A whole new concept in taste

Tonight I went to a number of establishments in Tokyo, but the last was a champagne bar, as best as I can tell. It sold champagne and still red & white wines. At the beginning of the menu it had a tasting guide. This is a fairly sensible idea for a country that has relatively recently adopted the fermented grape as a drink. However, it takes a Japanese sensibility to create a tasting guide that looks like this.

Go ahead, zoom in on that. The first row tells you about body. Yep, I'll give you a moment to digest that.

The second is fairly sensible - varying from tropical fruits to citrus.

The third is something to do with flavour, or maybe aroma, my friends couldn't really help me.

The fourth is a measure of sweetness. Why this is iconified in hearts is anyone's guess.

That last row. What can I say? The left hand side indicates softness, so I can only assume the right end is hard. I don't know what a hard wine is, or why a stubbly man in sunglasses typifies it, but there you go.

The strangest thing? Using this very bizarre guide, I chose a chardy that was divine. Weird and inappropriate, yes, but also effective.

I chose the third one down. Apparently I like my chardys with fat arses.