If the hand fits…
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They’re only crunchy if you overcook them.
Good timing, Stumbled into this re-upload of and old Vice video on wine tasting. (Timestamp 3:35)Here is the well respected Steven Spurrier saying “I love the freshness and the Crunch”
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Sips liquid. “I love the crunch” 
I suppose some people are charmed by this.
Would anyone seriously hear crunchy and assume the liquid has some corn flake type substance floating in it? When we say Full body are we referencing the wine literally having legs a fat torso and a head? There are plenty of descriptors that if we took literally would be just as silly. Chewy tannins for example: sips liquid “quite chewy”. If I use fresh when describing an aged wine am I misusing the word fresh?
Lets have just a little bit of creativity here
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I personally favor clarity over creativity, but I acknowledge the validity of the opposite view.
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I think for some people crunchy might be the most clear way to describe a wine
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Wow, I’d not heard of this. I regularly perceive textures from aromas, which often are validated by tasting. I just assumed that certain aromas had become associated (for me) with textures. I need to learn more.
I thought I’d quote @Marcus_Goodfellow who summed up crunchy, minerality and other subjective terms nicely on another thread:
“ Almost all subsets of people adopt terminology that is useful for them to communicate amongst themselves. Sometimes it’s technical and sometimes it is abstract. And it’s rarely necessary for it to match a wider definition.
For the larger part of society the word “stupid” means unintelligent, unwise, foolish, etc. But at some point a bunch of kids started using the word “stupid” to mean good, cool, over-the-top, as in “Man, that show last night was just stupid, best ever!”
Does that mean that the kids are wrong? To the old fogey’s, yes. The kids 1) don’t care and 2) are glad that the old fogey’s don’t get it.
Are wines “lean”, which by definition is lacking in fat. Only if you mis-use the term fat and apply it to the idea that a richly textured wine actually has fat. Do people think that wine has actual “fat” in it? Doubtful.
Or specifically bacon fat? A not uncommon aromatic in red wines? Doubtful.
So with mineral, a term I use regularly when a wine has a finish that combines acidity and astringency deftly enough that they present in a singular manner to my palate, I don’t really care if the fogey’s don’t get it.
Wine descriptors are routinely not literal terms, e.g. racy, sexy, mineral, lean, fat, grand, bombastic, crunchy(another favorite). But these terms all work just fine for the group of users that I communicate with, so ultimately it doesn’t matter if the term is exact.
As to the authors supposition that because some tasters ascribe a “mineral” aspect in the wine to actual minerals in the vineyard, then the point would be to educate people that there isn’t necessarily a correllation, rather than to suggest that minerality is misused.
Given that there are a wide range of minerals and combinations thereof, it doesn’t seem logical to assume that a mineral descriptor in a wine correllates to specific minerals in the soil. But some folks enjoy that idea, and it’s bound to stick around. I’m disinclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater though and suggest that minerality be struck from the wine descriptor lexicon. And certainly not before getting rid of terms like “sexy”.”
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The other day, I was listening to an NPR piece on Fergie Chambers. They described him as prickly. I knew exactly what they meant.
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Even without seeing a picture of his spines?
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Crunchy is a great descriptor. Makes me a lot happier than reading about a forest chocolate vanilla cake.
I’ll add that until you taste crunchy in a wine, there’s a good chance you’re in for a treat in your future wine journey! 
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I think of it as the flavors of a fruit when you actually bite into it vs just the juice or just the ‘flavor added’. The skin, the pulp, the stone all add something, usually tartness or tannins. Apple off the tree vs apple juice vs apple flavored Jolly Rancher
Agreed.
And what is really wrong with using a syntax that a core group uses and letting them sort out what it means for themselves? This is, literally, how the vast majority of slang terms grow and spread.
Enshittification is not a literal term, yet it is indeed a word now and gets regular use (unfortunately) by a significant number of people these days.
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To be fair they may have just added the ‘-ly’ to get it past the censors….
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