New Yorker Article on wine criticism...

Sorry if it was already posted:

Very interesting, and I guess I’ll not say “Minerality” any more!

Also apparently Pliny the Elder was a Low Alcohol fan too!

Pliny elsewhere warned that wines from Pompeii are “productive of headache, which often lasts so long as the sixth hour of the next day.”

I have commented on this several times here already,

The problem is that the brain projections for wine perception involve memory, emotional, and unconscious regions rather than language/cognitive cortical areas. This means you really can’t describe wine sensations with words, would be like trying to describe a kiss or a massage with words.

As described in this article the culture has been to replace wine sensations with verbal analogs, and I always felt this was pretty stupid. Studies have shown that there is very little inter and even intra observer consistencies in the use of these analog descriptors.

Well, “minerality” is just one of those silly words but overall she makes a good point and I like the example of the tasting notes on the same wine.

Lots of arguments with the links in the article, e.g. the “cheat sheet” is pretty ridiculous. According to it, esters produce the aromas of white flowers, so I guess the somm who invented it is someone who is keenly perceptive and who I would go to for guidance regarding wine. He understands that lilacs, lilies and lupine all smell the same, as do white chrysanthemums, tobacco, peonies, and apple blossoms. I wonder what chemicals produce the aromas of pink flowers.

The problem is that if on the one hand you have people who pretend to know some chemistry and on the other you have people who search a thesaurus, you end up with no communication.

And the analogy by Galloni is dead wrong. You compare an iPhone to the last version because you can compare objective criteria. And then at the end of the review, you say that you liked the feel of the other one more or less. You can do the same with wine actually, providing an objective spec sheet with the chemical breakdown, but it would be pretty meaningless and would convey very little about the experience of the wine. Wine criticism is really about the last part of the product review, i.e. the subjective opinion.

It’s why I never understood why people say to ignore the score and read the note. The notes are generally useless for me. The score indicates whether the taster liked the wine or not.

It’s hard to describe personal experiences in words, as Phillip says. The best solution is often to compare to something, and that’s kind of where things get fuzzy. You can describe a physical pain to your doctor as being similar to a cut or pin-prick, and you can describe a flavor as being similar to similar to another flavor you’ve experienced. When flavors start becoming colors, or Baryshnikov in a glass, it starts becoming meaningless.

And Kramer’s suggestions are just absurd.

Why I have been saying tasting notes are pretty much worthless. I don’t do them, nor do I give the notes of others any weight.

Apologies for a little off-topic history. Those might have been the last wines he ever drank. He died there from respiratory problems during the eruption of Vesuvius. I believe it was while he was trying to evacuate a friend.

I have to respectfully disagree here Paul. While our own impressions should trump all, I find others’ tasting notes useful. I have a list of favorite CT users whose palates and tastes seem to align with mine. I use those data points to help decide what to buy or try, and when to open.

Cheers,
Warren

Yea, that position is far too absolute for me. I prefer to take in all pieces of information and then apply my own filter. I feel like I would lose half the value of this board if I didn’t. For example, today, Neal’s simple, clear notes on the '86 Chateau Canon - yes, a person I respect tasting a wine from a region that I love - sent me searching and digging for some finds. Of course, many notes, including mine, use silly, flowery and contradictory descriptions, but many overall do capture the essence of important things like whether it is ready, needs time, needs decant, sucked so bad don’t buy, or has detail that tells me enough about the wine to think that I may like it. I cannot taste every single wine that I buy, so these tidbits of information can be useful.

Best to pay attention to both. The notes are useful if you know the taster. And there are some people for whom anything less than a 95 is meh. So a score alone can mislead.

Yep.

They make spelling mistakes at the New Yorker?!?!
de rigeur → de rigueur

Interesting article otherwise. Talking about wine is like talking about human faces. If you see the face while another person is describing it, you understand what he/she means. If you don’t see it you get a rough idea at best, and perhaps the desire to see this face yourself. But precision does not belong here. I am afraid attempts to make the language more precise are all going to fail.
But making tasting notes more useful is still possible, I believe.

“What world would you rather live in: a world where people are talking about minerality, or a world where people are talking about toasty oak?” ~ Matt Kramer, rejecting the notion that minerality can not scientifically exist in wine. - See more at: http://thewinesisters.com/blog/2015/07/our-top-10-quotes-from-i4c/#sthash.nK52INmD.dpuf

I think this is one of those times Kramer makes a valid point. Why do we only trust the “reality” of the chemical lab? Perception is a constructed notion based on sensory input from not only the outside world, but reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle in our brains through the miracle of the sensory areas, filtered through the limbic system, and projected into our cortex like a movie. Reality and perception are inseparable it seems to me. Why not accept the mystery of our senses? If there is a perception that can be shared by others, why not communicate it?

Just because we cannot agree always on a blue/black dress color, does this mean there is not a shapely bottom in that dress?

I for one celebrate a world of infinite variation and lots of different perceptions. Who cares about the scientists in white coats that tell us things do not exist because we cannot measure them with our little instruments. It is perhaps the instruments that are lacking, not ourselves.