92.34%
94.76%
78.57%
98.89%
88.89%
95.71%
b. Finish
41.53%
32.75%
22.86%
61.11%
32.22%
48.57%
c. Pungency
56.45%
80.35%
34.29%
38.89%
45.56%
25.71%
d. Mouthfeel
29.03%
31.44%
30.00%
81.11%
78.89%
60.00%
e. Balance
32.26%
38.86%
15.00%
28.89%
13.33%
8.57%
Table 2: WTN and OTN rhetorical structure and distribution.
6.2. Register perspective: Methodology and results
The rhetorical labelling of the texts also allowed us to identify keywords that
are typical of the different moves and steps in TNs as well as find the Pus
that are pervasive and frequent in the tasting register. In order to do this, we
followed a method developed by Thomas (1993: 47): “[O]ne way to
determine the keyword or headword is […] to find which word takes
‘precedence’”. We looked for keywords, preferably nouns or verbs as
headwords, because Pus tend to occur under a headword previously defined
as a term in a specialized subject field (L’Homme, 1995: 239). We identified
the candidate terms found in the corpus using the automatic term extractor
TermoStat (Drouin, 2010) which compares specialized corpora to a
reference corpus of general language: half from the British National Corpus
and half from newspaper articles from the Montréal daily newspaper La
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Gazzette. The term extraction process starts by automatically adding POS
tags to the corpus, upon which a filter is applied to “match different
predefined syntactic matrices” such as noun + noun or adjective + noun. At the
end of the process, the software allows for the retrieval of term candidates
including data about their frequency, specificity, POS, concordance lines, etc.
(Drouin, 2010).
The automatic output was examined manually to remove the noise6, allowing
us to obtain a wordlist of terms found in the whole corpus with, at least, five
occurrences in each corpus: 69 candidates were found in the OTNs out of
which 54 are nouns and 15 are verbs and 91 candidates were found in the
WTNs, of which 58 are nouns and 33 are verbs.
The next step consisted of examining our corpora with the aim of
identifying the words, mainly nouns and adjectives, that collocate with these
term candidates. To carry out this step we used Lancsbox, a tool for
monolingual corpus analysis focusing on concordancing and text analysis.
This allowed us not only to identify lexical items that frequently collocate
with a given noun or verb, but also to know how frequently that association
happened, and at which point in the text it occurs. After these steps, 129
different Pus were identified in the case of OTNs and 149 for WTNs. See
appendix 2 for a list of all Pus common to both the OTNs and WTNs subcorpora. Below we include some examples of the Pus found in both
corpora (see Section 4 above for a definition of the types of Pus):
- Term-embedding collocations: to display fruitiness and to open the nose
(OTNs critics); to open with aromas (WTNs producers).
- Lexical collocations: in the aftertaste (OTNs critics); with hints of (OTNs
producers, critics and bloggers, and WTNs producers); on the nose
(OTNs and WTNs producers, critics and bloggers); a blend of (OTNs
producers and critics, and WTNs critics).
- Term-forming patterns or multi-word terms seem to be the most
prolific category in both corpora, with instances such as green fruit
(OTNs producers); flavor profile (OTNs and WTNs producers); bottle
bouquet, lively entry and supple tannin (WTNs producers).
Regarding grammatical features, we also found several recurring grammatical
patterns in OTNs, which vary from irregular sentence structures to passive
voice, the imperative or the simple present tense:
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- Verbless phrases: Delicate aromas and flavors of butter and pure olive fruit,
with a zesty pepper finish (OTNs bloggers).
- Passive voice: It is produced in late October; harvesting is performed by hand
(OTNs producers).
- Present simple verbal tense: It is spicy with hints of artichoke and has a
medium-intense aroma with grassy tones; Its aroma is clean and complex (OTNs
producers).
In WTNs, the recurrent grammatical patterns are:
- Passive voice: The entry is honeyed with ripe citrus (WTNs producers).
- Present simple tense of verbs: The wine is chewy on entry (WTNs
producers).
- Imperative mode: Savor and enjoy! (WTNs producers).
7. Discussion
7.1. Genre perspective: Discussion of results
Once the quantitative analysis was carried out, we started the functional
interpretation of the results “from description to an account of why these
patterns exist” (Biber & Conrad, 2019: 69) in order to determine linguistic
similarities and differences in the genre and register in both TNs and across
the three different types of writers.
