American wine culture
The consumption and appreciation of wine among Americans has gradually given rise to a distinctively Americans wine culture. American wine enthusiasts employ their own language, advocate their own behavioral codes and engage in ceremonies or festivals that celebrate the fine things in life.
One typical example of the emergence of a wine culture in the US is the fact that wine festivals have sprung up from coast to coast. What is distinctive to American wine festivals is that they appear in locations (e.g. New York City; Aspen, Colorado; and Longboat Key, Florida) and on dates having nothing to do with wine production. Most wine festivals are targeted at the wealthy and consist of hours of lectures, seminars and structured "blind tastings" whereby participants build skills at identifying wines by smell, coloration, and taste.
Various terms and phrases have emerged to denote the typical sensory experiences that are basic to the induction into American wine culture. For example, when wine tasters accentuate their appreciation of the visual appearance of a wine, they use such words as "straw-coloured, cloudy, casting amber" etc. To describe the olfactory properties of a wine, they use "fig and dough aromas, cherry and courant bouquet, rich on the nose" etc. When they express the oral sensations of a wine, they say it is "very restrained but broad and soft on the palate; lean and citric but with depth to the flavors and subtle texture that carries the flavor through to an impressively long finish, smooth and harmonious with a crisp acidity and long on the finish," There are numerous other expressions of American wine culture. The "wine talk "has gained more and more popularity among the American people. And American wine culture has drawn more and more attention in America.