Pulling The Cork

A Wines Value Proposition - The Last Sentence Of A Tasting Note

“How many times have you read a concert review in the newspaper and found you have no idea what the reviewer is saying? “Her sustained appoggiatura was flawed by an inability to complete the roulade” Or, “I can’t believe they modulated to C-sharp minor! How ridiculous!” What we really want to know is whether the music was performed in a way that moved the audience.” - Levitin, Daniel J. This Is Your Brain on Music. New York: Penguin Group, 2006

Over the last dozen or so years one of the “new” themes in corporate America has been the Value Proposition (VP), also sometimes called the Value Statement.  The VP is supposed to be a short pithy statement that tells the world what you do and the value that you bring.  Corporations spend million of dollars trying to define what they do, the value that they offer, and then reduce that research into a short statement. 

If you have never tried to write a VP you don’t realize both how hard it is to do and how much it runs counter to human abilities.  People are excellent at breaking an issue into components, but generally poor at creating meaningful summations.  To illustrate the difficulty in writing a VP, try writing one for your relationship with your family.  You might start out by saying things like, “Well I take out the trash; I mow the lawn; I change the light bulbs; I go to work”.  These are the things you do, but they are not your VP to your family.  A personal VP for your relationship to your family might be something like, “I provide the financial, emotional, operational, and moral stability for my spouse and children so that they can have the fullest life possible.”  Listing what you do is easy, but summing those activities up into the value they provide is hard.

Wine tasting notes come in two flavors:  the personal tasting note and the public tasting note.  Thirty to forty years ago almost all tasting notes were private notes as there was really no extensive way to share, so the format of the notes was not an issue.  Thirty years ago a private tasting could have read as follows:

27 X Wide Flanker Right Right Drop on Three

While this might have meant a lot to the writer, and to the Offensive Coordinator at Alcorn State, it would have meant absolutely nothing to the rest of the world.  In the 1970s the first of the U.S. based wine review newsletters started publication.  Around the same time, articles began to appear about the benefit of tasting notes following a specific structure.  The theory went that if all tasting notes tended to follow a similar structure, then the wine community would benefit from a common “language”.  In large part the goal of a common “language” for tasting notes has been successful.  Tasting notes from most major publications are substantially the same. 

The two most common formats for wine reviews are the numerical format and the take-it-in-order format.  Previous PTC entries on writing a wine tasting note may be found in the How To Taste & Talk Wine Series.

There are several numerical formats for scoring wine, but the one most widely used is the 100 point scale.  In the 100 point scale a wine is given 50 points for showing up, a maximum of 5 points for color, a maximum of 10 points for the nose, a maximum of 15 points for the taste, a maximum of 10 points for the finish, and a maximum of 10 points for the overall impression.  Using the 100 point scale a wine review might be as simple as:

 50 + 5 (color) + 2 (nose) + 12 (taste) + 2 (finish) + 6 (overall) = 77 points

From this score you would derive that the wine tasted fine but did not have much aroma or much in the way of a finish, but still struck the reviewer as an okay wine.  It is, of course, obvious that a numerical score does not tell you much about the wine.  Numerical scales in and of themselves were never meant to replace written notes; rather the intention was to provide a quantitative distinction between two wines that were similar.  Alas, as is often the case, the numerical score often came to be the only review of a wine that mattered. 

How To Taste & Talk Wine - The Big Finish

Finish Strong!

A former coach of mine would say this when we were conditioning for football in the heat of August before the season started.  The idea being the harder we worked now, the stronger we finished each conditioning drill, the more likely we were to finish strong in the 4th quarter of a game.  The same could be said about wine.  Finishing strong is critical to the overall quality of a wine.  It can be the difference between a good and a great wine. 

Today on PTC TV we are in Part 5 of our How To Taste & Talk Wine series with The Big Finish & Overall Impressions.  Today is it all about Finish, Balance and Complexity and how to document that information for a tasting note.  In the event you haven't been paying to attention to this series, or you are just now coming up on the series, you can visit this link and it will take you back to the beginning or you can look over to the left hand side bar where we have a section specifically for the series.

