(ChicagoTribune) - Wine descriptions are like monsters under the bed: they're there and they're not. Whenever I detail a wine to people at a tasting (or, indeed, in tasting notes that often accompany these columns) and say, for example, that the wine "smells and tastes of cherries," I right away need to pull out a sort of word mop. "No," I will explain to a few who ask, "the winemaker didn't add cherries to the wine. It's just a word that describes this particular wine's fruity aroma and taste, that's all. 'Cherries' is the only word that will do."