Does this Bonnes Mares really have notes of chocolate, truffle and merde de cheval? Can Chablis really possess bracing acidity and a middle palate of steely minerality reminiscent of wet stones? Assuming that winemakers in the Loire or Barossa valleys are not experimenting with some unusual ingredients, can Sancerre really smell of cat's pee or Shiraz of sweaty saddles? Can wines really be brooding, profound, elegant, pretentious, charming, cheeky or deceitful? At what point do metaphorical characterizations of wine transgress the hazy boundary dividing the imaginative and informative from the outlandish and absurd? Is Château L'Eglise Clinet 1989 really a better wine than Château Belair 1989? Can wines be expressive? Should great wines be thought of as works of art? Are there genuine experts in taste or merely pretentious snobs overburdened with the desire to dazzle and to cultivate a coterie of exclusivity and luxury masquerading under a cloak of objective quality?

These kinds of questions must at some point have entered the mind of anybody who has read a wine label, puzzled over the tasting notes of a wine writer, been baffled by the response of a sommelier to an innocent question, or participated in or simply overheard the chatter of those who, from perspectives encompassing the awed, the charitable, the sceptical and the downright scornful, might be labelled alternatively wine bores, snobs, lovers, experts or connoisseurs.