As someone who is not in the business, I’m not interested in figuring out how to taste as much as possible, or trying to figure out how much my experience with wine Y is being impacted by having just tried wine X. This is a large part of why I rarely post tasting notes.
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Fair enough. But food is only part of the story. I’ve found that my perception of red wines depends on whether they are the only thing I am drinking, whether they come after Champagne, semillon, chardonnay, off-dry riesling, a lighter red, a heavier red, etc. Obvious you can organize your tastings to minimize these issues but they are likely to pop up in informal wine dinners, which are the source of many tasting notes on this site.
What takes place on this site, and in the course of ordinary consumption is not the same as a critical evaluation.
When seriously looking at a wine, it’s a snapshot of what’s in that glass at that time. Not what was before, not what’s coming next. It’s not what you ate, or will eat, nor the people you’re with, or where you’re at. It’s a serious focus on your impression of what’s in the glass.
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Then I guess I missed the point of your reply to me.
I don’t post a lot of tasting notes either, but I have to keep an immense bank of knowledge. So I need to make sure that when I’m tasting anything, I’m able to analyze it in the purest way.
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to piggy back on what you are saying, I’ve seen menus that don’t make “wine sense” (a dish containing asparagus for instance), so I’ve always moved on from those notes.
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the more expensive the wine, the greater the disappointment
That’s not always the case. Sometimes that’s true. That depends on the wine, the bottle, provenance and the taster. I’ve had legendary wines that left me asking, is that all there is? On the other hand, I’ve tasted a lot of the truly famous wines, and they delivered incredible experiences that resonate.
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well of course Jeff, but I’m non-itb, so there’s that
Which is why, unless one knows the producer/wine, before purchasing in any quantity, one should try, in the context he/she enjoys wine, any wine recommended by a critic whose review arises from a “tasting trip” or the like described above. Wines which impress some critics in the latter context may do little or nothing to enhance a meal which, in my experience, is particularly the case with ripe, oaky, alcoholic wines, whereas leaner more lissome wines plump up, remain fresh and enhance a meal if paired with some thought.
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I’m not sure what difference that makes.
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He promised it last year and we still haven’t seen a list. Can you believe it?
Of course, one should try before they buy. But, with most high-end wines, that’s not really possible.
That’s the purpose of a trusted taster. Most extensive tasting note sets are from trips. Context is not relevant. Pairing food and wine is of zero concern.
What is paramount is the ability of the taster to be able to taste a wine, understand its character, coupled with the ability to explain what they tasted.
The consumers job is to know if the taster has that ability and then to extrapolate from that if it’s a wine they want or not.
FWIW, I do not like lean, lissome wines. I also despise oaky alcoholic wines. I prefer good wines with complexity, elegance, energy and character with the ability to age and evolve.
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Jeff, I don’t drink a lot with ITB folks, we do our best on our own
so that does make a difference
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And, what’s your point? Almost all the old wines I taste are with friends, during lunches or dinners with music banging in the background and none of them are ITB. They just like wine as a hobby and sharing with friends.
I’m sorry, but I do not see what you’re trying to say.
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David, my comment was that here are big wines which are not too ripe, oaky and alcoholic. I did not have Cabernet Sauvignon in mind when I made it. Tyler, I made no promise regarding a list, although it might make for an interesting thread. However, the wines that I had in mind were the likes of Allemand, Clape, Gilles Cornas; Levet Cote-Rotie; Pradeaux, Tempier, Terrebrune Bandol; Trevallon; some Languedoc Mourvedre-dominant wines such as Barral Faugeres Valiniere; Barolo from the Serralunga Valley; and even some Burgundies, particularly with the warming conditions. For example, the 2018 Joseph Voillot Pommard Rugiens is a fairly big wine, but it is not excessively ripe, oaky or alcoholic. Just now, to see if others had a similar impression of the wine, I checked CellarTracker and found this note: “Youthfully exhuberant, on nose and palate, deep, dark, robust, concentrated in a hyper-feminine way, red fruits, floral perfumes, sandalwood spice, lipstick, mineralite and some cool, coniferous forest floor. So concentrated yet weightless, tannins seemingly absent …” There are many, many more, of course.
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Do you write and publish notes regarding these?
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Which is why, if one enjoys wine only/primarily at the dinner table, the tasting notes of some critics must be (no pun intended) taken with a grain of salt.
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Above you said this: “When seriously looking at a wine, it’s a snapshot of what’s in that glass at that time. Not what was before, not what’s coming next. It’s not what you ate, or will eat, nor the people you’re with, or where you’re at. It’s a serious focus on your impression of what’s in the glass.” So my question is do you write and publish tasting notes of old wines tasted “with friends, during lunches or dinners with music banging in the background?”
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Yes, of course, I do that as well. That’s where a good portion of the tasting notes for the older, special bottles come from. I also add notes from single bottles with dinner at home.
I have almost 30,000 notes on the site from the 1850s to today.
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