Wine Tasting Notes

Wine snobs get right up my nose but unfortunately “nose” has been previously spoke of by whine snobs.

Wine snobs are no fun, but neither are knuckle draggers who insist on complete wine ignorance.

Amateurs often end up tongue-tied, but I find many experts wind up being overly eloquent and/or exact about the wines they taste. Consider this excerpt description of a Chateauneuf du Pape wine that I received in a mailing from an online wine store:

“… this prodigious effort boasts an inky/blue/purple color to the rim in addition to an exceptional bouquet of camphor, roasted meats, blueberries, black cherries, black currants, truffles, beef blood, pepper, and incense….”

Solution for this non-existent dilemma of descibing wine (for some people):

Non Pretentious Wine Tasting

Be non-pretentious and simply state whether it smells good or not, tastes good or not, & if it reminds you of a certain flower or fruit. No need for verbosity or pompousness.

This works for me every time & if I am asked to nit-pick it even more I tell them I don’t care about the details. If I sit next to a wine snob who won’t stop talking, I tell them beer tastes better than wine any day….that will surely shut them up.

In an article in the Times recently a reader commented that during an Etihad flight to Australia they sat with a viticulturist who made the following observation following a trip to France and Italy.

The space on the back of a wine bottle is valuable real estate. Most european wineries ignore it or put drivel there.

The few wineries that have amusing or useful information help sway a sale (at least for me).