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Wine reviews can sometimes be a bit... annoying. Once in a while, the flavors described in a review will actually come through in the wine, but more often than not the "crisp" flavor and "pineapple notes" are nowhere to be seen. Or, at least, they cannot be identified by the average wine drinker.
To actually get some use out of the reviews, we've come up with a game to play the next time you have some friends over. Print out a copy of the review and pour each of your friends a glass of the wine. As they sample it, get them to try and guess how the reviewer described it. They almost always involve a fruit or a wood, so that's a good one to guess, but you can get creative. Here's a review to get you started:
Cambria Katherine's Vineyard Chardonnay (2004) is reviewed by Bevmo: "Creamy and pear-like in the aromas and perky and citrusy on the palate, the finely balanced '04 Cambria Katherine's Vineyard Chardonnay finishes bright and lively."
Could you guess that it is "creamy" or has fruits like "pear" and "citrus"? And did you notice that it was "lively"? Interestingly, you can beat the game because there are terms that reviewers love to use, like multi-layered, complex, blackberries and smoky. Use them as your fallback guesses.
And trust me when I say that the game gets more fun as you sample more wines.
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7-21-2006 @2:06AM Alder Yarrow said... While there certainly are extreme examples of wine tasting notes that read more like someone throwing darts at a thesaurus (and which you might have grounds to criticize) calling out flavor descriptors like "creamy" "pear" and "citrus" as examples of "annoying" notes shows your own lack of experience with wine.
No offense intended, but you're up against almost sixty years of real science here (google Anne Noble and Aroma Wheel if you care to), which has clearly identified and described many of the flavor and texture sensations of wine that are now part of a standard vocabulary for describing what's in the glass.
There's a reason that every experienced wine writer, wine critic, and winemaker uses words like those to describe wines, and it's not marketing. They actually taste those things. Now, do some of them "trump up" those tasting notes, especially when they're on the back of a bottle? Sure. But to dismiss as pretension the description of a wine as having a pinapple notes in its aroma or flavor is just plain ignorance on your part.
Fortunately, Nicole, you can learn. Go take a wine tasting class, or start comparatively tasting ten or 15 wines together yourself on a regular basis. When you do, ask yourself what flavors you perceive. At first, you're likely to just say things like "white grapes" and "alcohol" but over time, you will begin to taste and smell the very things that you now so easily mock.
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7-21-2006 @12:37PM Nicole Weston said... Thanks for the insight, Alder. I have taken quite a number of wine tasting classes and, while I acknowledge that there are fine wines with complex flavor profiles, I wrote this up because I wanted to point out that there is a discontinuity between the review and the wine. Not only will everyone not taste the same flavors in a wine, since the reviews are subjective to one extent or another, but the average wine taster will not be able to pick out "blackberry" from "currant" undertones.
That said, I will also say that I have done countless tastings with chocolate and probably hundreds of different coffees and know that it is easy to pick out the various flavors in those products. There is no question in my mind that time and practise will develop someone's palate in all of these areas.
But for now, I'll stand by the game because I've seen people play it and end up rolling on the floor (once they've set their glasses down). And even wine connoisseurs like it, if for no other reason than to test themselves against the experts.
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10-01-2006 @9:13PM luminouscarl said... I have to agree wine reviews written by professionals tend to be of little value. Blogs are a good solution to the problem. We need average wine consumers to rate and describe the wines they have tried and then others can comment on them and tell us how their tastes varied. This will be far more helpful to consumers then the reviews so often seen. I have taken a crack at it with a review of Beringer 2005 White Merlot. Reat it here and please comment if you have tried the wine. http://www.carlhuttononline.com/
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