Every now and again I’ll post a column on a certain word that wine people – myself included – use to describe wines that can be slightly troubling. I am going to try and make it a little bit clearer as to how the word is being used in reference to wine. Because as much fun as it is pairing wine with death, one must try to be of some use.

Slight disclaimer: This is a column that imagines its readers enjoy thinking about wine a little. If you are happy with the “Ja, not battery acid I’ll drink it. Fuck that it’ll kill you” approach to drinking wine, this may annoy you.

This week I have chosen the word  ‘elegant’ for two reasons. Firstly, because I was at a tasting recently where part of the exercise was to focus on the notion of elegance; the tasters were very experienced and I saw much disagreement. Not just about how the term could be used, but also which wines showed elegance, and over which famous men/women could be described as elegant. The second reason is that this past weekend I tasted a wine that I believe was unavoidably, and supremely elegant, but more of that in a bit.

Looking back on that table of venerable tasters and winemakers it seems that the term elegance – when applied to wine especially – seems to be rather subjective. The more subjective a term used to describe wine is, the less useful it becomes. For example, ‘nice’; there is nothing useful in describing a wine as nice, except suggesting it can be swallowed without grimace.

Describing taste is a tricky thing. In wines – and I do this quite a bit – we can’t help anthropomorhising the stuff. I have a tendency to feminize many wines, giving them tight dresses, runway-like swaggers, big-tits, and, of course, elegance. This happens, I think, because, sometimes, describing wine is more than just flavours and aromas. A wine’s textures, structure, balance and how the whole shebang comes together, often call for some sort of description that is altogether more metaphorical. This has generally fallen out of favour with wine writers, as wine descriptions today are used as consumer guides. Consumers want to know, simply, what wine tastes like. They prefer apparent objectivity in descriptions over, for example, a wine that is “stern, but not without attraction, like a sexy librarian.”

Elegance is a word used to describe people, and as one dictionary puts it, this is “dignified grace in appearance, movement, or behaviour.” Fairy muff. How else can it be used? Mathematics and science offer a use of elegance which is generally described as when a theorem or solution is surprisingly simple yet highly effective. What about wine? A combination of these, or something different?

May I first describe the wine I tasted this weekend and then try to answer that. It was the was the Non-Vintage De Sousa Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Reserve poured from Magnum, a French Champagne made by a small producer in Avize, south of Epernay. A Champagne made from 100% Chardonnay, here is my tasting note:

A delicate floral nose – like a pressed flower from an old book. The mousse was fine, and the palate was really taught and mineral, like licking wet slate that had lime chopped on it. This was followed by some gentle toasty notes with a touch of beeswax. It felt seamless. Long, fresh, clean but with weight. There were no snags, everything was in its right place; giving the impression that to add or take away would be to its detriment. A goldilocks wine, a wine of presence without having to shout, a wine of balance. A wine that had me on my knees.

OK, so I got a little carried away. (I also did not mention elegance; I took it out intentionally because I wanted to see if it that comes across without mentioning the word. You tell me.)

One of the most important things a wine must be if is to be described as elegant, is balanced. All of its components are working beautifully together, nothing is out of joint. Whether it is tannins, acidity, sweetness, primary flavours, secondary flavours, tertiary flavours; nothing dominates or is lacking.  But you can have a balanced wine that is not elegant. Big, chunky, ripe and sweet reds can be balanced, but their lack of refinement, (or in my opinion good taste) prevent them from being called elegant.

It starts to get tricky here. So let me refer back to the De Sousa. It had other aspects that make for a good sparkling wine: complexity, persistence of taste, fine bubbles or mousse. In a sense it was a complete wine; although to be great it needed more complexity, but it was still elegant. Two points here then. The wine must be, on the whole, good. A wine that is really lacking in complexity I do not think deserves to be called elegant for example. And then a wine must give a feeling of completeness – a dubious assertion, it reminds me of a perfectly made bed, no creases, all lines and sleekness. This, I found in the De Sousa.

Was I right? Maybe not. A lady opposite me at the tasting said it sounded like I was saying the wine was too perfect, too fine, and lacking interest. Another word I have come across that describes elegance is ‘flair’. This, the De Sousa may have lacked. However, my reply would be that its perfect balance was flair in itself. Run in circles much? All the time.

Did this help? Have I in anyway cleared up elegance in wine, or were these 900-odd words pure mental masturbation that has only obfuscated the issue even more? I wrote this column, I guess, because after tasting this wine I realised that I have used this word rather loosely in the past, and maybe giving a column to it would be useful.

How would you describe elegance?