English Major with too much time on her hands trashes wine writing...

[quijote]

As a professor of Spanish literature and culture, I share the article writer's interest in studying and trying to understand the genre of the Tasting Note. It's one of the many fascinating things about world culture.

There are some things in the article that seem believable, such as the descriptive shift away from class and gender terms to organic/inorganic terms. Not really a big revelation, though.

I do disagree with the writer's conclusion that the use of fruits, veggies, etc. as descriptors is linked to some yearning for the pastoral. Someone should send an aroma wheel to the writer; I'm new to the deeper pleasures of wine, but it seems pretty reasonable to me to evaluate the complexity of wine against other items with similar tastes and aromas. People do this with food all of the time: I've described jicama to newbies as a combo of apples and water chestnuts; a really ripe pear is like a custard pie with hints of apple and honey; ripe brie is earthy and damp-smelling, often with flavors of mushrooms or grass. People describe dim sum in terms of "dumplings," and describe samosas in terms
of "turnovers." Why not?

It seems to me that, aside from the compelling scientific basis in taste/flavor affinities between wine and other items, the vocabulary of tasting notes does nothing less than draw from all sorts of global and personal experiences, many of which would have been unthinkable to many people just a few decades ago. I still have students who have never tried jalapeno or asparagus, or who have never really smelled a rose. But many of us now have all of these things within instant reach; even modest supermarkets carry kiwis, gooseberry jam, and other delights.

Our experiences, too, have changed a lot over the decades. More people can travel to different places with less money during a single lifetime. Wine, like food, is vicarious travel. And I'm not just talking about geographical travel; wine takes us back to the past--it evokes memories. The other day when I tasted some Cloudy Bay SB there was an aroma and taste that took me back--and it was, in fact, lychees. When I was a kid I used to eat lychees for dessert at Chinese restaurants. If a madeleine can work for Proust, why cannot wine work for oenophiles?

Again, some things the writer said make sense, but others are way off the mark. I'm throwing my support behind fruits, veggies, tar, lead pencil, and wet dog!

[This message has been edited by quijote (edited 03-07-2003).]