Metatheory of Wine Appreciation: Tasting Notes

one of my favorite tasting notes was in michael broadbent's first 'great vintage wine book' published in the early 80's. i forget what the wine was, but it was a claret, and the note went something like this: "lovely, 4 stars".

far more beguiling that a whole paragraph of "semi-underripe mulberry" goings-on.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
None of the links are to the Dressner argument that I remember, which went along the lines of this: all tasting notes concentrate on the taste of wine as the proper focus of attention. To know a wine, one had to know where it came from, etc., etc., preferably by visiting the vineyards, talking to the vigneron and then meditating on the quidditas of that wine. Such meditations would not lead, by their nature, to tasting notes. I am not doing justice to his argument, but since I can't find it, maybe by offering this transmogrification, I can get Joe to repost the original.
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That's all in the blog post/url provided by Joe (Dougherty) and is what I meant by the reducionism charge. Joe (Dressner) makes a compelling case for the big picture, without which the TN is sorely meager in scope (but, I think, still useful, depending on who writes it).
 
originally posted by Kevin Roberts:
... the act of putting pen to paper to describe something increases my interaction with it. I experience more when taking notes.
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Good point. Writing notes forces us to be more attentive and, probably, perceptive.

But perhaps Jeff's point was that we do it primarily for ourselves, disguised as being for others.
 
Since we're posting links...

Joe Dressner's original "walk the land" essay led to some discussion on Therapy and his blog, but after that it was quiet for a while. What re-energized it was a speech Eric Asimov made on the subject, or maybe it was just an essay, reproduced here.

Here's Joe, again, on the subject.

Cory weighed in here.

As for me, I've got stuff going back about five or six years on the subject. For the overly-bored: a definitional essay that's now old enough that I might like to revisit some of the points, since my thinking has evolved a bit, an argument for changing the form of tasting notes (and there are links to Lyle, Vincent, and perhaps others in that one), and my response to Cory.
 
In response:

1. I can very well remember things that I have never written down. These tend to be important events but sometimes it's just what my head decides to do.

2. When I read other people's words I imagine having that experience. That is not the same as what happened to the author and it's probably not even much like it. Even reading my own words only brings back pieces of the experience and those memories are provably tainted by selective omission and revision.

3. Spending extra time with my perceptions and judgments will lead naturally to broader and stronger (e.g., more detailed, longer-lasting) memories.

4. Communication can be good, can be tedious (see certain other boreds if you doubt).

---

Going from the specific to the general:

For me, if a wine is exciting and good, then there is the (solipsistic) pleasure of wrestling my experience into words. Words have the aura of permanence and it pleases me to catch and keep something good.

For me, unless the wine is an obvious "beverage", writing a TN is useful because it can serve as a guide when considering subsequent purchases.

For me, offering my words to others sometimes leads to discussions in which I learn something. There is no law or rule about it but it seems to be generally true that one gets as good as one gives (or perceives it so).

My life is not conveniently arranged for spending time with vignerons. TNs, boreds, books, bottles are the only reasonable outlet I have for my interest in wine. I settle for the aforementioned reductionism.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman: For me, offering my words to others sometimes leads to discussions in which I learn something. There is no law or rule about it but it seems to be generally true that one gets as good as one gives (or perceives it so).
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For me, this is the best argument in favor of even the reductionist TNs. I think most of the enlightened around here (and elsewhere too) realize that they are not absolute truths about wines but rather springboards for conversation. And I think everyone here likes conversation!

My life is not conveniently arranged for spending time with vignerons. TNs, boreds, books, bottles are the only reasonable outlet I have for my interest in wine. I settle for the aforementioned reductionism.
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This is another key point for me. I mean I enjoy mockery and petty criticism as much as the next Disorderly. But I've always rejected the idea that certain kinds of TNs are "wrong".

It seems that this critique often comes from ITB folks who have devoted their professional (and often personal) lives to wine. But surely they acknowledge that everyone will not do the same thing. Wine is a leisure activity for most people and there are many ways to enjoy it.

Who am I to mock someone for watching all of a director's films all weekend long when they might have learned more by watching one film over and over again, or watching one film and reading books about the director.

Let those 1000 flowers bloom! (And within those flowers let 1000 critiques bloom)
 
"My life is not conveniently arranged for spending time with vignerons."

This is what I meant by saying I found Dressner's position so extreme as to be disabling. Its demands are such that so few people would be able to appreciate wine in the manner in which he demanded that, if that were the only way to appreciate wine, it would cease to be made. Even people who spend time with vignerons and in vineyards, can only do so for a very limited number of them. According to Joe, I could enjoy the Rhone wines that are made within a 20 mile radius of the place I stay there (and really only that small portion of those whose domaines I visit and learn about). I should just give up on all other wines. And that probably puts me a step ahead of a lot of you.

I think Joe's objection to tasting notes was really an objection to the idea that just by tasting a wine, we knew all we needed to know about it, or even that we knew more about it than just what it tasted like to us at that moment, though, and to that extent, his position had some merits.

Still, there is a problem with tasting notes that, seeking to live with his view of wine, find a wine to speak of its place, say, when we don't know how that came about. Since it is theoretically possible for any sensation to be reproduced, we cannot know from a taste, alone, that it comes uniquely from a place, as opposed to coming from some other mechanism that produced the exact same sensation. As Samuel Goldwyn is reputed to have said, the key to acting is sincerity, once you can fake that, you can fake anything. The most we could say is that it tastes like other wines that we have reason to believe come from nearby, a much reduced claim.
 