Table 3 shows the rhetorical choices reflected in our corpora, for both
OTNs and WTNs, and according to each type of writer:
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BELéN LóPEz ARROyO & LuCíA SANz-VALDIVIESO
Olive oil tasting notes
Wine tasting notes
Producers
Critics
Bloggers
Producers
Critics
Bloggers
Colour
10.80%
13.47%
11.43%
24.44%
46.67%
54.90%
Aroma
47.60%
79.13%
44.29%
71.00%
55.56%
73.24%
Taste
99.20%
99.57%
100%
100%
100%
98.59%
A+C
7.20%
11.74%
6.43%
23.33%
31.11%
36.62%
A+T
47.20%
78.70%
44.29%
71.11%
55.56%
71.83%
C+T
9.60%
13.04%
11.43%
24.44%
46.67%
38.03%
Preferred
T or A + T
A+T
T or A + T
A+T
A + C + T or
T
A + T or
A+C+T
Table 3: OTN and WTN move inclusion and preferred rhetorical combination.
TNs written by olive oil and wine producers have aroma and taste as
compulsory moves and their preferred structures include either only taste, or
both aroma and taste. Perhaps this is due to their marketing strategy, which
targets a particular audience so that the lay consumer understands the
description of their products and is more likely to buy them.
Amateur writers’ (bloggers) preferred rhetorical structure differs between
OTNs and WTNs. In the case of olive oil, only taste or taste and aroma are
included, while WTNs combine at least aroma and taste, with the possibility
of including all three main moves.
Olive oil critics include taste and aroma the most in OTNs, maybe because
of their higher expertise on the subject. In the case of WTNs, critics include
taste as their only compulsory move, although they also mention colour and
aroma to a fairly significant degree.
In any case, the three writer profiles of both specialized languages seem to
share the view that taste prevails over colour and aroma. Colour is discussed
the least in all cases. Besides, taste and aroma are the most strongly
associated moves in both OTNs and WTNs, their combination being the
most frequent in any writer profile.
We then classified and contrasted the text-organizing patterns identified in
each corpus, according to their form and function. These Pus are the most
surface-level manifestation of textual organization reflected above, but the
different information units included in TNs appear to be implicitly arranged
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according to each main move (colour, aroma, taste) by means of other types of
Pus and are not explicitly signalled by text-organizing patterns.
Both corpora show a similar usage of text-organizing patterns. Producers
use this resource the most in their texts, sharing the metonymical expressions
(nose, palate) which also match the identified rhetorical structure (see Table 2
above). There is one exception to these matches: tasting note appears a total
of 46 times in the WTNs corpus; however, all of these occur in TNs written
by Robert Parker (critics sub-corpus). Thus, we may assume this cannot be
taken as a feature of the genre, but rather as part of the individual style of
that author.
7.2. Register perspective: Discussion of results
Next, we studied the Pus according to the type of writer, their phrasal
category (nominal phrase, prepositional phrase, verbal phrase) and the POS
(Part of Speech) combinatorial pattern (adjective + noun, noun + preposition,
etc.). The results enabled us to identify the function of those linguistic
choices in relation to the situational context (see Table 4 below):
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BELéN LóPEz ARROyO & LuCíA SANz-VALDIVIESO
PU type
Writer profile
Term-embedding
collocations
Lexical
collocations
Term-forming
patterns
Total
Type7
9/21
42.86%
25/36
69.44%
53/72
73.61%
87
Token
32/84
38.10%
214/649
32.97%
247/836
29.55%
493
Type
14/21
66.67%
33/36
91.67%
53/72
73.61%
100
Token
51/84
60.71%
376/649
57.94%
523/836
62.56%
950
Type
1/21
4.76%
21/36
58.33%
31/72
43.06%
53
Token
1/84
1.19%
59/649
9.09%
66/836
7.89%
126
Type
21/129
16.28%
36/129
27.91%
72/129
55.81%
129
Token
84/1,569
5.35%
649/1,569
41.36%
836/1,569
53.28%
1,569
Type
11/20
55.00%
19/23
82.61%
81/106
76.42%
111
Token
34/53
64.15%
106/237
44.73%
238/487
48.87%
378
Type
4/20
20.00%
16/23
69.57%
50/106
47.17%
70
Token
6/53
11.32%
66/237
27.85%
170/487
34.91%
242
Type
9/20
45.00%
17/23
73.91%
35/106
33.02%
61
Token
13/53
24.53%
65/237
27.43%
79/487
16.22%
157
Type
20/149
13.42%
23/149
15.44%
106/149
71.14%
149
Token
53/777
6.82%
237/777
30.50%
487/777
62.68%
777
Producers
Olive oil
Critics
Bloggers
Total
Producers
Wine
Critics
Bloggers
Total
Table 4: OTN and WTN distribution of PUs per class and writer profile.