Ok, so let's get to it!  Enjoy!

How To Taste & Talk Wine - What You Taste & How To Taste It

Yesterday we gave you some thoughts on the technique for tasting your wine as we move to Part 4 of our How To Taste & Talk Wine Series - What You Taste & How To Taste It.

Now that you have the technique down like a pro it's time to help you to know what you are doing all that swishing and aerating for.  In today's PTC TV episode we are going to go into Taste (sweet/tart and mouthfeel), Body and Flavor of wine and what to be on the lookout for. 

Before we get into it, we need you to put on your memory cap for a minute.  Remember in What You Smell & How To Smell It we told you that your nose is the most important tool you have when it comes to discerning aroma, bouquet and flavor in wine.  Guess what?  Since your nose is so important it is also the primary instrument you use to identify flavor as well.  If that seems confusing to you don't worry about it because we cover it in today's episode.  We bring it up because, since it is all tied to your sense of smell, the same chart we gave you in the What You Smell episode also applies to flavor.  You can use that chart as a guide to help you write down the flavors of wine in your tasting note.  That same chart appears here below today's episode so you don't have to jump all over the place to find it.

Enough jibber-jabber...let's get to it!

As promised, here is the chart on Aroma, Bouquet and Flavor that you can use as a guide when writing your tasting notes. 

What You Taste & How To Taste It - The Technique

I grew up in Kent, Ohio where there was this great deli called Franklin Square Deli in our small downtown.  They had an amazing BBQ Pulled Pork!  I think they are under new ownership since I roamed the streets of Kent but I have had their food and it is still wonderful.  Their tag line used to be "If It Smells Good, Eat It"  When I first got into wine I used to think about that tag line when I would nose a wine and logically I would think to myself - If it smells good, drink it. 

We are now at part 4 in our series How To Taste & Talk Wine.  Today we are introducing What You Taste & How You Taste It with a quick intro of the technique to actually putting the wine in your mouth and tasting it.  The follow up episode tomorrow will get into actual Taste, Body and Flavor but those won't make any sense unless you know a decent technique to get at those characteristics.  Again, this is not only technique to taste wine but this is how I do it and how I do it when evaluating a wine for Pulling The Cork. 

How To Taste & Talk Wine: Why You Might Smell Poop In Wine

There is a pattern developing in our How To Taste & Talk Wine series.  The last two PTC TV episodes have generated emails from our PTC friends asking some really interesting and important questions.  With both episodes a good number of the emails asked questions that were originally addressed in the pre-edited videos but, for the sake of running time, they were cut out of the final version. 

In the first case it involved the What You See & How To See It episode and many email questions specifically asked questions about color intensity so we published an out take from the original video with a Color Intensity Demonstration.

Our most recent episode in the series on What You Smell & How To Smell It generated a number of email questions about the poop or manure smell that is sometimes present in red wine, specifically Bordeaux, Burgundy and some Cabernet Sauvignon.  Once again, we originally recorded a section on this topic but ultimately had to cut it out in the interest of running time.  We are publishing the edited section today to try and answer the question:

Why does your Bordeaux, Burgundy, Cabernet Sauvignon or other red wine sometimes smell like poop?  Watch and we'll try to explain!

So what do you think about Brett?

Have you experienced it?

Do you like it? Do you hate it?

Tell us what you think!

How To Taste & Talk Wine - What You Smell & How To Smell It

It's all about the smell! 

With wine that is oh so true.  Really, when it comes right down to it, our sense of smell is the most important sense and factor in our ability to taste and talk about wine.  Our sense of taste and flavor identification in wine is directly connected to our sense of smell so, in many ways, this is the most important installment in our How To Taste & Talk Wine Series.  In part one we talked about The Purpose of A Wine Tasting Note and in part two we talked about What You See & How To See It.  Part three today, a PTC TV episode, What You Smell & How You Smell It is the lynchpin that holds together a wine tasting and a good tasting note. 