So I am certainly guilty of having published tasting notes here myself. But I do seek to put the wine into context (so, not "redolent of lime and iris," but "richer, longer than the 2008, with more rs, but not a patch on the '24."
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
So I am certainly guilty of having published tasting notes here myself. But I do seek to put the wine into context (so, not "redolent of lime and iris," but "richer, longer than the 2008, with more rs, but not a patch on the '24."
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What does Jack Bauer have to do with this? Isn't he in trouble enough?
 
I'm joining this discussion a bit late, as I have been putting in a lot of hours at the job, but coincidentally this is a subject I have been thinking a lot about lately.

My current understanding of what I myself have been interested in writing about wine is that I am concerned with wine as a part of, and through the lens of human experience. I think that we experience wine in the same way that we experience being touched by someone else, for instance. It is a sensation. And like a touch from another, it can caress, it can excite, it can be harsh, it can be inappropriate. There is feeling associated, a response.

I find the (anti)philosophy of Bishop Berkeley to have a lot of currency in my current understanding of wine. Direct knowledge of a wine seems impossible. There is a sensation, an experience, and that is what I perceive and consider.

I am not currently interested much in wine as an ideogram, whether that is "94 points" or "an expression of terroir".

I am not much interested in wine as a somewhat reminiscent semblance of other sensations. Being akin to the taste of lemons, or apricots, or cherries is such poverty stricken understanding that such parlance depresses and frustrates me. Like grappling with shadows. Really, is that the best we as humans can do? I find such language particularly false to memories. And it is the very sure sounding of it that is so wrong, and so appalling.

I am interested in understanding wine as we sense it, as part of what might be termed human experience. I am interested in understanding wine better through the stories of Eddie Remache counting looks, Chip Coen losing books, a sushi chef being lied to by Marlon Brando, my father being knocked over by a "tank", by my pushing Melissa Chong in the mud. I understand wine as I understand the other phenomenon before me: not well, bemused, and in wonderment.

I have in the past thought of writing a "musical score" for a wine. Nothing seems more boring to me now.

I experience wine as I experience a firm handshake. As I experience a blush. A lilting voice.

You take it all in.
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
I'm joining this discussion a bit late, as I have been putting in a lot of hours at the job, but coincidentally this is a subject I have been thinking a lot about lately.

My current understanding of what I myself have been interested in writing about wine is that I am concerned with wine as a part of, and through the lens of human experience. I think that we experience wine in the same way that we experience being touched by someone else, for instance. It is a sensation. And like a touch from another, it can caress, it can excite, it can be harsh, it can be inappropriate. There is feeling associated, a response.

I find the ideas of Bishop Berkeley to have a lot of currency in my current understanding of wine. Direct knowledge of a wine seems impossible. There is a sensation, an experience, and that is what I perceive.

I am not currently interested much in wine as an ideogram, whether that is "94 points" or "an expression of terroir".

I am not much interested in wine as a semblance of other sensations. Being akin to the taste of lemons, or apricots, or cherries is such poverty stricken understanding that such language depresses and frustrates me. Like grappling with shadows. Really, is that the best we as humans can do?

I am interested in understanding wine as we sense it, as part of what might be termed human experience. I am interested in understanding wine better through the stories of Eddie Remache counting looks, Chip Coen losing books, a sushi chef being lied to by Marlon Brando, my father being knocked over by a "tank", by my pushing Melissa Chong in the mud. I understand wine as I understand the other phenomenon before me: not well, bemused, and in wonderment.

I have in the past thought of writing a "musical score" for a wine. Nothing seems more boring to me now.

I experience wine as I experience a firm handshake. A blush. A lilting voice.

You take it all in.
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well said. and as an example, i will use the recent moving north lunch. even with all those wonderful wines, the event would have been incomplete without those present.
 
Levi, I am 100% with you. It's not about "saying what the wine is," it's about saying what your interaction with the wine was. The pretense that a different kind of note is of objective use to someone else -- and this is the basis of wine criticism -- is anathema, at this stage. Tell me how you felt. Tell me how it was. Just telling me what it tasted like is boring.

I still write notes like that, in big tastings like those done in Asti. There's not time for anything else. But they're extremely unsatisfying.
 
That said, I still believe in noting the flavors and textures experienced - even if only for future reference and memory stimulation - along with the good stuff, how it makes us feel, and whatever flights of fancy it inspired. Though we can never relate experience satisfactorily, I don't see the point of favoring one way of describing it over another when we can describe with everything we've got. To avoid the description of flavors and textures because we want to be hip and entertain others with linguistic legerdemain shortchanges the already slight efficacy of the tasting note.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
That said, I still believe in noting the flavors and textures experienced - even if only for future reference and memory stimulation - along with the good stuff, how it makes us feel, and whatever flights of fancy it inspired. Though we can never relate experience satisfactorily, I don't see the point of favoring one way of describing it over another when we can describe with everything we've got. To avoid the description of flavors and textures because we want to be hip and entertain others with linguistic legerdemain shortchanges the already slight efficacy of the tasting note.
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Who said anything about avoiding a description of texture?

Your statement here is pretty quick to ascribe motives ("want to be hip") in a way that is not justified by anything I said, and is also untrue. In other words, not disimilar from an slapdash tasting note.

I was careful in my reasoning to qualify repeatedly that this is a method I am interested in at this time. You have taken a bit more of a hard line stance here, as if there was one true way, and I think again, this is something that is symptomatic of a tiresome tasting note, and specious Internet discourse.
 
OK, let's everyone step back from the tasting note and take a deep retronasal breath, shall we?
 
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