“notes” that are nothing besides a score.
Beyond that, everything and anything is more helpful than nothing.
Another favorite is the tasting note that trashes the wine and then finishes with a phrase like, “and that’s why I hate Italian wines.”
Huh? All of them? Any wine from that entire Country? That’s a lot of wine! And – then why are you drinking it and writing notes about the experience? Someone force you to drink it?
X-second finish – utter baloney
minerality – sigh… it once meant something, but no more
Ummm, Todd, I hate to be the one to break the bad news, but “a la” could be replaced by “just like”. Just saying…
Todd you’re a provacateur. So much for picking tasting terms a la carte. Must we also kiss good bye to:
Apertifs
Foods that are au gratin or au jus
Avant-garde
Carte blanche
Chic
Cinemas
Coups (d’etat, de grace)
Cul-de-sac
Debutantes
Encores
Faux pas
Femme fatales
Fiance, Fiancee
Fois gras
Force majeure
The list is long.
Heck, even Bugs Bunny wished people “Bon Voyajee”
RT
My list of least-favorites (some mentioned above):
- Use of obscure varieties of foods (Bosc Pear, Meyer Lemon, Green Fig, et. al.)
- Pain Grille… oh, how I hate that…
- “Hollow mid palate” – I still have no idea what that means
- “Gain traction on the finish” – is this wine or a tractor pull?
- “Melted black licorice” – who melts licorice?
- “Graceful” – I guess that could mean balanced and less-extracted, but I think it’s a stretch
- Semi-sexual terms like “seductive” and “alluring.” Those are compliments, I guess, but not very helpful.
Wow, I feel so much better after all of that complaining!
Excellent thread.
“Wild berry.” Laube uses it in roughly 75% of his notes. Too ubiquitous to have meaning.
“Worn saddle.” Wait, do you mean leather, or do you mean Brett? Take a stand here.
Any attempt to discern seconds of finish is an indictment of the note writer.
Touchee!
Properly used it means a wine that has the tannin and/or alcohol to fill your mouth and tickle the edges of your tongue but lacks fruit/flavor concentration. It’s something you find with some grenache-based wines, for instance, or wines from weaker or wet vintages that are a little dilute but which have solid tannins (think cru bourgeois Bordeaux in a bad year).
Unlike a lot of vague or abused terms, I find this term is quite readily understood when you discuss wines at tastings. It’s a structural quality that is relatively objective, like tannin, acid and alcohol levels.
One thing I never personally find helpful is the grandiose and hyper-detailed explanation of the food pairing.
“Paired with wild Martinborough Bay Kumatomo oysters served with yuzu from the northernmost provinces of Japan, the zest of organic Meyer lemon, tobiko, freshly shaved ginger and 10 year old Honjozo-shu sake.”
Forest floor. Or even worse, as Todd alludes to, sous bois. [suicide.gif]
I’ve done a lot of hiking and camping in California forests and still have no clue what that means.
Train wreck
California forests don’t count. You need to hike French forests - then you’ll get it.
There’s actually a parcel in Meursault Blagny appropriately named “Sous Le Bois”. Chris, from a selfish perspective, it’d be better if more people didn’t get it or like it.
RT
Exactly.
You see, I fully realize that haricots vert are not just green beans, but green beans picked in France by French workers, dah. Oh, and flown on Air France.
Cris – Having lived in California, I can see how that would be hard to grasp there.
Having grown up in the damp climate of British Columbia, however, I know what forest floor/sous bois means – the smell of vaguely composting wet leaves. Walk through a dense forest in the Northwest or Northeast of the U.S. in the fall and you’ll get it.
Conversely, Vancouverites might have a hard time relating to tasting notes with “eucalyptus” or “jasmine.”
I know what damp undergrowth in a forest smells like and composting leaves. I love being in the redwoods and fir forests. But I most often see ‘forest floor’ as a taste. I just don’t get that and I’ve have very rarely smelled anything in a wine like a forest. I can see where some damp earthy aromas could lean that way.
Sous bois is forest floor if the wine is more than 30 bucks
Cris – Pure fir forests are different. It’s the deciduous leaves that really give you that faint rotting/composting aroma.
(Sorry – I edited my post after you quoted it.)