Immediately following the video below we have a quick comment about nasal fatigue and a helfpul chart for you to use in stimulating how to think about aroma and bouquet in wine (yes, there is a difference - watch the video to find out about it).  The chart is not designed to be all inclusive of every possible aroma or bouquet descriptor but merely a guide with some of the most common descriptors listed in some general categories.  If you are new to tasting and talking about wine then this chart should be a huge help.  If you have been tasting for a long time and have a rather mature nose and palate this may be of no use to you at all - but then again it might be a nice refresher.  So let's get on with it - PTC TV episode 09-008 - What You Smell & How To Smell It!

Thanks for checking out PTC TV and our series on How To Taste & Talk Wine. 

When smelling a wine for Aroma Intensity and Aroma Identity be sure not to over do it with the sniffing.  A few sniffs in the glass for each is sufficient and going back over and over again for more sniffing could induce nasal fatigue.  Nasal fatigue is exactly what it sounds like, your retro-nasal passage becomes tired from the sniffing workout and almost shuts down, preventing you from being able to identify anything.  So, in the interest of your nasal receptors, don't over do it. 

As promised, here is the chart of the most common Aroma and Bouquet descriptors by general category.  Again, it is not meant to be all inclusive but just a good starting point to help you think about what you might be smelling in wine.  Enjoy!

Got a number of emails from this video that specifically asked about the "poop" smell in some red wines.   We answered the question in a quick video called Why You Might Smell Poop In Your Wine.

How To Taste & Talk Wine: Color Intensity Demonstration

Yesterday we released the second part of our series on How To Taste & Talk Wine in which we explored What You See & How You See It on PTC TV.  One of the 4 visual characteristics we talked about was Intensity, specifically Color Intensity.

We had about 5 emails from viewers who were still a little unclear on the concept and they specifically mentioned they couldn't quite visualize what we meant when we talked about a wines color being high intensity in color (dark), medium intensity (medium) or low intensity (pale). 

Part of putting together an episode of PTC TV involves shooting a lot of footage and then doing a large amount of editing.  Some things don't make it into the final episode.  In this case we cut out a demonstration on intensity that may have proved useful had we included it.  Since we had 5 emails come in we figured others may have had the same difficulty with the Intensity characteristic so we are publishing the color intensity demonstration today.  It is a quick video but we think the demonstration is a pretty simple way to think about intensity.  Enjoy!

How To Taste & Talk Wine - What You See & How To See It

It's time for the second installment in our How To Taste & Talk Wine series.  To bring you up to speed if you haven't been reading (shame on you by the way) we are presenting a series of posts designed to help you write a tasting note and help you with the tasting techniques you can use to get the information for your tasting note.  Rob MacKay started it all off with this post and then we guided you through The Purpose Of A Tasting Note earlier this week. 

Today we are going to talk about What You See & How To See It.  After jotting down the information from the wine label - remember we said it was ok to cheat and copy down the information - the next step in crafting a good tasting note is to write down what you see.  There are four things, all related to what you see in the wine, that you need to pay attention to and document.  There are also some sound techniques you can use to help you reach some conclusions about what you see.  Check out our video (you can even watch in HD - we are so high tech) on What You See & How To See It. Let us know in the comments what you think and if you have any questions...we are ALWAYS open to your feedback and questions! (By the way, the mispelling of my last name in the end credits is intentional - inside joke between me and someone who is a regular here who always pronounces my name wrong!)

 

 

EDITORS NOTE:  As an adendum to this episode of PTC TV we posted a follow up post with an excerpt demonstration to illustrate color intensity in wine.  This video was cut out of the final edit of What You See & How To See It in the interest of time but, in response to several emails, we posted it the next day to clarify how to think about color intensity.  Here is the link to How To Taste & Talk Wine: Color Intensity Demonstration if you are interested!

The Purpose Of A Wine Tasting Note & Where To Start

This is the first in the series How To Taste & Talk Wine in which I will be sharing thoughts and ideas on how to write a tasting note, some of the tasting techniques you can use to better appreciate wine and gather the information you need to write a great tasting note.  It seems only logical then to start at the beginning and that means we need to understand the purpose of a tasting note and why it even matters. 

