Driven to Drink - A Reflection by Frank Devine
Friday, 25th June, 2010
- David Farmer
Over the years I have moved to the view that tasting notes are not particularly helpful. How can you describe a wine in a way that imparts helpful information to a potential purchaser? To partly overcome this problem most wine writers include a score with the description. Unfortunately in our view and often argued here, scoring has become so corrupted that great wines score marginally above average wines.
That is why we seldom write tasting notes on Glug and seldom give a score. What you as a buyer should do is follow the advice of those you have come to respect. Thus you will either think Glug offers good advice, and good wines for the price, or you do not. I'll return to this theme another day. You may though be interested in the views a fine journalist who was very familiar with wine although was not a wine professional.
The quotes are from 'Driven to Drink'; Frank Devine, The Australian Magazine, March 1st-2nd 1997.
The article begins with Devine's bafflement that expensive or cheap wines are described in the same manner and he quotes five wine descriptions from a catalogue. The article begins with:
"It is not enough for writers about wine to tell me to look out for strong lime aromas and citrus flavours, culminating in a crisp acid finish, or a nose that is limey with a touch of honeysuckle."
He continues:
"My scepticism about the usefulness of wine criticism as a consumer's guide was just as strong when I studied a catalogue in which all the commentaries were attributed by name to particular wine critics. So which is out of kilter-the pricing or the prose? In my opinion, both, with the latter contributing significantly to the former.
And:
"It is not open to wine critics to use the comparative antiquity of their trade as an excuse for avoiding exploration and innovation in the use of language. They have been obtusely unresponsive to the phenomenon-now a couple of generations old-of wine-bibbing by the common man (and sheila). And slovenliness in self-expression has become endemic among them.
Even the solitary departure from orthodoxy noted above smacks of it. [he refers here to a tasting note I have not quoted] "Extremely powerful, occasionally idiosyncratic" means what? What happens when one encounters this power? Does one flee, shout for help, gag or go weak at the knees? In what way is the wine idiosyncratic? How does it confound expectations?
Wine critics rely heavily on metaphor but, in the hands of the inventively literate, this can be as much an inspiration as a restriction. By failing to develop any exemplary stylists, serious wine writers have left themselves open to easy parody by bluffers. Worse still, I often cannot tell who is bluffing and who is serious when critics profess to find the same attributes in $50 treasures and $7 specials. It is self-denigration on their part to say $7 bottle may be a better buy. What drama critic would recommend a lousy play because the tickets are cheap?" [here he refers to being unable to establish an order of pricing from reading wine descriptions or tasting notes]
I will return to this topic another time but at least you now know why we seldom do tasting notes and with the compression of point scores into such a narrow band they also are no longer much help in deciding what are the better wines.
The conclusion is not simple for the wine buyer but I finish by repeating what I said at the start. Trade with people whose views you think are close to yours as demonstrated by what you get in the glass for what you paid.
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