The results show that the type/token ratio is different among classes of Pus
but similar in both specialized languages. Term-forming patterns seem to be
the class of Pu most variedly and profusely used in both OTNs and WTNs,
followed by lexical collocations, and lastly term-embedding collocations.
OTN and WTN writers show the same tendency: all three writer profiles use
term-forming patterns and lexical collocations rather than term-embedding
collocations. The reason could be that TNs are by design more contentoriented than action-oriented texts. In our corpus, verb-based Pus (see
OTN A. below) do not seem to be the most useful resource for writers to
describe and/or evaluate a product. Instead, term-forming patterns (see
OTN B. below) are well suited to this purpose, given that they are collocates
of generic terms. The purpose of these terms is usually to add specificity,
which is a function that answers the communicative needs of the tasting
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discourse community. As can be seen by comparing OTNs A. and B. below,
the same sensory expressions related to the finish of the olive oil can be
achieved by omitting the verb:
A. A touch of ripe tomato and celery with a lingering pungent and bitter finish and
hints of bitter almond.
B. With a subtle nutty taste, this buttery oil finishes with a pleasant bitterness.
Likewise, lexical collocations, as recurrent routine formulae, serve the
purpose of connecting content across the text, given that they are not tied
to any specific specialized context or rhetorical section of TNs, as seen in
WTN C. below:
C. Delicate and juicy sweet dessert wine with a hint of sweet pears and mangos on
the finish.
These results match those found after we manually analysed all Pus
according to the phrasal category they belong to and to their POS
combinatorial pattern. Additionally, the phrasal categories of these Pus
coincide for both TNs: the most common was the nominal phrase (NP),
followed by the prepositional (PP), and the verbal phrases (VP) as shown in
Table 5 below.
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BELéN LóPEz ARROyO & LuCíA SANz-VALDIVIESO
Phrasal category
Writer profile
NP
PP
VP
Total
Type
64/86
74.41%
14/22
63.64%
9/21
42.86%
87
Token
365/1,206
30.27%
96/279
34.41%
32/84
38.10%
493
Type
66/86
76.74%
20/22
90.91%
14/21
66.67%
100
Token
752/1,206
62.35%
147/279
52.69%
51/84
60.71%
950
Type
39/86
45.35%
13/22
59.09%
1/21
4.76%
53
Token
89/1,206
7.38%
36/279
12.90%
1/84
1.19%
126
Type
86/129
66.67%
22/129
17.05%
21/129
16.28%
129
Token
1,206/1,569
76.68%
279/1,569
17.78%
84/1,569
5.35%
1,569
Type
89/116
76.72%
11/13
84.62%
11/20
55.00%
111
Token
304/627
48.48%
40/97
41.24%
34/53
64.15%
378
Type
59/116
50.86%
7/13
53.85%
4/20
20.00%
70
Token
218/627
34.77%
18/97
18.56%
6/53
11.32%
242
Type
43/116
37.07%
9/13
69.23%
9/20
45.00%
61
Token
105/627
16.75%
39/97
40.21%
13/53
24.53%
157
Type
116/149
77.85%
13/149
8.72%
20/149
13.42%
149
Token
627/777
80.69%
97/777
12.48%
53/777
6.82%
777
Producers
Olive oil
Critics
Bloggers
Total
Producers
Wine
Critics
Bloggers
Total
Table 5: OTN and WTN distribution of PUs per phrasal category and writer profile.
Bloggers, in both specialized languages, do not use NPs as frequently as the
other type of writers. Nevertheless, olive oil critics and wine producers use
them more frequently than wine critics and olive oil producers.
Regarding PPs, WTNs show a slightly smaller variety of Pus than OTNs.
While olive oil producers use fewer PPs than their critics, wine critics utilize a
less varied pool of PPs than wine producers. Both olive oil and wine bloggers’
preferred phrasal category appears to be PPs, both in variety and frequency of
use, although wine amateurs use these phrases more than olive oil amateurs.
VPs are the least variedly employed category across the writers in both
corpora; producers again use this category more than the other two profiles.
