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+--- Thread: English Major with too much time on her hands trashes wine writing... (/thread-13572.html)
- Botafogo - 03-07-2003
First, read this
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i26/26b01501.htm
My response, in short, to the person who sent me this (he is a scientist and wine sceptic):
That person started with an agenda (make fun of wine critcism) and then just plugged in amusing examples out of context. Very lazy if you ask me.
YES, wines can and do have the same olfactory chemicals that give everything from bananas to marigolds to road tar their distinctive aromas and YOU of all people should know that. Yes, wet dog and also wet saddle, forest floor and compost. See if anyone you know knows anyone in the wine chemistry department at UC Davis. They will explain it all to you in excruciating, scientifically repeatable detail.
As to using architectural, emotional and gender descriptions, this is especially commonplace in classical music and fine art writing and is the way a cultured mind works: finding patterns and similarities in seemingly abstract information.
Re gender, there is no question that a big, phat Barbera made from partially dried grapes is the vinous equivalent of a cute 17 year old latina with a big ol butt and that a hard as nails, too tannic to drink St Estephe is a crotchety old man.
Cheers, Roberto
- ShortWiner - 03-07-2003
A friend of mine sent me this article, too. There are certainly ridiculous excesses in the world of wine writing--much of it, after all, is merely a form of advertisement. But two thing really bothered me about the article. First, there was no mention of the great pleasure that these tastes and smells which can be so hard to describe can bring. Second, there was no alternative idea. If it's wrone to use metaphor, and it's silly to make associations between aromas, then what? This guy says he was a wine columnist--helluva column he must have written, allowing himself to describe wines with only scientific terms.
- ShortWiner - 03-07-2003
PS Welcome back to the 'board, Roberto.
- Georgie - 03-07-2003
Ok, raise your hand if you ever ate a bilberry!
- Botafogo - 03-07-2003
(hand in air) Michael Broadbent once wrote a great column about the fact that most of us live in cities, rarely visit the country and generally have a fairly restricted diet. Thus, we are EXPERTS at differentiating diesel from gasoline fumes in passing vehicles, can probably work backwards from the smell of the dumpster to the contents of the garbage that went into it and, perhaps, even distinguish between as many as fifteen types of plastics and synthetic fabrics by smell alone.
BUT, even if our lives depended on it, few of us could tell a marigold from a daffodil by sight let alone smell and God help us if we had to sort berries with our noses.
ANSWER: GO to the Farmer's Market and SMELL things, really smell them, suck in their essences like you would a drag from some really nice bud (law enforcement types excepted). GO to the park at least or a forest and a meadow even better, and dig up a little dirt, pull some moss off of a tree, sniff some fresh and then some dry and then some rotting leaves and REMEMBER these aromas...
Then, go to a bakery, a pottery shop, a florist, ect and repeat as needed.
Changed my life, I still do it all the time, Roberto
- quijote - 03-07-2003
As a professor of Spanish literature and culture, I share the article writer's interest in studying and trying to understand the genre of the Tasting Note. It's one of the many fascinating things about world culture.
There are some things in the article that seem believable, such as the descriptive shift away from class and gender terms to organic/inorganic terms. Not really a big revelation, though.
I do disagree with the writer's conclusion that the use of fruits, veggies, etc. as descriptors is linked to some yearning for the pastoral. Someone should send an aroma wheel to the writer; I'm new to the deeper pleasures of wine, but it seems pretty reasonable to me to evaluate the complexity of wine against other items with similar tastes and aromas. People do this with food all of the time: I've described jicama to newbies as a combo of apples and water chestnuts; a really ripe pear is like a custard pie with hints of apple and honey; ripe brie is earthy and damp-smelling, often with flavors of mushrooms or grass. People describe dim sum in terms of "dumplings," and describe samosas in terms
of "turnovers." Why not?
It seems to me that, aside from the compelling scientific basis in taste/flavor affinities between wine and other items, the vocabulary of tasting notes does nothing less than draw from all sorts of global and personal experiences, many of which would have been unthinkable to many people just a few decades ago. I still have students who have never tried jalapeno or asparagus, or who have never really smelled a rose. But many of us now have all of these things within instant reach; even modest supermarkets carry kiwis, gooseberry jam, and other delights.
Our experiences, too, have changed a lot over the decades. More people can travel to different places with less money during a single lifetime. Wine, like food, is vicarious travel. And I'm not just talking about geographical travel; wine takes us back to the past--it evokes memories. The other day when I tasted some Cloudy Bay SB there was an aroma and taste that took me back--and it was, in fact, lychees. When I was a kid I used to eat lychees for dessert at Chinese restaurants. If a madeleine can work for Proust, why cannot wine work for oenophiles?
Again, some things the writer said make sense, but others are way off the mark. I'm throwing my support behind fruits, veggies, tar, lead pencil, and wet dog!
[This message has been edited by quijote (edited 03-07-2003).]
- Bucko - 03-07-2003
I'm with Roberto. How many have ever ate hackberries? Mulberries? I have, and occasionally find them in wines. Pawpaws, persimmons? Yup. Lord only knows there are millions of aromas out there and aroma is the main component of taste. If someone denigrates descriptors then you can usually take it for what it is worth.........
[This message has been edited by Bucko (edited 03-07-2003).]
- Georgie - 03-08-2003
As a novice, I am still very much in the "mmm-good", or "eeuuww-yuck" stage of wine tasting. But I certainly have had instances with food where I've said, "This tastes like such and such smells." Relating tastes to smells such as leather or even damp dogs seems completely reasonable to me. I, for one, learn a lot and enjoy reading the wonderful descriptions that wine tasters write. No one has a problem when poets use creative imagery; why not wine tasters?
[This message has been edited by Georgie (edited 03-08-2003).]
- winoweenie - 03-08-2003
Okay Foodie........Lay off the Weeners' flowery writing skillz. Metaphorically I be rite on! WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img]
- Thomas - 03-08-2003
ww, it ain't the flowers; it's the keyboard slaughter...
Goes without saying, so I'll say it, you can't taste a thing unless you can smell it. In the writer of that article I smell a rat seeking to make waves, and a little money too.
The guy probably doesn't understand the myriad components in grapes, the myriad aromas that certain yeasts help give to grapes after fermentation, the myriad associations that living offers as sensory experience, and the myriad wine lovers who think he is a general blowhard!
- winoweenie - 03-08-2003
If this feller/gal was a wine writer no wonder he /she changed jobs. He/she has the expertise of a firefly. WW