Forgive the noobish point - but is this following indicative of the general approach to wine these days - or is it tongue in cheek? I find it hard to imagine discriminating between the following tastes within a wine.
leather
tar
soy
violets
plums
black berries
plum
raspberry
leather
soy
pepper
espresso
licorice
chocolate
spice.
The wine is a deep purple with ruby/garnet tinges at the rim.
The nose is quite savoury with aromas of leather, tar and soy prominent but there also notes of violets, plums and black berries lurking below.
The palate is medium to full bodied and shows fantastic balance and poise. There is a great depth of fruit driven flavour but elegance and length captivates the imbiber. The depth of plum, dark berry like fruit sees a hint of raspberry and is complemented by touches of earthy leather and soy as well as some pepper,espresso, licorice, chocolate and spice. Fine tannins carry the wine through a long savoury finish.
Tasting comments
Noobish point forgiven but it is not a good idea to use people's tasting notes without mentioning who wrote it.
I can differentiate between the flavours, other wise I wouldn't have written the note that way. Lovely wine that 98 St Henri.
Jordan wrote:The wine is a deep purple with ruby/garnet tinges at the rim.
The nose is quite savoury with aromas of leather, tar and soy prominent but there also notes of violets, plums and black berries lurking below.
The palate is medium to full bodied and shows fantastic balance and poise. There is a great depth of fruit driven flavour but elegance and length captivates the imbiber. The depth of plum, dark berry like fruit sees a hint of raspberry and is complemented by touches of earthy leather and soy as well as some pepper,espresso, licorice, chocolate and spice. Fine tannins carry the wine through a long savoury finish.
Excellent wine drinking very well now and should continue to develop for at least 5 years.
I can differentiate between the flavours, other wise I wouldn't have written the note that way. Lovely wine that 98 St Henri.
Premierships and great wine... that is what life is all about
-
postlethwaite
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:19 am
No worries, my previous post seems a little abrupt now - probably a little seedy from last night's offline 
. Writing tasting notes is definitely something that you pick up with time. 3 years ago I would often think the same, that people couldn't possibly detect all those descriptors but with time and thinking about wine in the context of those ideas, you pick up how flavours in a wine match up with those in a tasting note.
. Writing tasting notes is definitely something that you pick up with time. 3 years ago I would often think the same, that people couldn't possibly detect all those descriptors but with time and thinking about wine in the context of those ideas, you pick up how flavours in a wine match up with those in a tasting note.Premierships and great wine... that is what life is all about
A useful tool for sparking thought is a 'tasting template' which lists various aspects of wines and allows you to pick out pertinent features. Link these together with a few words and hey presto : instant tasting note!
TORB has a good example on his site, but I've seen others.
If these templates were just a list of fruit/veg/spice/flowers then it would be pretty useless - for me the structural elements are key to bringing the whole thing together. Yes there's acidity, but is it bracing, refreshing or painful! Are the tannins drying, overpowering, soft and how do they square up to the fruit? For a while the 'Gilly Goolden' school of tasting notes (from Food and drink TV prog) threatened to make wine appreciation just a long string of fruit references with sometimes daft adjectives / allegories.
TN's are a personal thing and 1st & foremost are just a way of sparking your memory as to whether you liked a wine and if so why. From there, being able to interpret others notes offers a glimpse into wines you won't have tasted, offering mental reminders to try one of those wines somewhere down the line.
Well that's my take on it anyway
regards
Ian
TORB has a good example on his site, but I've seen others.
If these templates were just a list of fruit/veg/spice/flowers then it would be pretty useless - for me the structural elements are key to bringing the whole thing together. Yes there's acidity, but is it bracing, refreshing or painful! Are the tannins drying, overpowering, soft and how do they square up to the fruit? For a while the 'Gilly Goolden' school of tasting notes (from Food and drink TV prog) threatened to make wine appreciation just a long string of fruit references with sometimes daft adjectives / allegories.
TN's are a personal thing and 1st & foremost are just a way of sparking your memory as to whether you liked a wine and if so why. From there, being able to interpret others notes offers a glimpse into wines you won't have tasted, offering mental reminders to try one of those wines somewhere down the line.
Well that's my take on it anyway
regards
Ian
Essential Wine Tasting Guide
a foldout wallet sized card thingo, not dissimilar in layout to tourist maps.
outlines specific characteristics commonly found in the given varietal.
covers sparkling, sauv blanc, chenin blanc, riesling, gewurz, verdelho, gris/grigio, viognier, semillon, chardy, pinot, grenache, cab franc, merlot, mouvedre/mataro, durif, zinfandel, tempranillo, sangiovese, nebbiolo, shiraz, cab sauv, dessert wine, vintage port, rutherglen tokay, rutherglen muscat, armagnac/brandy/cognac, sherry - fino monty olorosso.
then on the back it covers tatcile descriptors, appearance, descriptor groups, colours, scrtructure, faults, scoring etc.
it says on it "vinum vitae 2000" email vinum2000 at hotmail dot com
very useful point of reference that fits in your pocket.
outlines specific characteristics commonly found in the given varietal.
covers sparkling, sauv blanc, chenin blanc, riesling, gewurz, verdelho, gris/grigio, viognier, semillon, chardy, pinot, grenache, cab franc, merlot, mouvedre/mataro, durif, zinfandel, tempranillo, sangiovese, nebbiolo, shiraz, cab sauv, dessert wine, vintage port, rutherglen tokay, rutherglen muscat, armagnac/brandy/cognac, sherry - fino monty olorosso.
then on the back it covers tatcile descriptors, appearance, descriptor groups, colours, scrtructure, faults, scoring etc.
it says on it "vinum vitae 2000" email vinum2000 at hotmail dot com
very useful point of reference that fits in your pocket.
