Death to Tasting Notes? A Question of Context

[Damien Lawrie]

The New York Time’s wine critic Eric Asimov created quite a stir at last week’s Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in his keynote speech entitled “The Tyranny of the Tasting Note.” Asimov argued that a number of cultural assumptions about the amount of knowledge required before one can even enjoy wine has created a wall of separation for the general public. These assumptions and stereotypes which have raised wine onto a pedestal have been reinforced by portrayals in the media, articles in newspapers, but especially in Asimov’s mind, by the ubiquitous tasting note. I’m sure you’ve encountered some hellacious examples from time to time. Chris Macias cites this beauty,

“The wine opens with a windsong of spice and freshly foraged truffle on the nose, with a final whisper of red fruit that coos in the glass; the taste is a ponderous expression of currants, Godiva milk chocolate, Tasmanian honey and a soupçon of gooseberry that pirouettes on the back end of the palate.”

I’m rather fond of this description: “an attractive minerality that speaks of stones and fresh rainwater and sometimes an oddly characteristic chalky note
that's oddly reminiscent of clean seashells on an ocean beach.”

Let’s call these for what they are - unfettered flights of fancy cluster bombing pornographic combinations of well-endowed verbs and swollen adjectives (tongue planted firmly in cheek). But is the answer to diminishing an elitist drinking or culture, or to prevent something similar transpiring in the craft beer world to eliminate tasting notes altogether?

I’ve been interested reading a number of thoughts that have boiled over from the Symposium and into the blogging world. [Thanks must go to Stan Hieronymus for several of the links found in his discussion of Asimov’s speech.] Wine writer Alder Yarrow has generated a great discussion on his blog Vinography. Like Yarrow, I think Asimov has some valid critique and concerns about wine culture, but the idea that tasting notes should be relegated to the graveyard seems hyperbolic at best.

Tom Cizauskas blogging at Yours for Good Fermentables, sees a danger of beer falling to formalism and elitism, especially through “overwrought beer descriptions”, similar to wine notes. He linked to an interesting program called Cyclops developed in the UK for bar-staff and beer suppliers to communicate characteristics of beer. The basic principles are that a beer’s appearance, aroma, and flavour are described using a maximum of three words each, aimed at the average drinker. This premise, I think, is a good one for the express context of selling over the counter beer. It allows for bartenders or sales clerks who may never have tried the beverage in question to provide some very basic descriptors to an average customer.

But this is hardly useful for a beer geek, or wine enthusiast who really wants to get a handle on a drink. And in its current state I would argue the Cyclops program still has weaknesses aplenty. Let me give you an example or two. Since it currently caters only to British beers, I looked up some more common examples that I’ve consumer on multiple occasions – Wychwood Hobgoblin, Adnams Broadside, Fullers London Pride, and Wells Banana Bread. The results varied considerable.

The Broadside it described as red, amber in appearance. Fruitcake and almond for smell, and full, rich, smooth for taste. Interestingly it broke its rule of “do not use distinctive terms such as orange, chocolate, toffee unless the beer is a flavoured beer.” It also seems to conflate the idea of taste with mouthfeel, in this instance offering nothing close to concrete for flavour.

Better was the Wychwood Hobgoblin: See – Dark, Ruby. Smell – Toffee, slight citrus, chocolate. Taste – Toffee, dry, biscuit. Once again breaking the aforementioned rule, but arguably offering something more useful in doing so.

But then we had much worse. Fullers it describes as: See – Tawyny. Smell – hops, malt. Taste – balanced malt bitterness. Imagine that, a beer that smells of hops and malt, and tastes of, well, hops and malt. Utterly useless.

And then we have the inspiring analysis of Wells Banana Bread: See – Dark amber. Smell – bananas. Taste – bananas. It’s not the most complex of beers, granted, but is that seriously all it merits?

Let’s return to the question of tasting notes. I want to argue that Asimov and some others in decrying complex tasting notes, are creating a one size fits all response to a much broader set of concerns. This is really a question of context.

Firstly, to whom is the tasting note addressed? To a drinking newby? Then damn straight, push your half page description aside and offer the generic basics. But to offer such austere descriptions to a seasoned scotch enthusiast, or fellow beer blogger would be useless and inappropriate.

And what of recording your own tasting notes? For those of us who return to our notes to refresh our memories on what we’ve tasted, or perhaps to compare one vintage to another, the note can be quite autobiographical, almost a diary entry. The richer the language and details, the more readily memory of the experience is recalled. The more detail, the easier it is compare the beers we’ve tried and to also provide avenues of exploration for other drinkers to broach. Here I will geek it out unabashedly – I love losing myself in the complexities of a fine drink. There is nothing formal or elitist about whole-heartedly throwing yourself into your passions. But if I’m drinking a few over a football game with some friends, it would be absurd to have my head stuck in my notebook. Again, equally enjoy yourself in a specific context.

I’ll finish my rather disjointed thoughts on the topic with a brief reflection on what many criticise as the major problem of any sort of tasting note – the problem of subjectivity.

Here I think it’s so important that we openly and undefensively admit to the nature of the endeavour. Tasting is unequivocally a subjective experience and our notes will inexorably reflect that.

We are not making truth claims about the constitutive flavours and aromas intrinsic to the drink. That is, we are not saying the flavour of this stout is liqourice. Instead we are saying there is a flavour in this stout that reminds me of liquorice, and we adopt methods of shorthand to facilitate the thought (eg, I taste liquorice). Can we do better any better than this? I don’t think so, nor should we aspire to. Even as science further unlocks the secrets of scent and flavor compounds, its findings will not translate to taste experience. The explanation that linalool found in both bergamot and muscat wines may account for floral or tea characteristics in some muscats does nothing to guarantee the detection of these aromas or tastes by a consumer not equipped with a chemistry lab. What we are attempting to do as we make notes is to gesture at our experience with the flawed medium of language, hoping to cast at best a decent reflection. This should not frighten us away from making or using tasting notes, but instead to take them for what they are – an interpretive portrait, not a high definition photograph, of the drinks we love.

Any thoughts on this topic folks?

Technorati Tags: beer review,wine review,tasting notes,Eric Asimov,subjectivity

[Damien Lawrie]

Thanks for the thoughts Virgil. I think you're spot on. There is a place for poetic reflection on drinking as with any experience. It just probably shouldn't appear on a label in the guise of objective description!

[Virgil G]

If I taste a beer that makes me want to write a poem, then I'm gonna write a poem.

If a beer only gives me three words to describe it, then I'm probably not gonna drink it again.

There's a place in the world for people who use a lot of adjectives when describing a beer; there's also a place for short and too the point.

I know where to find both.

V