"DaleW" > wrote in message
...
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?
Dale - I'm with you. 1. No you're not deluding yourself - I had a Thai
curry recently and as well as overall impressions, at the same and at
different times I could distinctly detect a multiplicity of aromas and
tastes: acidity, tartness, sweetness, lemon grass, ginger, basil, shallot,
garlic, coconut, chili, fresh turmeric, tomato etc. (I gather that what most
of us call taste is actually olfactory anyway). 2. Yes most wine descriptors
are associative and while there is a common language of descriptors we'll
sometimes disagree with fellow tasters but acknowledge "I don't quite see
that but I think I know what you're trying to describe. Or "yes, now that
you mention it I do smell Turkish Delight..." 3. When I'm taking notes, a
wine on opening will offer various aromas/flavours, then as it warms /
breathes and as my mouth and nose become attuned to what it offers, I detect
more and different characters - usually exceeding the magic limit of four...
One only has to read of the great "noses" in the perfume industry (Google
"Luca Turin: for some lucid and brilliant writing on this) to know that they
can detect myriad natural and synthetic aromas in perfume blends. (More than
four anyway.)
However, I am not suggesting here that listing a whack of detected aromas is
helpful to readers or listeners, I also tend to keep my descriptors in a
note to just a few.
Cheers!
Martin