On the other hand, regarding the POS combinatorial patterns, Table 6 below
shows those found in at least 5 different Pus and whose frequency accounts
for at least 10% of the patterns used by each writer profile in our corpora.
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Writer profile
POS
pattern
Total
Producers
Critics
Bloggers
Type
Token
Type
Token
Type
Token
Type
Token
A+N
41/87
47.13%
184/493
37.32%
41/100
41.00%
342/950
36.00%
26/53
49.06%
51/126
40.48%
57/129
44.19%
577/1,569
36.78%
N+N
9/87
10.34%
46/493
9.33%
8/100
8.00%
109/950
11.47%
2/53
3.77%
7/126
5.56%
10/129
7.75%
162/1,569
10.33%
V+P+N
3/87
3.45%
3/493
0.61%
7/100
7.00%
13/950
1.37%
0/53
0%
0/126
0%
10/129
7.75%
16/1,569
1.02%
N+P
8/87
9.20%
99/493
20.08%
8/100
8.00%
207/950
21.79%
5/53
9.43%
19/126
15.08%
8/129
6.20%
325/1,569
20.71%
P+D+N
4/87
4.60%
24/493
4.87%
6/100
6.00%
65/950
6.84%
4/53
7.55%
12/126
9.52%
6/129
4.65%
101/1,569
6.44%
P+N
2/87
2.30%
5/493
1.01%
4/100
4.00%
8/950
0.84%
6/53
11.32%
11/126
8.73%
6/129
4.65%
24/1,569
1.53%
P+N+P
5/87
5.75%
53/493
10.75%
5/100
5.00%
48/950
5.05%
2/53
3.77%
11/126
8.73%
5/129
3.88%
112/1,569
7.14%
Producers
Critics
Bloggers
A+N
62/111
55.86%
176/378
46.56%
38/70
54.29%
142/242
58.68%
28/61
45.90%
66/157
42.04%
82/149
55.03%
384/777
49.42%
N+N
19/111
17.12%
57/378
15.08%
12/70
17.14%
28/242
11.57%
6/61
9.84%
11/157
7.01%
22/149
14.77%
96/777
12.36%
V+P+N
5/111
4.50%
12/378
3.17%
3/70
4.29%
4/242
1.65%
6/61
9.84%
8/157
5.10%
13/149
8.72%
24/777
3.09%
N+P
6/111
5.41%
54/378
15.08%
6/70
8.57%
28/242
11.57%
5/61
8.20%
22/157
14.01%
6/149
4.03%
104/777
13.38%
P+D+N
5/111
4.50%
30/378
7.94%
4/70
5.71%
12/242
4.96%
5/61
8.20%
26/157
16.56%
6/149
4.03%
68/777
8.75%
Table 6: OTN and WTN distribution of most relevant PUs per POS pattern and writer profile.
There is a larger variety of patterns in OTNs than in WTNs; adjective + noun
(A+N) is the most common combinatorial pattern, as well as the more
widely used, followed by the pattern noun + preposition (N+P) in terms of
frequency of use, and by noun + noun (N+N) in terms of number of Pus
with that pattern. This logical preference for the structure A+N across
different writer profiles and different types of Pus confirms the results
found by Sanz-Valdivieso & López-Arroyo (2020) and by López-Arroyo &
Ibérica 43 (2022): 205-234
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BELéN LóPEz ARROyO & LuCíA SANz-VALDIVIESO
Roberts (2016: 12): “wine tasting notes […] are intended to describe wines
and the obvious way to do so is by adding descriptors to the key words for
different aspects of wine”.
Finally, Table 7 below shows the recurrent grammatical patterns analysed in
both corpora and in the three sub-registers:
Writer profile
Total
Producers
Critics
Bloggers
Wine
Olive oil
Wine
Olive oil
Wine
Olive oil
Wine
Passive voice
62/250
0.248
47/90
0.522
42/230
0.183
48/90
0.533
15/140
0.107
40/71
0.563
119/620
0.192
135/251
0.538
Present tense
490/250
1.960
308/90
3.422
356/230
1.548
273/90
3.033
123/140
0.879
193/71
2.718
969/620
1.123
774/251
3.084
Imperative mode
3/250
0.012
18/90
0.200
0/230
0.000
8/90
0.089
0/140
0.000
2/71
0.028
3/620
0.005
28/251
0.112
TNs with
verbless
sentences
27/250
10.80%
9/90
10.00%
142/230
61.74%
8/90
8.89%
20/140
14.29%
20/71
28.17%
189/620
30.48%
37/251
14.74%
TNs with all
verbless
sentences
17/250
6.80%
1/90
1.11%
22/230
9.57%
0/90
0%
57/140
47.41%
4/71
5.63%
96/620
15.48%
5/251
1.99%
TNs with no
verbless
sentences
206/250
82.40%
80/90
88.89%
66/230
28.70%
82/90
91.11%
63/140
45.00%
47/71
66.20%
335/620
54.03%
209/251
83.27%
Verbless sentences
Olive oil
Table 7: OTN and WTN distribution of most relevant grammatical patterns per writer profile.
