It's critic bingo! (not "perfect but perfectly embod[ies] the human spirit")

[Nick_Ryan]

I love existential shit in tasting notes, random streams-of-consciousness, copious swearing, anything to stave off boredom. Terry Theise is a master of this. Just to pick a random note from one of his newsletters…

“Polished and relatively “modern,” showing all the classic flavors of this greatest-of-great vineyards. From their oldest vines
(planted 1939) blended with a parcel that’s merely 40. A wine to study in its mint-smoke potion hookah juju; it should be served
by a Vizier instead of a somm, unless the somm comes to the table with falcons on both shoulders….”

Damn. You kind of have to be born with skill like that.

[Chris_Seiber]

You’ll get Richard Jennings every time if you put “medium-plus finish” on your card.

[Odd_Rydland]

@Nick Ryan

I love existential shit in tasting notes, random streams-of-consciousness, copious swearing, anything to stave off boredom. Terry Theise is a master of this. Just to pick a random note from one of his newsletters…

“Polished and relatively “modern,” showing all the classic flavors of this greatest-of-great vineyards. From their oldest vines
(planted 1939) blended with a parcel that’s merely 40. A wine to study in its mint-smoke potion hookah juju; it should be served
by a Vizier instead of a somm, unless the somm comes to the table with falcons on both shoulders….”

Damn. You kind of have to be born with skill like that.

Stuff like this is the only reason to read tasting notes. Otherwise concentration, acidity, balance and length is the only thing that matters. All the rest are mainly subjective anyway.

[Larry_Link]

@Chris Seiber

You’ll get Richard Jennings every time if you put “medium-plus finish” on your card.

With a pale meniscus.

[Larry_Link]

The other Parkerism that I dislike is:

The (insert name) winery is going from strength to strength. . .

[George_Chadwick]

@D@v!d P@rt@!n

Don’t forget “liquor-like”. Perhaps the most telling description warning me to skip this wine and move on to something else.

Do you mean liqueur-like? That means essence of the fruit, not alcoholic. I doubt any TN ever said liquor-like.

[Gary_York]

Did anyone actually bother to read the tasting note ?

[Robert.A.Jr]

@Chris Seiber

You’ll get Richard Jennings every time if you put “medium-plus finish” on your card.

And 93 pts.

[Neal.Mollen]

@Robert Alfert

@Scott Fitzgerald

Man, missing Klapp…

Tough to get rid of it when you get it.

He is an antibiotic resistant strain. He’ll be back posting. Everyone wave at Billy; Hi Billy!

For Tanzer, it seems as if every review begins with “[Good] medium red.” Or at least the red wines.

[David_K2]

I like Jancis’s notes. Short and terse, but they say more in 20 words than others’ do in 100.

[Neal.Mollen]

@john stimson

Unfortunately, Davy pays a heavy price for being able to write his over the top hallucinogenic tasting notes.

I’m happy to dis Antonio and Parker for their tasting notes, but in reality, it’s exceedingly hard to write original notes in the volume that these folks have to produce. I recently wrote some notes on a 10 bottle Thomas vertical. All of the wines were exactly the same, except the vintages were slightly different. It’s tough to write original notes that differentiate the wines in that setting, and that’s only ten wines.

Look at Jim Anderson, who has to write notes about each of the 63 or so bottlings that PG produces each year (I could be off by a few). How can you do that and not repeat yourself, or drift off into some existential shit to distract the reader so he doesn’t notice that you’ve actually left the wine and the planet a while before.

It is, in fact, an extraordinarily difficult thing to do if you are striving to (a) give the reader some sense of what the wine is like and (b) not repeat yourself. If you want to be clever or entertaining too, it is damn near impossible to do for a bunch of wines.

I think you could make a pretty strong argument that repeating particular adjectives is actually a plus. If “unctuous” puts a particular wine in a definable class of wines reviewed by critic P, it has some incremental value that wouldn’t be gained by having him find a rough synonym. Now, of this critic P labels every wine he likes as unctuous, that value is gone.

Grading a wine critic on the quality of the writing is usually a pointless exercise. It isn’t a novel or a poem. If the thing gives me an idea of what the wine is like and how it might mature, and expresses the critic’s enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for the wine, it has served its purpose.

[Michael_S_Monie]

David Schildknecht’s notes make me swoon.

[Ken_V]

@Gary York

Did anyone look at the TN ?

@Gary York

Did anyone actually bother to read the tasting note ?

Does anyone read Gary’s posts?

[Ken_V]

@Neal.Mollen

It is, in fact, an extraordinarily difficult thing to do if you are striving to (a) give the reader some sense of what the wine is like and (b) not repeat yourself. If you want to be clever or entertaining too, it is damn near impossible to do for a bunch of wines.

