I'm actually of the mind that tasting notes are, in fact, largely useless. Wine and Spirits are a strange category that we've adopted this practice for, but we don't use this for anything else involving taste. Food menus tell you WHAT the food is, they'll tell you if the steak has been marinated and in what spices, it'll tell you if the sauce is butter based or olive oil or a gravy, but it doesn't give us tasing notes. Nothing outside of alcoholic beverages do.
Of course, alcoholic beverages often have minimal ingredients, so listing those isn't helpful as it is with food. But none of us taste the same thing - which is big dirty secret of the alcohol industry, I suppose. The power of suggestion is unquestionably powerful, so tasting notes work on that level, but they DON'T actually mean anything as disparate notes. You soon figure out that all red wines are red, bramble, or dark fruit, then some litany of herbs, earthy, and woodsy stuff. Once you name more than 3 notes it's just a jumble of...stuff. You might as well just call it "layered" or "complex", and most readers will get the same info from that as they would from 8 individual spice notes.
So a DeGrasse-Tyson of wine would be able to showcase: fruit flavor is largely dictated by acidity and a little bit by vareity: Pinot Noir is typically red fruit, but that's because it's typically higher in acidity. If/when you grow Pinot to be low in acid, it'll taste like black fruit, just like any low acid red wine. (Red = higher, bramble [red + black] = medium, black = lower.) Essentially, it's the STRUCTURE of the wine that determines much of its flavors, or likely flavors. It's the WHAT the wine is that's important, not a poutpourri of random-butt tasting notes pulled from our random butts.
I know many adore these notes, they revel in it; they want to list that list; they want to get creative and toss out notes that are wild and impress themselves and others, and many others appreciate this right back. So go for it, if you love it. It doesn't harm anything too much (though it does, I'd argue, confuse things more than enlighten.) But this is the part of wine writing that was born out of a kind of elitism - you had to learn the language, the style guide to writing about wine, and then you had to stick to that whether you thought it was useful or not, while the writing itself did not educate the public in any useful way at all.
It's like listing grapes in a blend - if you're naming more than three, at some point literally no one can determine what the wine actually tastes like just by reading a list of so many grapes. Similarly, if you're naming 8+ tasting notes, we can imagine each individually but almost no one is actually imagining the combination of all of them. What you really need to know is the final structure, so you're in the ight ballpark of style and fundamental flavors, and then your own brrain telling you what you're experiencing from there.
[/rant] oopsie that went on longer than I intended, mea culpa!
This is great. It’s funny because you’re essentially admitting that the emperor is not wearing any clothes!
So far, when drinking wine, I have been able to determine a few obvious tastes. I had a muscadet once that tasted like bread. And a Gewürztraminer that tasted sweet. The high-acid ones were easy to call “citrusy” but I haven’t the faintest idea what tobacco or wool tastes like!
Hi, I’m Kelly – slow traveler, writer, and someone who chooses wine based on the label and the region we just fell in love with. My husband and I are currently a month into sipping our way across the UK, where I’ve eaten an ungodly number of sticky toffee puddings and still manage to feel oddly… radiant.
I absolutely loved this: “Wine is finicky and full of personality. It can be sweet, sour, bitter, or buttery.” Yes! That’s the kind of messy, mystical truth I can raise a glass to. I agree completely – wine doesn’t need demystifying, it needs storytellers.
If you’re into rooting yourself in place and pleasure (with a little chaos thrown in), you might like our tale too: Retired, Roaming, and Rooted. Cheers from someone still learning the difference between earthy and oaky but drinking anyway.
I'm actually of the mind that tasting notes are, in fact, largely useless. Wine and Spirits are a strange category that we've adopted this practice for, but we don't use this for anything else involving taste. Food menus tell you WHAT the food is, they'll tell you if the steak has been marinated and in what spices, it'll tell you if the sauce is butter based or olive oil or a gravy, but it doesn't give us tasing notes. Nothing outside of alcoholic beverages do.
Of course, alcoholic beverages often have minimal ingredients, so listing those isn't helpful as it is with food. But none of us taste the same thing - which is big dirty secret of the alcohol industry, I suppose. The power of suggestion is unquestionably powerful, so tasting notes work on that level, but they DON'T actually mean anything as disparate notes. You soon figure out that all red wines are red, bramble, or dark fruit, then some litany of herbs, earthy, and woodsy stuff. Once you name more than 3 notes it's just a jumble of...stuff. You might as well just call it "layered" or "complex", and most readers will get the same info from that as they would from 8 individual spice notes.
So a DeGrasse-Tyson of wine would be able to showcase: fruit flavor is largely dictated by acidity and a little bit by vareity: Pinot Noir is typically red fruit, but that's because it's typically higher in acidity. If/when you grow Pinot to be low in acid, it'll taste like black fruit, just like any low acid red wine. (Red = higher, bramble [red + black] = medium, black = lower.) Essentially, it's the STRUCTURE of the wine that determines much of its flavors, or likely flavors. It's the WHAT the wine is that's important, not a poutpourri of random-butt tasting notes pulled from our random butts.
I know many adore these notes, they revel in it; they want to list that list; they want to get creative and toss out notes that are wild and impress themselves and others, and many others appreciate this right back. So go for it, if you love it. It doesn't harm anything too much (though it does, I'd argue, confuse things more than enlighten.) But this is the part of wine writing that was born out of a kind of elitism - you had to learn the language, the style guide to writing about wine, and then you had to stick to that whether you thought it was useful or not, while the writing itself did not educate the public in any useful way at all.
It's like listing grapes in a blend - if you're naming more than three, at some point literally no one can determine what the wine actually tastes like just by reading a list of so many grapes. Similarly, if you're naming 8+ tasting notes, we can imagine each individually but almost no one is actually imagining the combination of all of them. What you really need to know is the final structure, so you're in the ight ballpark of style and fundamental flavors, and then your own brrain telling you what you're experiencing from there.
[/rant] oopsie that went on longer than I intended, mea culpa!
Oh, and don’t apologize. I have learned so much from generous comments like yours.
Maybe the thing is - wine creates a desire for people to ponder on wine, itself.
This is great. It’s funny because you’re essentially admitting that the emperor is not wearing any clothes!
So far, when drinking wine, I have been able to determine a few obvious tastes. I had a muscadet once that tasted like bread. And a Gewürztraminer that tasted sweet. The high-acid ones were easy to call “citrusy” but I haven’t the faintest idea what tobacco or wool tastes like!
Hi, I’m Kelly – slow traveler, writer, and someone who chooses wine based on the label and the region we just fell in love with. My husband and I are currently a month into sipping our way across the UK, where I’ve eaten an ungodly number of sticky toffee puddings and still manage to feel oddly… radiant.
I absolutely loved this: “Wine is finicky and full of personality. It can be sweet, sour, bitter, or buttery.” Yes! That’s the kind of messy, mystical truth I can raise a glass to. I agree completely – wine doesn’t need demystifying, it needs storytellers.
If you’re into rooting yourself in place and pleasure (with a little chaos thrown in), you might like our tale too: Retired, Roaming, and Rooted. Cheers from someone still learning the difference between earthy and oaky but drinking anyway.
Yes! Thanks for the comment. And I can't wait to check out your story. Cheers!