It is a well established standard practice to apply all sorts of descriptors wine that go well beyond simply describing the taste, aroma, and texture. Indeed it has become somewhat of a tradition to characterize wines with such adjectives as bold, timid, dramatic, subdued, flagrant, and so on. So much so, in fact, that to the novice many adjectives may seem to say a little too much about a wine and even come off as downright humorous.

Are critics in earnest when they use these expressions? Doubtless there are some charlatans out there in the wine community who use colorful descriptions of wines to conceal their own lack of knowledge, but in general, the more one tastes wine, the more one begins to understand how some of these words actually might apply.

In that case, how far does it go? Can a wine be tragic? Angry? Maybe that's too far. What about sexy? Some people certainly think so. The Syrah grape (also known as Shiraz) for one produces deep, intense wines that are often referred to as such.

So what makes them