Satisfied with your good taste, you pop the cork with a romantic dinner, swirl, sniff and sip like the experts do – and spit it right out. You're not sure what kind of berries you should be tasting, but whatever they are, they're certainly not ripe. And you're sure you know what chocolate tastes like, and this ain't it. Presumably, a wine expert writes the descriptions in reviews and on bottle labels, so why aren't the berries and chocolate and jam obvious?

There's no denying that sommeliers and and their ilk go through extensive training in order to match descriptive words to wine qualities, but that doesn't mean that their description of a wine is right for you, or that you're wrong if you don't agree with it.