Wine can be a very subjective thing.  I can't tell you the number of times I have been involved in a tasting and just about everyone at the tasting table smelled or tasted something different in the same wine.  To some that can seem strange or frustrating but that is really one of the beautiful aspects of wine - that it can reveal so many different characteristics to different people and it is ever changing.  Trying to capture all of those different characteristics on paper, or on video as we often do, can seem to be a very daunting task. So why do it?  What is the point?

The Purpose

There are many reasons to write tasting notes and Rob MacKay hit on a few of them in his post recently.  I take tasting notes for a few reasons and I think each of these reasons pretty much define the purpose of a tasting note.  I am sure there are others but since this is my series I am going to go with mine

First, I like to document what I experience with a wine each time I taste it to capture my personal experience.  This not only helps me to go back and sort of relive the experience through my words but it also allows me to track a wine's development over time.  I have a number of wines in my cellar that need a fair amount of bottle aging in the cellar before they hit a peak window for drinking.  I often buy 3-6 bottles of each of these so that I can open one up pretty soon after receiving it to get a sense of what it is like very young and then, based on what I learn at that time, I open the remaining bottles over many years, each time documenting my tasting experience.  These tasting notes on the same wine over many years are like a written photo album of the wines life.  A written documentary of the seasons of life the wine has gone through.  For those wines I only get to experience once, a detailed tasting notes will allow me, perhaps many years later, to recall the experience in vivid detail and to some degree relive the wine. 

How To Taste and Talk Wine - The Series

Last week Rob MacKay wrote a great post on how to write a wine tasting note that hit on some really important and essential elements.  He focused on some structural aspects of the tasting note that helped a reader to gain an understanding of how to relate your wine tasting experience beyond the traditional tasting note information.  It was really a great post and you should read it.

After Rob published his post we got to thinking about those traditional elements of a wine tasting note.  Pretty much what you see, what you smell, what you taste, how it finishes and overall impressions.  These are things that are seemingly obvious but, as Rob pointed out, with the potential for thousands of people to see your tasting notes it is probably worth the time to talk about it in some detail.

We decided to write a series of posts on on the more traditional components of writing a tasting note and this is the introductory post.  Actually Rob's initial post is the first in the series so this introduction is a bit out of sequence but you get the idea.  Our approach is going to be a bit different than most in that we are not only going to write about it but we are going to provide some helpful videos, at least we think they will be helpful, to make it a bit more entertaining and illustrative of some of the ideas, concepts and techniques.  We are also going include basic wine tasting technique suggestions (yes there will be video) as part of how to write a wine tasting note.  We are going to talk technique alongside how to write a tasting note because we think you can't talk about and write a tasting note without some understanding of how to execute and think about those structural elements you plan to communicate.  You have to know how to walk before you run so to speak.   

In this series of posts we are going to cover (hyperlinks provided to those posts that are live):

The Purpose Of A Wine Tasting Note & Where To Start

What You See & How To See It

What You See & How To See It - Wine Color Intensity Demonstration

What You Smell & How To Smell It

Why You Might Smell Poop In Your Wine

What You Taste & How To Taste It - The Tasting Technique

What You Taste & How To Taste It - Taste, Body & Flavor

The Big Finish & Overall Impressions

What's The Score? (if you're into that sort of thing)

We fully realize that for some readers of PTC this will be rather basic and common knowledge.  For others this may be the first time they are learning about some of these ideas and techniques.  No matter what your level of wine knowledge and expertise we think you may be able to learn a few things from this series because even the most experienced and knowledgeable might find some of the ideas to be a great refresher or maybe even see them in a different way through our delivery of the material.

The series will start next week and we are anxious to hear your thoughts and feedback as we go through it. 

Oh, and thanks for you patience with us the last couple of days when we haven't posted.  We fully intend on trying to post at least every other day, if not every day, so it was as frustrating for us as it may have been for you.  Or maybe you didn't miss us at all. 

Life has a funny way of throwing curve balls at you sometimes. 

Cheers!