A Writing Tip to Make your Writing Fine like Wine

What do you do when you’re struggling with adding sensory details to your work? You may be writing a piece of prose and can’t quite bring the setting alive, or writing a poem and wanting to avoid the cliche turns of phrase. Time to check out the tasting notes for a bottle of wine. The people who create win tasting notes are pros when it comes to sensory description.

I used The Wine Cellar Insider, but there are many others. Choose a category of wine and then read through the tasting notes, making a list of all terms that jump out at you. I used Robert Mondavi Winery, since they are local to my alma mater, UC Davis.

Here’s the list of terms I pulled out: Fresh and forward, The wine finishes, Complex perfume, Concentrated, Seemed like it was fading, Soft and polished, In the nose, Fill the nose, Packed a punch, Sweet, supple, round, Selling for a song, Ringer, Crispness, Power and elegance, Texture, Mouthful, Bright, Demands you open it

Now, try to write your book jacket or poetry anthology synopsis using these terms. See below an early example from Dance With Me:

Dust jacket (original): This is a book about phantoms. Not the paranormal kind shaded by darkness, but the everyday kind that exist in the light—absent parents, imaginary friends, and words unspoken. This is the story of Charlie, a high school girl who figures she will always be able to figure it out. But then Charlie meets someone who invites her to understand herself more intimately than she’s comfortable. As the relationship progresses with the prose, Charlie wrestles with the idea of what constitutes “real” relationships when she feels at home with someone whom she barely knows. Their literary exchange provides the landscape where Charlie works out many of the classic coming of age themes of identity, relationship to others, and finding her true power. And yes, the phantoms are real by the end.

Dust jacket (wine review): Robinson delivers crisp, powerful prose in this story about everyday phantoms—absent parents, imaginary friends, and words unspoken. Robinson gives you bright characters that pack an emotional punch, offering fresh reflection on age-old themes of identity, relationship to others, and finding true power. Her lines are author forward, delivering a complex storyline perfumed with texture and suppleness. This story demands to be read and whose elegant message will not fade with time. And yes, the phantoms are real by the end.