I find nothing wrong with this description or more importantly, nothing that the average person couldn't understand.

Storytime.

I was at the wine store the other day, looking for a specific brand/bottle of wine. They didn't have it. When the sommelier or whoever-he-was asked me what it tasted like, I couldn't tell him.

I knew I liked the wine. Did I know if it had "cherry flavors" or "plum" or "rose petal" or "chocolate undertones"? No, and quite frankly, I don't taste those things when I take a sip of a glass of wine. I know what I like and I know what I don't like; I know this by buying bottles of wine, drinking them, and shoving the labels into the correct category in my mind.

Eventually I told him I liked easy drinking or "everyday drinking" kind of wines - my joke is that I like "everyday drinking" wines because that's the kind of drinking I do, everyday - and he found me something that was pretty all right.

I guess my point is that I don't have a very good understanding of all these terms, I couldn't recognize the flavors or smells if they were used, (matter of fact I don't ) and they're basically all Greek to me. They tell me, personally, nothing about the wine I am buying. I do know what tannins are, for what it's worth.

I mean, sure. I may not be trying. I have a terrible sense of smell and an "unrefined" palate. But as long as I can keep plodding along and finding wines I like, it doesn't matter to me if it smells "grassy" or not. In fact, yes, I'd say it's kind of pretentious* because I can't relate to any of it and don't really have any interest in relating to it.

I think if you don't want to be an expert in wine, right now, the verbiage used in the industry can prevent you from feeling like you know anything about it. I don't want to be an expert. I just want to be able to grab a bottle I'll like with some confidence.

*Keeping in mind that pretention is often in the eye of the beholder, and I'm not pretending that this use is an exception to that.