A bit of a ramble this one, as there’s more than just the headline question.
I’m interested in your ‘journey’ in writing tasting notes, how you started, what’s influenced you, what’s changed over time, what you’re aiming for in writing a tasting note and indeed why do you write them.
Even if you don’t write tasting notes, you’re very much welcome to say why, as that’s equally interesting.
For me, I started because I felt rather ignorant when writing scribbled notes when tasting with the wine tasting group I started with (people who over time became strong friends, where wine is now just one facet of our friendship). I felt my ability to express myself was extremely limited, like trying to speak a language without sufficient vocabulary.
Two books and one amateur strongly influenced me. The two books were on wine tasting - Michael Broadbent’s ‘Wine tasting’ and Michael Schuster’s ‘Essential Winetasting’, with the latter being more influential, as I liked the structured approach he brought to it. Both helped with the vocabulary, but also in how to approach it. The amateur was TORB (Ric Einstein) in Australia, as his multi-choice tasting sheet helped me be confident in the vocabulary (even though I maybe only used that sheet a couple of times). In addition, his reminder to focus on the structural elements resonated with me, as my original reference point was the fanciful fruit salad descriptors of Oz Clarke and Jilly Goolden on a UK TV show, and I found those rather too fanciful.
At that tasting group, we (like many others I suspect), used to write notes on eye, nose, taste, with a final box for additional thoughts and/or an overall feeling. Whilst I still follow that same sequence, I try to avoid being overly regimented/repetitious in how I write it, seeking a more natural style of writing. That’s probably the big change that happened over time.
One aspect I’ve tried to avoid (not always successfully!), is mimicking the stridency of critics. Thus I’m primarily looking to describe what I experienced with that glass of wine, but not trying to make it a definitive statement, and linked to that I don’t assign scores. I understand why critics feel the need to sound authoritative, but I’m not trying to mimic them.
I don’t write TNs as often as I used to do in the past, but I still do like doing it to ‘keep my eye in’. They’re useful to return to e.g. a reminder that I’d tasted wines from that producer and enjoyed them (or not!), or to compare experiences with someone here / elsewhere. If they’re of use to someone else, then super, but I’d hate to think anyone took my notes as anything but an opinion. 2nd hand recounting of a wine, is never a substitute for tasting the wine ourselves.
There’s one other useful reason for writing a TN… In writing it in Cellartracker (CT), it makes it natural to do so as part of removing the wine from inventory there. Thus it’s a great way of ensuring my inventory in CT is reasonably accurate.
So that’s my journey, how about your own?
I also rarely go back and read my own notes, since I tend to have a reasonably good memory of what I drink. So I would say I mostly write the notes to formulate my own thoughts better - the notes are the more final expression of initial less well formed thoughts. I also don’t use scores for this reason; if I write a tasting note for my own benefit, scoring the wine makes no sense unless I keep some kind of spreadsheet of those scores.