Once more with feeling
There are 130 words in the aroma wheel. Only one of them entices people to buy
What’s your favourite wine descriptor?
Mine is “supernacular”.
Adjective
1. supernacular (comparative more supernacular, superlative most supernacular)
(obsolete, humorous, of alcoholic drink) Of outstanding quality; that one would wish to drink to the last drop.
It comes from the sham Latin, supernaculum. Meaning “upon the nail”. Which itself comes from an old drinking game where the drinker had to upturn their empty cup onto their thumb. If any droplets of wine spilled off their thumbnail they had to had to fill the cup back up again and drink more. This means that a “supernaculum” is an “excellent wine that one would wish to drink to the last drop”.
A word of warning.
Don’t use this in any sales materials. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. Nobody gets it. Which is kind of okay as none of you were going to anyway. But unfortunately it turns out that most of the words people use to describe wines don’t work in sales materials. And the most useful words that do work, people don’t use.
So what are these words? And why?
For many years I worked at Bibendum, the London-based wine merchant. Everyone there loved wine. Although everyone loved “selling wine” just as much. So we used to try and find out what it was that made people want to buy the wine we were selling. And one of the things the team looked at was the words “that entice people to buy”.
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