Metatheory of Wine Appreciation: Tasting Notes

Levi, why so quick to anger? Perhaps you presumed I was talking about you, but I was addressing the entire anti-grocery list position (which I entirely sympathize with). I greatly admire the way you look at wine and write about it. Given the beating that grocery lists were taking, I wanted to put in a word for the embattled view that there can be value in ornery descriptors. I don't see that this complementarity poses any threat. I did not ascribe "wanting to be hip" to you. How could I ascribe that to someone who is so naturally hip, so totally dapper in that longilinear suit? I am entirely puzzled that my words should threaten or upset you as to cause you to lash out like this (I am referring to the earlier, harsher version of your response).
 
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 (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.
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Beautiful writing, but I am reminded of what the mathematician said to Ludwig Wittgenstein upon reading the end of the Tractatus (Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent. But we must climb the ladder before we may kick it away):

"If you can't say it, Ludwig, you can't whistle it either."
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

"If you can't say it, Ludwig, you can't whistle it either."
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Quite untrue, and obviously so! Music *of course* expresses things that words can't.
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"Expresses" is what philosophers would call the weasel word in this sentence. An animal growling expresses emotion in ways language can't as well. Music has better things to do, but one of those things isn't articulation.
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton: I am interested in understanding wine as we sense it...
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I agree with everything said but just as you can't take texture out of the picture, you also can't take flavor out of the picture. I mean surely you sense some fun and amazing flavors in wine!
 
Wow!

Interesting the different ways that wine (or life for that matter) can be experienced. At this point in my life, I suppose that I neither "feel" or "know" wine. For me it is a component of a meal to be shared with good company. I don't want to make it into a religious or mystical experience. Hell, I probably lack the tools to do so. More power to those that find more in the bottle than fermented grape juice. I hope they keep writing (and most of them write very well). I find it intriguing and maybe someday I'll have my own epiphany. Enjoy the madeleine, but stay away from the kool-aid.

As for really knowing the wine: the only vineyards I've walked were in Wisconsin (the wines weren't very good), I've only casually discussed the winemaking process with a few winemakers (and much like sausage, a little knowledge is enough) and I've only tasted a mere sliver of what is out there. So I guess I'm stuck with enjoying wine. For me, it is a lot like music. I can't play an instrument; I can barely follow a score; I've never met Hector Berlioz, Charles Dutoit, Mighty Joe Young, Willie Dixon, the sound engineers at Decca or Quicksilver or even the good folks at Rotel and B&W, but I could and did enjoy the music coming out of my speakers last night.

Writing (at times) and reading tasting notes adds to my enjoyment. I'm not good at, and am suspect of, games of "I Spy", so I tend to focus on red fruit v. black fruit etc, structure and drinking windows. Most of my notes aren't posted (they tend to be short reminders of the company, the food, the music and the weather...it all helps me recall the wine years later). The ones that I do post deal with the same things that I appreciate in notes: that the '02 white burg from Wednesday was not premoxed, that the '99 BdM from last night is entering into its drinking window.

Granted the internet's broad access to all kinds of arcane information can spawn some bizarre notes (and the new CellarTracker "Dial-A-Note" feature is not going to help). There are google experts/adjective pounders pouring out paragraphs on how the '95 CDPs tasted on release, years before the noted poster opened his first bottle of wine (to cite one example), but that is just noise. Ignore it, but I hope the useful flow of information continues.
 
When did the laundry list approach really become part of the common lexicon in wine communication?

When I first started studying wine there was the occasional "pencil lead" descriptor for some Bordeaux wines, and the standard "shit and strawberries" for red Burgundy.
But those types of analogous descriptors were few and far between. More commonly, wine writers used poetic phrases that were less exact in describing the array of aromas and flavors, but far more evocative in setting tone and far more seductive. Johnson likening the wines of Chateau Canon to a big bronze cannon, or Duijker describing the color of old Yquem as "Rembrandt yellow".

I first ran into the laundry list way of doing things at UCDavis, where Dr. Noble was in the process of putting together her very first Aroma Wheel. The Aroma Wheel was never intended (in those early days, at least) to serve as basis for a common vocabulary among wine lovers. It was developed to provide a common set of descriptors for wine producers and sensory and flavor chemists working with the wine industry. It was an overt attempt to force industry folks to use a common, delimited language that would serve as adjunct to basic research, especially where viticultural and enological research required sensory testing to support a premise.
The Aroma Wheel may be useful when, for instance, using QDA testing with a panel of judges to see if leaf-pulling makes a difference in the flavor profile of Sauvignon blanc wines.
As a basis for a meaningful discussion about wine between individuals it sucks. It pulls wine apart into separate, dismembered components, and loses track of so much in the process.
More than a laundry list it always reminds me of Jr High School biology classes where, in order to learn how a frog lives, we were each given a live frog and the following instructions:
"STEP 1: Kill the frog...."

Internally, I still use a limited amount of this component-based tasting technique to draw a line from cause to effect in what I do and others do.
But I don't think it serves much purpose beyond that.
 
well, I got on this board tonight with the intention of doing something I very rarely do - posting a tasting note! Yes, I really planned to do so although I don't take notes and my tasting notes are usually notes to myself (now on cellartracker but before in my wine notebook) in which I jot down who with, what else, how the wine showed or whether I (or any of my guests) liked it or not, and ideas about when to try the next bottle.

But I was dropping some wine donations and empty shipping boxes off at Macarthurs today and it occurred to me to take a bottle of riesling with me as I'm always promising the German specialist there (who often laments that he doesn't own my german wine stash) that I'll bring riesling over sometime. So I grabbed an auslese - I did this because dinner guests, even those who love german riesling, seem to never want me to open auslese. And then when I do I think, dang, I should open auslese more often. This bottle was simply delicious and all of us thought so - it was shared with shipping staff, 5 wine sales people, the elderly woman who owns the store, and 4 customers who happened to be german wine fans. I managed to get about 4 oz for myself and wish I'd had three times that much. Rich, but balanced with great acidity, totally yumola, perfect time to drink it because it's so delicious now although bags of life I'm sure.

That's the kind of tasting note I do, I'm more about the structure and the yum or ick of it - and the who and with what.

Oh, it was Dr Loosen's 96 Urziger Wurzgarten. Total deliciousness.
 
originally posted by maureen: I managed to get about 4 oz for myself and wish I'd had three times that much...Oh, it was Dr Loosen's 96 Urziger Wurzgarten. Total deliciousness.
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Sounds delicious. Perhaps you have more bottles to enjoy in the future?

Speaking of German riesling, have you had any of your 01 von Hovel OH Kabinetts? I've been drinking one over the past few days and it is showing well and nice for what it is. Not a meditation/auslese wine but if you need something to start one of your evenings you might consider opening a bottle.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:

Sounds delicious. Perhaps you have more bottles to enjoy in the future?

Speaking of German riesling, have you had any of your 01 von Hovel OH Kabinetts? I've been drinking one over the past few days and it is showing well and nice for what it is. Not a meditation/auslese wine but if you need something to start one of your evenings you might consider opening a bottle.
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I have one more of the Loosen. I haven't tried the von Hovels yet - but did have the 93 CFE the other night and it's terrific and actually ready to go (no rush tho).
 
originally posted by maureen: I haven't tried the von Hovels yet - but did have the 93 CFE the other night and it's terrific and actually ready to go (no rush tho).
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Sounds good. I've been thinking about opening the CFE soon but sometimes it's less fun when Gesche's not drinking!

(She had a sip of the von Hovel and really liked it. So that was good. I may save the others to open with her.)
 
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