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| In a snotty little review of Joe's ascension to the best wine blog, I emphasized one of Joe's sentences -- and one of his personal characteristics. After relieving myself of a little bile, I actually read the entire article; it describes a wonderful approach to tasting wine, and is well worth reading by any wine lover. I'ld apologize to Joe, but what's the percentage in that -- he'll just irritate me on another day. In the meantime, I'll enjoy this lovely little piece of wine literature: http://www.datamantic.com/joedressner/?1674 | |||
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| Or maybe 95..buts its certainly not a 96. ;-) Between Joe's sentiments here and the established points of view of Kermit Lynch or Terry Theise regarding blind tastings and the like, its certainly made an impact on how I go about trying out various wines. Ya, I fall into the fruit/earth/wood trap that Joe points out but it's articles like this that keep reminding me to take a look up out of the glass. | |||
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| (trying again, for some reason I can't edit post I sent prematurely) Clearly this is a B+ article (on my easy scale). Opens with a lemony acerbic note, with a little air fills out into a fine-full-bodied article. Hints of New York sidewalk and Loire earth. Very nice. Dale | |||
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| but I say that, of course, because I completely agree with Joe's assessment. Thomas Pellechia | |||
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| When I read the article and came upon the...."fruit/wood/earthy flavors" phrase. Sorry, Joe....but I have the trademark on the use of ////'s. My lawyer will be in touch with your lawyer and Guido will be around to remove the / from your computer keyboard!!! :-) Much of the sentiment I can agree with. OTOH, I think the ability to communicate one's thoughts on a wine to others, be it a tasting note to some other person out there in CyberSpace, or speaking to the person across the table from you over the food; is an important part of wine. There are times I want to try a wine to see what it's like and try to communicate my impressions of it to others via a tasting note; and there are times I just want to sit down and become one with the bottle and the food. Tom TomHill | |||
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| You basically describe the sentiments of a lot of people on this board, I think. | |||
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| I resonate to the sentiment expressed by Dressner on the wrong direction represented by points, green apples, petrol, and all the rest. On the other hand, we need ways to communicate our experience. How to do so about wine without falling into the reductionist trap? I went back to Dressner again to look for an answer but the closest thing I came across " So few people now are being trained to taste a wine in context, for where it came from, what it expresses and how it interacts with food and the real world" wasn't much help. | |||
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| and everything is slowly becoming the same place, we need to have something to remond us of "place", "location" or, in the wine world, "terroir". We have very little new architecture in our world anymore - the outskirts of every North American city all look the same. We have standard roads, standard shopping centre chain stores, standard WalMarts, and yes, standard wines. So anything the serves to remind us that different places make different wine, and delays this sameness creep, is fine by me. The word context is often misused, by I thought it was used just fine in this case. Evem numerical scores, though they may appear to be universally comprehensible, are subject to the preferences of the scorer. My 92 is not necessarilty your 92. I know that RP's and mine certainly are not. | |||
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| if we aren't going to use the standard reductionist lexicon (peaches, old socks, cat pee, and God knows what else) to describe wine how do we go about doing so? Or is it just a solipsistic, non-communicable experience? | |||
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| comes closer to allowing a shared impression of all aspects of the wine than a number between 80 and 100. I also believe that there is more than just those descriptors that should be conveyed. In beer judging, we call it "Overall Impression", and include a sliding scale for "Intangibles" on the scoresheet for competitons. When I do notes, I catalogue my sensory evaluations, but I usually finish with a less scientific, if you will, comment. Like "yummy", or "good for the price", or in rare cases "mind altering" to try to convey my general impression of the experience of drinking the wine. | |||