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Banish Tasting Notes? You Decide!
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Banished?
I recently read a post over at Alder Yarrow's Vinography blog that was discussing Eric Asimov's assessment that we should just stop recording and publishing tasting notes. While I agreed with Eric's points on wine snobbery and the effects of said stereotypes on the blooming of our wine culture, I stepped up to support Mr. Yarrow in the feeling that ending the worship of the tasting note would certainly not provide an answer to our problems. My response to both points of view is reprinted below. I am anxious to view the responses of other readers. Did I make any sense? Was I convincing? Or did I seem to be a guy with too little knowledge, too much of an opinion, and possibly too much to drink? You decide.
"This post brings up an excellent point of conversation (as do most of them on this site). Although I have attempted to resist the Death Star-like gravitational pull of my temptation to become enthralled with this discussion, I have failed. Alas, here is my (somewhat candid) response.
First of all, I apologize for the above noted Star Wars reference.
I would agree with Eric’s assessment that the source of people’s anxiety about wine comes from the perception that to enjoy it, you must be an expert. In reality, this is the doing of wine folks just like you and I. We have lived out the stereotype of the wine snobs before us.
When two or more people get together in the same room with a glass of wine, the same peculiar dance begins. One or more folks will swirl it and make a comment on the legs as they perform the Viewing of the Wine; one or more will wave the glass under their nose and raise their eyebrows as they enact the Smelling of the Wine; one or more will take a drink and immediately swallow in the Tasting of the Wine. Then, almost synchronously, a quiet reflection will come upon the room as the entire gaggle, even those who have not performed The Tasting, engage in the Judging of the Wine. Some will over-emphasize the importance of the Tasting of the Wine and not enough of the Judging; those folks will often follow up with the Spilling of the Wine, and sometimes (sadly enough) the eventual Purging of the Wine.
My point is that this is not natural human behavior. This is a learned response which we associate with being appropriate in any situation where wine is involved and we want to instantly communicate that we belong. I did it; I bet everyone reading this did too. Why? Simply because I observed someone else who knew a lot more about wine than me (or so I thought at the time) doing it. And so it continues. Why doesn’t someone stop it? We can’t help it. Why? Who knows?
There are other things, however, that are help in almost the same snobbish regard. I always use my scuba diving analogy.
When I first got into scuba, I was quite intimidated not only with the sport itself but the people I came in contact with. Constant conversations about deepest dives, scariest situations, and jokes about recent encounters with a newbie were more than effective in making me believe I should probably just save the time and quit. My first four trips to a real dive shop as opposed to the sporting goods section of Wal-Mart were quite sobering. Those fins you’re using, that you think are really cool? Crap. That mask that you got for Christmas? Garbage. Renting your tanks from the guy in the parking lot with a trailer on his truck? Amateur. Spending Sunday afternoons diving in eight feet of water and looking at starfish with your girlfriend? That, my friend, isn’t even diving.
That perception convinced me to buy an $800 dive watch, a $200 set of fins, my own tanks, my own gear, and then take all that stuff, book a $2200 vacation, and go to Cozumel. Quite a serious dive spot and quite a few serious divers. Too serious to understand that I was still learning; too serious to understand I had never been drift diving before; too serious to care whether or not I was actually enjoying myself. That was 2005. I haven’t been diving since. I use my equipment to snorkel and point out starfish to my wife.
Point taken, Eric.
However, I have to also agree with Alder regarding tasting notes. They have their place, and that place is quite near and dear to my heart.
Compared to a lot of the wine writers on the web, including Alder, I am somewhat of a novice. While I’d assess that I’ve been serious about wine as a hobby for over five years now, I’ve only been writing about it for eighteen months. I’ve probably only really understood what I was writing for the last six months or so. My first “wine story” was a collection of tasting notes that I kept in a leather-bound journal that I bought from Borders. It looked official enough for my purpose. At any rate, these “tasting notes” were from my honeymoon to Italy. I didn’t understand the difference between European and American labels. I didn’t realize that chianti was not a grape. I didn’t realize that Venice was smack in the middle of a wine district-which wasn’t Tuscany-so you can imagine the quality of these notes.
The point was, I wrote them. I read them to my wife and she enjoyed them. Friends came to the house and marveled at my amazing wine journal. I didn’t realize until much later that in reality, my tasting notes were about as chintzy as the $19 fins I started diving with. The important thing was, that journal gave me the medium for practicing what I thought was an elite skill. It was cool. And it made me enjoy wine.
I respect the tasting notes of the Great Ones, and I respect the notes of the Unknowns too. I always read them with an appreciation for how the writer came to the interpretation of the wine that he or she had communicated rather than how good a wine might be or whether or not I’m even going to like it. Even a novice can quickly discern that in the wine world, everything doesn’t “taste like chicken”. How it tastes is a direct correlation of an individual’s palette, just like anything else. Tell me chitterlings and black-eyed peas don’t taste good, and I’ll kick you in the shin. Get the picture?
Every “amazing” bottle of wine I’ve ever had usually involved some time in my life, some event, or some memory that’s burned into my conscience as well. One of my favorites was a cab franc that I had in Venice, along the canal, on my honeymoon. One was a syrah from my first dinner of the very first night of the cross-country trip I took back home to see my mom in almost eleven years. One was during my first ever trip to Napa Valley. I contend that it was the experience – not the wine – that opened my soul and allowed me to drink it all in. And what I was trying to capture, without even realizing it, in those first tasting notes, was the memory. And like a good bottle of Bordeaux, you do everything you can to hold on to it forever."
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