Sometimes the wine industry — and those who write about and “explain” wine — do the beverage more of a disservice than the Prohibitionists who dominate the National Coronavirus Command Council. (I can’t resist giving the NCCC its full and magisterial name: it helps to maintain the illusion that someone or something is actually in charge of things).
Let’s start with tasting notes. Research shows that even the most astute tasters cannot distinguish more than three or four different fruit aromatics. Nevertheless, the following note, written by Master of Wine Greg Sherwood, was published on a commercial site, presumably in an attempt to encourage purchase. (This is only the first part of the note. I’ve left out the bit about “mineral tension and harmony” as well as the food pairings).
“This wine casts an attractive plummy purple-black colour and offers up vibrant notes of candied Parma violets, crème de cassis, sun raisined black cherries and hints of blueberry confit with an overlay of graphite and cedar spice. There is a lovely youthful maritime salinity and black liquorice nuance that melts into notes of iodine and Chinese five spice. The palate is medium bodied, fresh and supple but slowly unfurls to reveal a solid frame of creamy mineral tannins, ample cabernet sauvignon extract and a long, pleasingly drying grippy structure that is bolstered by salty cassis, taut black orchard fruits, stewed black cherries and hints of complexing bay leaf herbal spice.”
To be clear, those of us who produce tasting notes have all been guilty, to a lesser or greater extent, of overwriting them from time to time. Fashions also change, and exaggerated and repetitive descriptions like these were more à la mode in the era when Robert Parker was the Emperor of Wine. But if you were thinking of buying a bottle of Seriously Old Dirt (which sells for roughly R250 and which Mr Sherwood scored a respectable enough 92) would that massively overlaid purple prose help or hinder that decision?
Notes should guide whoever reads them in terms of what to expect from the bottle, and should contain useful descriptors to assist those who have some technical knowledge to understand the wine in terms of weight, complexity and ripeness. Here’s an example from Jancis Robinson MW, describing the 2017 La Tache (which sells for about R50,000 a bottle) “Pale ruby. Really quite intense on the nose. Glorious spread of ripe fruit and freshness. Very immediate. Such a peacock’s tail on the finish too! Rich yet far from sweet. Massive concentration. Resonates with violets and forest charm on the finish. Gorgeous.”
Robinson rated this vinous classic 19/20 (pretty much as high as she ever scores) and which leads rather naturally into the more fraught question of ratings and scoring systems. Until Parker popularised the so-called 100-point system in the 1980s, most wines were scored out of 20 — a calibration still used in many competitions. Over the years, the 20-point system has been superseded by the apparently simplicity of percentages — except that the scores are not actually out of 100. When Parker launched his system, the scoring nominally went from 50 to 100 (though as one retailer ruefully remarked “anything below 90 you can’t sell and anything above 90 you can’t buy”.)
Lately rampant score inflation — in which I too have become complicit — has reduced this to a 20-point range. The medal equivalents are: gold — 95 points and above; silver 90-94; and bronze — 85-89. A “high no medal” would be 84, good ordinary wine would be 81-83 and below 80 would only sell on a lockdown bootlegger’s list.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that wine culture is at risk of vanishing up its own fundament. Unless the marketing folk and wine writers make a conscious effort to avoid the arcane and obtuse, and rein in the puffery, they’ll kill the goose: it’s only a glass of wine FFS, not the Taj Mahal.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.