Wine Focus - January: What’s the point of a tasting note?

[David M. Bueker]

BTW - my note (Solitude Standing) on the '99 Domaine de la Solitude gets at the why for me these days. I still scribble notes for almost all good wines and bad I try, but only feel moved to do so when the overall experience is more than just "yeah that's a good wine."

Sorry I’m late to this conversation. (As you can tell, my presence here has gotten sporadic of late, and my note-writing even more so.) But I think this is a great question.

Developing some themes that have been mentioned here: for me, the fundamental thing is that writing notes, no matter how you do it, with or without a dictionary, a salad bowl, a hundred-point scale, or anything else, is a discipline of attention, a way of training yourself to be reflexive about the experience you’re having when you taste or drink.

That can be done analytically, or with literary flourish, or both, and I think my purposes in doing it have changed over the years: early on, writing notes was a way of learning about wine by giving structure to my impressions. And learning about wine was a way of… what? Of adding a dimension of knowledge and understanding to my experience of wine (maybe the definition of a geek is someone who gets additional pleasure out of knowing where a pleasure came from and how it works). And of being better able to find and drink (what seems to me) excellent wine, at home or out in the world.

Now… of course I’m still learning, but I’m also not focused on the research-and-collect side of wine as much as I used to be. (I’m now avidly collecting something else, a hobby I turn out to share with one other longtime WLDG member, who can disclose himself if he wants to.) So now I write notes more for the sake of my middle-aged memory than anything else, and to maintain a kind of baseline attentional fitness, if you like… the same way I keep cycling like a maniac (indoors and out) even though, at this point, I’m not entering any races. (I mean, I’ve never been a racer, but in my 40s I thought maybe I would give it a shot…)

But there’s also this: I think we (here) write notes for each other, or at least I do. (I think of this as a literary echo of the fact that wine is fundamentally social, something to be shared.) This was not the only place I learned how to pay attention to wine, but it was a significant part of that education. And that means that how I think about and experience wine has been shaped by all of you, and by participants past: not just by your tastes and preferences and advice, but by watching and reading how you write. Early on, there was a lot of experimental imitation in my TNs, which (as in any social situation), was probably influenced in part by my desire to fit in to a scene full of older, more experienced people. I think now I probably just sound like myself, not like someone who’s trying to sound like someone else. (And thank you, Jenise, for the enormous compliment, which at least tells me that I do have a style of my own.) But whatever that style is, it wouldn’t be what it is without the last 25 years of the WLDG. And it’s still true that what sometimes gets me to record a note, these days, is the thought that a particular bottle was I’d like to share with you guys, even if only in words.

Happy new year!

[David M. Bueker]

Not late to the party at all, and an excellent set of thoughts.

[David M. Bueker]

There’s a rather weird debate about the Maker/Theise column going on over at Berserkers. Most of the people (with one notable exception) rarely if ever post any tasting notes at all. The other is a rigid disciple of the WSET format. So it’s not such a positive reception, with a great deal of reading into Meg and Terry’s intent that displays a complete lack of experience with their writings. Not shocking I guess.

[Jenise]

Patchen, you hit so many good points which made me reflect on the waning of my interest in posting tasting notes here. Without any clear intent to cease doing so or any loss of interest in the topic of wine in general, the recent changes in my life have simply put certain things in the back seat or tossed them out of the car altogether. I walk among blossoms once mapped in hope....

Your comment about writing for others hit home. For instance, I tasted a terrific QPR Washington Cab and a deliciously dry/savory Aussie Shiraz at a local event last night. Not high level stuff but both notable for certain reasons--however, why bother posting about them here, neither are topics anyone here cares about. This forum, much as I still consider it a home base of sorts, has become hyper focussed on France, Italy, California and, maybe, a little Oregon if it's Goodfellow or Kelley Fox, but anything outside of that set of origins generally fails to connect. I used to think there was value in creating content for the sake of content, but no longer do.

But back to your notes. There're notes and then there are notes. If it doesn't already exist we should create a super-category called Wine Lit. Your notes, and sometimes Bueker's, could be lovingly stored there.

Oh, and a question to all: whatever happened to the WLDG Tasting Note Hall of Fame? It might have been created for something by Chris Coad, or perhaps Stuart Yaniger's hilariously comparing something to the panties of a 16 year old cheerleader. Either way, it celebrated the fun one can have writing a note. I loved that.

[David M. Bueker]

Even if I am not going to buy them, I am interested in your Washington notes. It’s an area I wish I still had bandwidth to explore. A close friend buys some from WA, so I do get to try some (beyond the Betz and Q Creek I own) every now and then.

I know what you mean, Jenise, though not with the same force or for the same reasons as you, about the way a turn in your life can change the way you relate to a practice like this. It's no accident that I became scarcer here (and disappeared from Berserkers altogether, and stopped putting notes in CT, both of which had only been relatively recent practices anyway) after a cardiological scare required me to reconfigure my relationship to wine. (Going on two years later and no further issues, I'm glad to report.)

It's also true, I think, that notes on wines that aren't in the middle of the Venn diagram where the cellars of all the most frequent posters here intersect will probably get fewer responses, and that it can be frustrating to post things that don't get much uptake. But one of the things I appreciate about posts like that is exactly that they can pull me out of my comfort zone, remind me of a region or a grape or a style that I do like, and maybe miss, or that I might like if I tried it; and that's only possible when I really know the tastes of the poster, as I do with yours (at least enough to take a flyer on something). But of course that doesn't oblige you to post notes if what you're getting back from the experience isn't enough to justify it!

As for the titans of WLDG wine literature: am I the only one here who can still practically recite passages from some of those famous and infamous posts from memory? Probably not. "There were giants on the earth in those days," as the saying goes.

I haven't actually read the Maker-Thiese piece yet, but I will...

[David M. Bueker]

I had a nice wine last night. I didn’t write a note. I won’t write a note. The wine was nice. I enjoyed a couple of glasses, but it didn’t inspire me.

So no note.

I used to post more often than I do now. When I post a wine note today it is to inform others and document my own experience that I may want to retrieve at a later date. So if a wine is particularly good or bad, it will likely get a note, but if it is unremarkable, I usually don't bother, especially if I have previously posted on that wine.