Re: Essential Wine Tasting Guide
Ryan wrote:a foldout wallet sized card thingo, not dissimilar in layout to tourist maps.
outlines specific characteristics commonly found in the given varietal.
covers sparkling, sauv blanc, chenin blanc, riesling, gewurz, verdelho, gris/grigio, viognier, semillon, chardy, pinot, grenache, cab franc, merlot, mouvedre/mataro, durif, zinfandel, tempranillo, sangiovese, nebbiolo, shiraz, cab sauv, dessert wine, vintage port, rutherglen tokay, rutherglen muscat, armagnac/brandy/cognac, sherry - fino monty olorosso.
then on the back it covers tatcile descriptors, appearance, descriptor groups, colours, scrtructure, faults, scoring etc.
it says on it "vinum vitae 2000" email vinum2000 at hotmail dot com
very useful point of reference that fits in your pocket.
You're not Glen Green under a different name, are you?
-
KMP
- Posts: 1246
- Joined: Sat Apr 17, 2004 4:02 am
- Location: Expat, now in San Diego, California
- Contact:
I believe that the description of aromas/bouquet in wine is fraught with difficulty and not a little imagination on the part of many. And science backs this up.
How confident can you be that a tasting note has correctly identified an individual flavor? It seems that for trained individuals its relatively easy to identify a single flavor in a mixture (Jinks and Laing, A limit in the processing of components in odor mixtures. Perception 28(1999) p395-404). However once a mixture reaches 16 components the ability to identify a single component falls to chance. What was interesting from this study is that there were a number of “false alarmsâ€Â; that is identifying the target odorant when it was not present. This failure to identify the target occurred in some cases when only one or two components of the possible 16 were present. It is important to note that the individuals in this study were trained to identify the odorants before being tested.
Fortunately most tasting notes contain fewer that 16 odor descriptors; many have less than half a dozen. That is an interesting finding as it has been shown that “only 3 or 4 components of a complex mixture could be discriminated and identified and that this capacity could not be increased by training†(Livermore and Laing, Influence of training and experience on the perception of multicomponent odor mixtures. J. Expt. Psychology: Human perception and performance. 22 (1996) p267-277). In this case the total number of odorants tested was seven and the total number in a mixture was five. Some of the participants in this test included professional perfumers and flavorists. So don’t be too alarmed if you can only give names to 3 or 4 flavors in any one wine. You are actually doing pretty well, as long as you are correctly identifying those aromas!
Its also important to note that recent studies have shown that genetics can control what we believe we smell. Smelling the same compound can resut in some liking the smell, some not liking it and others not smelling anything!
Mike
How confident can you be that a tasting note has correctly identified an individual flavor? It seems that for trained individuals its relatively easy to identify a single flavor in a mixture (Jinks and Laing, A limit in the processing of components in odor mixtures. Perception 28(1999) p395-404). However once a mixture reaches 16 components the ability to identify a single component falls to chance. What was interesting from this study is that there were a number of “false alarmsâ€Â; that is identifying the target odorant when it was not present. This failure to identify the target occurred in some cases when only one or two components of the possible 16 were present. It is important to note that the individuals in this study were trained to identify the odorants before being tested.
Fortunately most tasting notes contain fewer that 16 odor descriptors; many have less than half a dozen. That is an interesting finding as it has been shown that “only 3 or 4 components of a complex mixture could be discriminated and identified and that this capacity could not be increased by training†(Livermore and Laing, Influence of training and experience on the perception of multicomponent odor mixtures. J. Expt. Psychology: Human perception and performance. 22 (1996) p267-277). In this case the total number of odorants tested was seven and the total number in a mixture was five. Some of the participants in this test included professional perfumers and flavorists. So don’t be too alarmed if you can only give names to 3 or 4 flavors in any one wine. You are actually doing pretty well, as long as you are correctly identifying those aromas!
Its also important to note that recent studies have shown that genetics can control what we believe we smell. Smelling the same compound can resut in some liking the smell, some not liking it and others not smelling anything!
Mike
Re: Essential Wine Tasting Guide
Nayan wrote:Ryan wrote:a foldout wallet sized card thingo, not dissimilar in layout to tourist maps.
outlines specific characteristics commonly found in the given varietal.
covers sparkling, sauv blanc, chenin blanc, riesling, gewurz, verdelho, gris/grigio, viognier, semillon, chardy, pinot, grenache, cab franc, merlot, mouvedre/mataro, durif, zinfandel, tempranillo, sangiovese, nebbiolo, shiraz, cab sauv, dessert wine, vintage port, rutherglen tokay, rutherglen muscat, armagnac/brandy/cognac, sherry - fino monty olorosso.
then on the back it covers tatcile descriptors, appearance, descriptor groups, colours, scrtructure, faults, scoring etc.
it says on it "vinum vitae 2000" email vinum2000 at hotmail dot com
very useful point of reference that fits in your pocket.
You're not Glen Green under a different name, are you?
no?!