In the case of passive voice, present tense, and the imperative mode, we tried
to obtain a mean per text; the numbers compared were calculated as follows:
instances of passive voice/texts (i.e., 0.248 instances of the passive voice per
text). In the case of verbless sentences, we examined TNs not only to
calculate the mean for verbless sentences per text, but also to obtain
information about whether each text was made up of any, some, or all
verbless sentences, i.e., the number of TNs containing no verbless
sentences/total number of tasting notes, for example.
Producers use the passive voice and the present tenses more often than the
critics, and critics employ these more regularly than amateur writers. This
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seems logical, since the passive voice puts the focus on the object —olive oil,
wine, and their qualities— and the present simple is the most obvious verbal
tense for description and evaluation. However, these patterns can be found
more recurrently, around twice as often, in WTNs than in OTNs. Results
regarding the use of the imperative mode leave no doubt as to whether it is
a characteristic grammatical pattern in WTNs, although not OTNs. Perhaps
this is because wine requires more specific consumption practices and dates
than olive oil in terms of temperature, pouring, conservation, etc.
Only TNs written by olive oil critics include some verbless sentences—more
than half of their texts. The second most common case is texts containing
at least one verbless sentence. As for TNs made up entirely of verbless
sentences, there is a considerable difference: WTNs rarely include verbless
sentences; notably those written by wine critics do not include any at all. As
noted, this is in sharp contrast to olive oil critics. However, the rest of the
writer profiles show similar tendencies. This, coupled with the popularity of
wine tasting in comparison to olive oil tasting, could be explained as OTNs
writers seeking to make their texts accessible by employing such methods as
grabbing the reader’s attention, emphasizing certain elements, and/or
enlivening the text by using an informal or conversational style (LópezArroyo & Roberts. 2015: 166). In any case, these results are in line with those
found in the analysis of Pus above: verbs appear in WTNs to a greater
extent than in OTNs.
8. Conclusions
This study of olive oil and wine tasting notes has proven that certain
specialized discourses share crucial genre and register features:
1. Both have almost identical rhetorical structures in regards to moves
and steps. Text-organizing patterns seem to be restricted to
producers’ TNs, with writers generally organizing information
implicitly, i.e., not using text-organizing patterns and simply
sequencing information related to the different moves. Although
there are some variations across the writer profiles, both olive oil and
wine TNs share preferred rhetorical choices, meaning their texts show
similar organizational patterns in their arrangement of the same
information units.
Ibérica 43 (2022): 205-234
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BELéN LóPEz ARROyO & LuCíA SANz-VALDIVIESO
2. Both specialized languages share a register in which three distinct
communicative goals can be identified. They are further characterized
by a similar set of terms and Pus although they are employed to
different extents. All writers preferred term-forming patterns and
lexical collocations when expressing content-based descriptions and
evaluations, mostly in the form of nominal phrases made up of A+N.
Amateurs, however, seemed to prefer prepositional phrases and their
overall use of Pus is scarcer and more irregular than that of
producers and critics.
3. Producers and amateurs seem to behave similarly when writing TNs.
This may be due to the need for producers to reach as many
consumers as possible, regardless of their expertise or experience in
the specialized context of tasting, thus bringing their register closer to
that of their target audience.
4. There are more differences among the different writers of OTNs
than among WTNs, which could point to the fact that the wine tasting
discourse community is more homogeneous and less linguistically
stratified than that of olive oil. Perhaps this is due to the fact that wine
tastings have a long history and have attracted participants from
across the socio-economic spectrum resulting in more laypeople
having the ability to access the specialized language of wine tasting.
This, however, does not seem to be the case with olive oil tasting,
which may be a consequence of the newness of tasting olive oil as a
hobby outside of specialized and professional contexts.
