This Sunday, I want to turn our attention to tasting notes. The value of tasting notes and scoring points is always somewhat in dispute, so it merits our attention.
I stumbled about this blog post by Frank Haddad. He starts his post with a strong statement “I hate tasting notes.” He then goes on to explain why. (Always good to explain why you hate something!) And that is where I realized I agree with him. Haddad strongly dislikes tasting notes that are clinical, that don’t give us context about the wine. Whether it is typical for its varietal or region, whether a star on its own or with food, whether the drinker liked it or not…his point is: put emotion into tasting notes, let the reader know how you felt. Were you surprised? Was it pleasurable?
Now, I have spent considerable time writing tasting notes, perfecting them to suit my needs but also to get others to be able to read and hopefully understand them. I am trying to convey emotions, but maybe I will try to do more so…
Just a thoughtful reminder to show ourselves in our notes…
Have a great Sunday!
the winegetter 
Agreed, I always try and tell the story and the context of the tasting, cause that’s what its all about. Sometimes I feel like I’m rambling, but I think its better than if I just gave a clinical tasting note.
I agree. Rambling is better than just facts that are meaningless if not in context.
I pretty much agree with you that tasting notes should convey emotion and are practically binary in the end of the day – you either like the wine or you don’t.
If you remember my “wine reviews” quiz series, the hidden idea behind it ( may be not so hidden even) was to show that those technical reviews are not very meaningful and one review can be easily applied to multiple, very different wines…
And that was exactly what made your quiz so hard…:)
You beat me to it! That one with six reviews was impossible!
One of my posts that I have not yet posted is about tasting notes and how they have gotten completely out of hand. Hopefully will have it up this week…
Looking forward to it!!