I think you could make a pretty strong argument that repeating particular adjectives is actually a plus. If “unctuous” puts a particular wine in a definable class of wines reviewed by critic P, it has some incremental value that wouldn’t be gained by having him find a rough synonym. Now, of this critic P labels every wine he likes as unctuous, that value is gone.

Grading a wine critic on the quality of the writing is usually a pointless exercise. It isn’t a novel or a poem. If the thing gives me an idea of what the wine is like and how it might mature, and expresses the critic’s enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for the wine, it has served its purpose.

Well said!

Extra credit for “Grading a wine critic on the quality of the writing is usually a pointless exercise.”

[Brian_Tuite]

@Gary York

Did anyone look at the TN ?

@Gary York

Did anyone actually bother to read the tasting note ?

OK Gary, calm down. I’ll bite, whats your revelation about the note?

[Oliver_V]

@Neal.Mollen

Grading a wine critic on the quality of the writing is usually a pointless exercise. It isn’t a novel or a poem. If the thing gives me an idea of what the wine is like and how it might mature, and expresses the critic’s enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for the wine, it has served its purpose.

I disagree completely. Any time you are communicating an idea, a good command of the language is critical, as it is in all other walks of life.

[Ethan_H]

@Oliver Viveier

@Neal.Mollen

Grading a wine critic on the quality of the writing is usually a pointless exercise. It isn’t a novel or a poem. If the thing gives me an idea of what the wine is like and how it might mature, and expresses the critic’s enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for the wine, it has served its purpose.

I disagree completely. Any time you are communicating an idea, a good command of the language is critical, as it is in all other walks of life.

+1

Like Michael, I think Schildknecht is an excellent writer. At the same time, he hasn’t always been the fastest to publish his notes. I wouldn’t call Galloni a great writer, but he does sustain a pretty high output without stooping to chain gun hackery like JS.

As for Bingo, on my Parker scorecard I’ll take “hypothetical blend” and “on steroids”. As in, “this Martinelli pinot noir tastes like a hypothetical blend of Leroy Chambertin and Chapoutier Ermitage Cuvee de l’Oree on steroids.”

Come to think of it, I want “dead ringer” on there too. “This Martinelli pinot noir is a dead ringer for a hypothetical blend of Leroy Chambertin and Chapoutier Ermitage Cuvee de l’Oree on steroids.”

[MiranK]

It’s always interesting to see how this plays out. Between the ridicule and snorting, the universal fact is that whatever you do - as long as you actually DO something - will be exposed to possible criticism. And I literally mean WHATEVER you do. There will always be people who, for some reason, will spend their time and energy to tell you how bad some other’s work happens to be. All fair of course, but every now and then I wonder if those who have such animosity towards others and truly believe their work is crap, ever allow themselves a pause to ponder on how THEY would have done it better. To stay with our particular passion that unites us all - wine - with the professional wine critics targeted in posts in mind, and the complaints about their palates, their scoring and now also their use of vocabulary, how would YOU do it better?

To go back to the OP of this thread, if you would be a wine critic, tasting thousands of wines each year, sometimes tasting 20 similar wines from the same grape, the same vintage and the same producer in an hour, and then heading to the next winery to repeat the very same task, how would you make it differently? And not only differenly, but better, to avoid the very same criticism on display here.

[Howard_Cooper]

@john stimson

You forgot that in Antonio’s world, everything leaps from the glass, making me think that perhaps he has a coordination or balance problem.

Actually, if you try to write a lot of tasting notes, it’s incredibly hard not to use phrases over and over again. That’s why I sometimes find I prefer Coates’ minimalist notes. I’m also reminded of a thread a few years ago about 6 word, or 10 word (some small number in that range) tasting notes. It’s an interesting exercise, and the notes communicate about the same amount of information as the much longer notes.

Very fine indeed

[Michael_S_Monie]

@MiranK

It’s always interesting to see how this plays out. Between the ridicule and snorting, the universal fact is that whatever you do - as long as you actually DO something - will be exposed to possible criticism. And I literally mean WHATEVER you do. There will always be people who, for some reason, will spend their time and energy to tell you how bad some other’s work happens to be. All fair of course, but every now and then I wonder if those who have such animosity towards others and truly believe their work is crap, ever allow themselves a pause to ponder on how THEY would have done it better. To stay with our particular passion that unites us all - wine - with the professional wine critics targeted in posts in mind, and the complaints about their palates, their scoring and now also their use of vocabulary, how would YOU do it better?

To go back to the OP of this thread, if you would be a wine critic, tasting thousands of wines each year, sometimes tasting 20 similar wines from the same grape, the same vintage and the same producer in an hour, and then heading to the next winery to repeat the very same task, how would you make it differently? And not only differenly, but better, to avoid the very same criticism on display here.

I continue to think that some, if not all, wine critics play a valid role and provide a valuable service to many. One thing that I do find contradictory and confusing though is when a critique begins with the fact that a wine is presently shut down and a detailed description follows.