I try to see humor in most every aspect of life and with a critic’s nose to the glass and pen in hand – comedy can follow. Even I – an experienced taster who often samples upwards of 200 wines each week will begin a tasting note that is structured, clear and purposeful. Example: This Muscadet is light bodied, fresh clean, crisp and dry with a slight aromatic quality. By the end of many tasting sessions, only a star or a check and words such as “buy”, or “pass”, “sucks”, or “good” mark my often illegible notes. Ah, the myth and reality of the seasoned wine professional! Not satisfied with descriptions that evoke fruit, flowers and various edibles, some wine critics have summoned descriptive powers that certainly add color to their copy but often do little to enlighten the casual wine drinker or enthusiast. One of my favorite wine notes – penned by a friend and colleague of mine – Terry Theise — is so celebrated – that it was reprinted several years ago in the New Yorker. Let me set the scene, this man is talking about German wine Riesling:
“These are astonishing, vivid, undeflected, radiantly, seethingly alive on the palate, not just larger than life, but larger than reality. Drinking them I have been moved to every emotion under the sun: wonder, sadness in the face of such utter beauty, frustration when the wine was so celestially multi-faceted I couldn’t assimilate all the flavors, shattering excitement at the sheer electricity, helpless yielding at the total seductiveness, tears of gladness, sorrow and almost rage at one wine special wine that was so fiercely beautiful I felt I couldn’t rise up high enough to meet it.” Incidentally, this quote was followed by an editorial insertion “Quick, Terry: take an Alka-Seltzer!”
It is hard enough to put sensory experience into words; it is quite another thing to understand them and most importantly for other folks to understand them.
Take for instance the word dry. Often one person’s perception of dry is another person’s idea of off-dry or fruity — or gosh forbid, sweet! Form a sentence about a wine and you have probably alienated most folks around you. Ah the language of wine. So subjective, so bloated and so inadequate. Wine speak has gotten comical to the point of absurd. With an insider’s tongue that often befuddles, bemuses and often alienates the very drinkers we are often trying to embrace.
A wine review might contain the words “jam packed tannin staining fruit with surreal amounts of extract.” Huh? It gets worse. Several years ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article whose title was something to the effect, “If your wine smells like a dirty hamster cage, it might not be a bad thing.” The article again puts forth the idea that the language of wine has gotten way out of hand, and if we continue in the direction we are going, we will soon be describing aged Syrah as smelling of Sumo Wrestlers thighs. So if the words are getting out of hand, why not try the numerical approach, another popular trend in wine reviews and ratings. Following bloated language is a score that usually rates the wine from 1 – 100 points.
What, for example, does a 96-point wine really mean? Imagine if we rated art numerically. “I give the Venus de Milo 75 points, with points deducted for each missing arm.” Or the next time you are ready to order some fish at “restaurant tres cher”, the waiter recommends his 99 point salmon in a buerre blanc sauce. The tuna is listed as an 87.
Putting comedy aside where does that leave the average consumer or even the wine enthusiast? Wine has inspired us to develop systems to create it and so it seems reasonable to attempt to develop a system of expression to understand it. These systems can vary and frankly, whether you find it as simple as I liked it or I didn’t like it (and you can answer why) or if it more complex as to have you more fully verbalize, your response must be honest clear – at the very least to yourself. Or you can do what I sometimes do. Sip, savor, smile and never say a word.
Photo of wine glass courtesy Flickr Creative Commons. Photo credit: Mr T in DC.
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