I had my eye on a wine I had never tasted, a relative rarity that can be confusing given its name — the Heitz Cellar Martha’s Vineyard cabernet sauvignon. Martha’s Vineyard? one might ask. Who knew anyone made a good cab out off the coast of Massachusetts? In fact, the name comes from the fact that the grapes come from a plot of Napa land planted by Tom and Martha May. The 1970 vintage is among the American wines that put in a fine showing against their French counterparts in the 1976 Judgment of Paris.

I invited a couple of friends over the other night to help me drink a bottle of the 2015 Martha’s Vineyard I had bought. I wanted to see if we could taste the wine and talk about it without using any of the language common to wine tasting. You know the sort of vinous vocab I have in mind. Fruit. Red Fruit. Jam. Is there a red wine, whether Mouton-Rothschild or Carlo Rossi jug Chianti, that doesn’t have some flavors that could be described as red-fruit jam?