In future studies, it would be interesting to focus on other linguistic features
complementary to phraseology in an effort to explore whether or not there
is a shared nature in the tasting register and sub-registers. In any case, TNs
authors writing in English need to carefully consider their intended
readership, not only because of the shared features of olive oil and wine
tasting specialized languages, but also due to the different writer profiles, to
ensure that their texts match the expectations of the target discourse
community and are accepted as part of the genre of tasting notes.
Article history:
Received 9 February 2022
Received in revised form 13 April 2022
Accepted 23 April 2022
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Belén López Arroyo is an Associate Professor in ESP at the university of
Valladolid (Spain). She currently teaches ESP and translation and Corpus
Linguistics in the English Studies Degree. Her research interests include
Terminology, Contrastive analysis and Translation. She is author of several
articles and books related to contrastive analysis of scientific and
professional genres and its implication for translation. In the ACTRES team
she is in charge of the Rhetoric of Expert-to-Expert Discourse (in different
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areas) as well as of terminology and its applications for developing writing
aids in English for Spaniards. Along with other members of the ACTRES
group she is the author of semi-automatic writing generators aids in the field
of Oenology.
Lucía Sanz-Valdivieso has a Master’s in Education and in Advanced
English Studies. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Advanced English
Studies program and is a teaching assistant at the university of Valladolid
(Spain). Her research is devoted to the study of sensory language and the
development of digital assisted-writing tools for specialized and professional
communication. She has published some articles in the fields of specialized
discourse in English and English-Spanish contrastive analysis.
NoTeS
1
WTNs and OTNs will be used to refer to wine and olive oil tasting notes respectively.
See appendix 1 for an illustration of the content and organization of typical OTNs and WTNs, taken
from our corpus.
2
For a complete description of the situational characteristics of register and genres, see Biber & Conrad,
2019: 40.
3
The term ‘amateur’ in wine tasting was introduced by Robinson (2015) to describe laypeople or
beginners in the world of wine.
4
Recor software was developed by LexyTrad, a lexicography and translation research group of the
university of Málaga, Spain. The software is developed in Spanish and therefore the legends in the graphs
are available only in Spanish.
5
6
Invalid term candidates (Muegge 2012: 24).
“Type” and “token” are used in tables 4, 5 and 6 only in relation to Pus, not to types and tokens in the
whole corpus as described above. Like this, two occurrences of long finish are accounted as one type (one
form) and two tokens (two instances of use) in an effort to take into account both variety and quantity.
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Appendix 1: examples of oTNs and WTNs by
different writer profile
Olive oil producer TN (sample 0211_OT_PR_NAP_AC_18_EN from our corpus):
This oil is a classic, stone fruit, ripe Ascolano olive oil from California. It has a wonderful floral aroma
and an intense peach-apricot-like taste with some nuttiness and butteriness too. It is very fresh, crisp,
and zingy because of the green, herbaceous undertone qualities, which gives it a nice, teasing
pungency. It is very fresh and the balance is perfect.
Wine critic TN (sample 0005_WT_CR_HAB_RE_98_EN from our corpus):
The dark garnet-colored 1961 Haut-Brion is pure perfection, with gloriously intense aromas of tobacco,
cedar, chocolate, minerals, and sweet red and black fruits complemented by smoky wood. This has
always been a prodigious effort (it was the debut vintage for Jean Delmas). It is extremely full-bodied,
with layers of viscous, sweet fruit. This wine is akin to eating candy. Consistently an astonishing wine!
Wine amateur TN (sample 0513_OT_BG_RUS_BL_18_EN from our corpus):
Quite a rich, golden colour, the nose is subtle and refined with notes of melon, lemon, thyme and
pepper. The palate is full and almost creamy with a tangy grip on the finish.
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Appendix 2: PUs present in both oTN and WTN
corpora
Text-organizing
patterns
Nose
Term-embedding
collocations
Lexical
collocations
Term-forming
patterns
To add complexity
Palate
To open with aromas
To open with scents
Aroma of
With a hint of
On the palate
With aromas of
In the mouth
In taste
In color
On the nose
In texture
On the finish
In the nose
With a touch of
With hints of
Notes of
A touch of
Hints of
With notes of
A hint of
Nuances of
Low acidity
Floral notes
Tropical fruit
Floral aroma
Clean finish
Exotic fruit
Fresh aroma
Spicy finish
Citrus fruit
Intense aroma
Long finish
Red fruit
Berry fruit
Rich finish
Stone fruit
Full body
Fruit flavor
Velvety texture
Aromatic nose
Ripe flavor
Rich texture
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