Do We Need Tasting Notes? (Copy) (Copy)

For my podcast, I just interviewed Agostino Bertolin about Austrian wine, a subject that’s always a pleasure to discuss. Agostino has a website called notastingnotes.com which focuses on both Austrian wine and north-east Italy where he’s from. I love the name of the site, because no tasting notes may be exactly what the wine industry needs.

Open any wine publication and there are hundreds of reviews which are generic descriptions of wines with many fanciful adjectives to make each wine seem different. But all these tasting notes don’t convey any real feeling of what the wine actually is, who made it, what distinguishes it, why we should try it—ironically they often put me off the wine rather than attract me to it. This is why wine scores exist: it’s much easier to quickly look at a score rather than read a review that looks exactly the same as the last one (though one reviewer’s 94 points can be another’s 89). Try reading reviews of 100 wines from, say, a small region like Ribeira Sacra. All the wines are made from Mencia, all are from the same vintage, many of which may not be available in your local market, and each tasting note reads pretty much the same. Who exactly is benefiting from all these tasting notes?

In theory, it’s the consumer who benefits by getting to learn about the best wines the experts have chosen. Yet how many consumers actually read them or pay any attention to them? At most, they open an app like Vivino and look at the score. Most consumers buy wine on brand or grape variety recognition rather than tasting notes or even scores. The only way in which consumers benefit is if a store buys wine solely on reviews rather than their own tastings and research, which just adds to the homogenisation of wine.

Maybe the publications benefit because the tasting notes are easy content without requiring any research or journalism, but who is actually buying these publications? Who sits down and reads tasting note and tasting note ad infinitum? Is it really impossible to come up with more creative, imaginative content? A book or film review draws the reader into the story behind its genesis, why it’s great—or terrible—and aids our understanding before or after we’ve read or watched it. Read a tasting note: do we know anything more about the wine, the producer, the story, or do we just know that the wine has aromas of blueberries?

Perhaps the only beneficiaries are wineries who see their wines being reviewed and can use the tasting notes to promote their products. Wineries submit samples (for which they rather than the publication often have to pay) to create some noise; in a crowded market, that’s important. But it doesn’t just involve cost, but risk too. What if the reviewer is having an off-day (feeling cranky, has a cold) or just has a different taste from the producer’s?

Taste is paramount to appreciating a wine. But there’s only one person tasting the wine: you. Smell and taste are senses formed as a child, so our different upbringings mean we describe wine in various ways. That’s a good thing, one of the many fascinating aspects of wine. Why should your enjoyment of a wine be dictated to by someone whose palate may be completely at odds with yours? Even if we disagree with a book review, there’s an intellectual engagement that makes us consider the book in a different light.

What’s the alternative? I didn’t get into wine because of tasting notes. What drew me in were many, many other factors: yes, taste, but also geography, history, literature, politics, and, perhaps most importantly, people. It even made me interested in science for the first time in my life (if only winemaking were taught at school). Wine is about stories and a tasting note describing the jammy red fruit aromas of every Zinfandel ever made doesn’t bring a wine to life: it deadens it.

Perhaps the worst aspect of tasting notes is that consumers outside the industry feel obliged to describe the aromas and taste of a wine. There are so many occasions when I’m asked to say what a wine tastes like, and the question is always asked nervously in fear that they might be wrong. Tasting notes accentuate that fear: an expert has decided that a wine tastes of wet rock (because we taste wet rock all the time): what if we don’t get that? does that make us stupid? ignorant? devoid of taste?

Tasting notes can feel like putting everyone in their place, using over-the-top language to demonstrate expertise. But, after all, it is just a drink which can easily be discussed in accessible terms that actually make you want to drink it. Wine is real, not generic. Let’s talk about wine for what it is: a drink made by farmers and enjoyed all over the world for what it is: wine.