Writers through the ages have written fondly and frequently of the wines they have loved. Unfortunately, you can't reconstruct how a thirteenth-century French wine would taste from Henri Andeli's description in La Bataille des vins: The wine "shone like a star." The words isolating distinct aromas and flavours are not there. The words were literature, written to describe something pleasurable and enjoyable - something not easily put into words.

Since the eighteenth century, the language of wine has rapidly expanded. French studies show that wine descriptors went from forty in 1779 to about 1,880 in 1896. English terms for wine description first appeared in Dr.Alexander Henderson's 1824 The History of Ancient and Modern Wines. Both English and French wine terms borrowed heavily from those in use by wine merchants - beefy, heady, angular, sharp - and these continued to be the "proper" way to describe wines until the modern wine vocabulary explosion of the past thirty years.

Currently, the favoured vocabulary for describing wine comes from the wine aroma wheel, developed by Dr. Ann C. Noble at the University of California at Davis in the early 1980's. Many books on wine reproduce the aroma wheel and most English-speaking critics and wine writers use its language to describe wines. For instance, if you notice a fruity bouquet in a wine, according to the wheel, you will also smell on of six more specific scents - citrus, berry, tree fruit, tropical fruit, dried fruit or "other." Each of these categories has up to four subcategories that help pinpoint the aroma.

The aroma wheel expands on categories first presented to French academics about twenty years ago by Jules Chauvet, a beaujolais wine merchant. Chauvet's groupings were based on the smells of the French countryside - a natural point of identification for someone who spent his life among these aromas while toiling in his vineyard. A slightly more academic take on wine can be found in Emile Peynaud's classic book, The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation, first published in English in 1987.

I find the language used by North American wine writers creates anxiety in many people, who then spend too much effort trying to find the smells and tastes the writer tells them lurk in a particular bottle of wine. It makes people feel ashamed if they fail and robs them of their enjoyment, which is precisely the opposite of what drinking wine should provide.

One New World style features trendy, rather meaningless phrases dropped into a conventional garden of aroma-wheel labels. Last year, almost every issue of Wine Spectator referred to at least one wine as "jazzy." I still gave no idea what that might mean, and I wonder if anyone actually does.

Another wine writer's technique uses lifestyle or mood cues to strip away most of the flavour shorthand and make suggestions about then a particular wine might shine. This approach heightens the nature of wine as a joy and accompaniment to food and society. It is favoured by William Munnelly, a Canadian who publishes the Billy's Best Bottle newsletter. Here is a typical example from Munnelly: "This is modern-style Portuguese - zesty refreshment to hit the spot after work or at summer parties."

Beyond wine writing that matches wine with mood and setting is a category that truly matches the spirit of laughter and happiness that should envelop a dinner table. It provides sheer enjoyment, and I call it the over-the-top school. I think it brings back the joy and chases away the intimidation and pedantic air lingering around wine worship.

The current champion of this style of wine prose is Britain's Auberon Waugh, the son of novelist Evelyn Waugh. He described his approach in a 1986 collection of his wine articles called Waugh on Wine: "Wine writing should be camped up. The writer should never like a wine, he should be in love with it; never find a wine disappointing but identify it as a mortal enemy, an attempt to poison him; sulphuric acid should be discovered where there is the faintest hint of sharpness. Bizarre and improbable side tastes should be proclaimed: mushrooms, rotting wood, black treacle, burned pencils, condensed milk, sewage, the smell of French railway stations or ladies' underwear - anything to get away from the accepted list of fruit and flowers. As I say, I am not sure that it helps much, but it is more amusing to read."

There is one North American wine magazine that comes close to providing the humour and pleasure missing from much wine prose. For two years, Wine X Magazine, published in California and aimed specifically at Generation X, has produced quirky reviews such as "Santa Alicia 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon: Holly Hunter in a leather miniskirt eating summer squash. That pretty much says it all." Or "Vina Santa Carolina 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon: Imagine an Amway salesperson in a sack race at the company party - floral, burlap, and springy."

Some of the references may be lost on those of us well past the target age group and the look of the magazine can push the boundaries of legibility and comprehension. But at least it had banished talk of mown hay and dark berry compote and has plucked a person's face out of his or her glass and pointed it, smiling, at the people gathering around the table, on the patio or for a barbecue. It has tried to return levity to the language of wine and helped save it from its present condition - that of an earnest but unending undergraduate seminar. And (excuse me...pass the corkscrew) not a moment too soon.