In article
>,
DaleW > wrote:
> On Nov 19, 7:21*am, "JT" > wrote:
> > "Ed Rasimus" > wrote in message
> >
> > ...
> >
> > >I thought this was a fascinating item in the Wall Street Journal
> > > yesterday:
> >
> > >http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...57453384028265...
> >
> > > It makes me feel a bit better about my raspberry, strawberry,
> > > blueberry, chocolate, smoke and vanilla palette! Oh, with some notes
> > > of citrus, grapefruit, leather, tobacco, cigar box, merde, old
> > > overcoat, cardboard, wet dog and cat pee...
> >
> > > I think the making of much ado over something has been unmasked at
> > > least a bit. What say you?
> >
> > Very interesting, I always feel a bit of a dickhead when someone mentions 6
> > or 7 aromas on a fine claret. I struggle with 3 or 4, on a good day with a
> > following wind., after 35 years of wine tasting and drinking!
> >
> > JT from a very wet and windy UK
>
> There's not a lot surprising there.
>
> The most surprising thing is that Parker would use the EWS tasting as
> proof of his consistency. Knowing that he had previously ranked every
> wine 95 or above, a 3 point variation is scarcely impressive. He
> didn't mention he was 0 for 15 at identifying them single blind.
>
> As to # of aromas- there is one fellow in NYC who starts naming
> multiple aromas the second his nose hovers over glass. He probably
> names 20 descriptors per tasting note. Let's just say I'm extremely
> skeptical. But one yahoo's not really an argument for having a limit
> on descriptors. The WSJ said " even flavor-trained professionals
> cannot reliably identify more than three or four components in a
> mixture, although wine critics regularly report tasting six or more."
> Really? I have a few problems with their extrapolations from this:
> 1) first of all, I know several people (mostly women come to mind) who
> can taste a dish and name the spices involved with great accuracy,
> sometimes 5 or more. What is "reliably"? I think I'm at best an
> average taster physiologically, yet when I made a chicken dish with
> lemon, garlic, rosemary, butter, and leeks I thought I could taste all
> the components- was I deluding myself?
> 2) more importantly, wine does not contain plums, currants, earth, or
> cedar. A Graves does not contain tobacco, a Pauillac contains no lead
> pencil, etc. We are trying to project our personal associations onto
> taste and aroma, and everyone's associations are different. My
> cigarbox might be Lipton's cedar. I can't say that I ever worry about
> whether any of the descriptors I use match someone else's, I'd be more
> concerned if my structural judgements were far different from the
> norm. There are a few people I've tasted with a lot who I have some
> grip on their tastes, and I guess their finding tobacco might be a
> slight nudge for me to buy a wine, but far less than their structural
> analysis and overall judgement. But in general I'd never think much
> about actual descriptors in others' notes, and don't expect mine to be
> of any value to anyone but me. If I taste the same wine twice, I
> usually have some of the same descriptors, and some different ones.
> Probably some bottle variation, but Dale variation is more likely the
> explanation.
> 3) Lastly, it's not clear from cited notes that someone said they
> smelled all of those things at once. If I wrote down plums, cedar,
> tobacco, earth on first opening a mature claret, and later wrote black
> currants, cigarbox, fresh herbs, smoke, did I break the 4 aroma rule?
You smell what you smell regardless of preconceived concepts of what a
wine is supposed to smell like. I don't know what a lead pencil is
supposed to smell like. I have sniffed pencils all of the time trying to
get something or just pencil lead...nothing. Now cedar shavings yes and
pencil wood yes. I smell a lot of flowers a vegetables to get ideas
about what I am smelling. I have smelled tobacco in many pinot noirs and
was told by a wine expert that shouldn't be there. Sometimes it smells
like cigarettes that have been sitting a few days. This is not
necessarily appealing. Nose and palate are so subjective that it is
always a matter of weather you like it or not. I try to keep nose and
palate descriptions simple, 2-5 descriptors max.