Getting started writing tasting notes.
Tips on avoiding bum notes!
Putting pen to paper at a wine tasting can be a source of anxiety akin to hanging a target on your back. My wife still reacts with horror if we go to a wine event and someone hands her a tasting sheet. There is a fear that more experienced tasters will want to ask you to share opinions or even criticise your assessments.
“I think you’ll find that’s a mid-ruby hue; pale garnet is an entirely different colour!”
“Wild raspberries? No way – this clearly smells of farmed raspberries.”
I once sat with a colleague at a tasting and was very impressed by his diligent scribbling about the wines. Only afterwards did he shyly admit that he did not have anything much to say about the wines but felt obliged to be seen to be making notes; so had been desperately writing out the lyrics to his favourite songs.
Poor guy probably missed enjoying most of the wines as he tried to recall verse three of Smells Like Teen Spirit! What a waste…
So, why might you bother with tasting notes at all and how is best to go about writing them?
Who are you writing for?
First things first, the vast majority of people writing about the wines they taste are doing so for themselves. Let’s face it, you are neither Robert Parker nor Jancis Robinson: no one is paying for your notes and no winemakers’ livelihoods depend on your scores.
This is really important because knowing one’s audience relieves a great deal of stress and, if the notes are largely for your own benefit, no one knows your audience better than you do!
All of a sudden, your note only has to make sense to you and can be as brief – or as flowery – as is useful. I take this as licence to leave the full supermarket’s worth of exotic fruit descriptors at the door. Additionally, a wine that smells like the inside of your school pencil case when you were 12 might be meaningless to the rest of the population but could be deeply evocative to you – so put it in.
Why do you want to write a note anyway?
Imagine the scenario: you go to a tasting you have paid to attend, and there is a room with 24 bottles in it.
Assuming any notes are written for yourself, the best reason for putting anything down is to have a record of what you liked and which you thought were any good. If you have spent money going to a tasting, you may as well remember that you thought number eight was much better than 13, whilst wine 19 tasted like dog food. If nothing else, you might even want to buy the wine you liked the best and save yourself from accidentally ordering a case of the hog swill that was number 19!
Hopefully, if tasting notes are to be written for your own benefit, and are largely a record or your own likes and dislikes, this whole exercise is becoming a little simpler and less intimidating.
How to begin?
I recommend starting short and simple. Your note need only be a record of whether you liked something or not, perhaps with a sentence or two to add colour and remind you of what you liked / disliked about it. One day you might decide to do a wine course, like WSET, start sharing your notes with friends ,or posting them online; but this is much further down the line and there will be plenty of time to create your own style and method.
Remember, for now, your notes are solely for you and purely a record of your personal opinion.
Even for colleagues starting out in the trade, I suggest the ‘three ticks’ system and I even know professional wine buyers who use this. This is an incredibly simple rating system where the number of ticks shows how much you liked the wine:
No ticks: you are ambivalent about the wine, did not like it or simply have no opinion. If it does not move you to give it any ticks, simply move on and no need to waste time writing.
a decent wine, you would happily finish the glass (and maybe have another!)
a good wine and you would be happy to buy a bottle.
too good to stop at a bottle, you want a case!
Add in a handful of words to justify your ticks and you are not only writing a useful tasting note, you’re scoring wines!
A wine with no ticks may not merit any comment at all – or it could be the aforementioned dog food! In case you worry about anyone looking over your shoulder at anything you have written about a wine you did not like, a subtle DNPIM (do no put in mouth) can suffice.
The single tick wine could well fall into the refreshing but kind of lacks character category.
Up a notch, a mellow and rounded red with full body and lots of fruit might attract two ticks and have you thinking a bottle would disappear very easily.
For the top rating, a wine you would buy by the case need not be anything more than DELICIOUS! but it does not hurt if it is also really spicy, with a finish that goes on and on…
There you have it: three simple steps to help overcome feelings of self-consciousness in writing tasting notes, explain why they might be useful and offer a basic structure for creating them. For me, the main point is that it is only wine and wine is meant to be pleasurable. There is no benefit or enjoyment to be gained from agonising over whether your Chablis is green gold or pale straw in colour or if Pauillac smells like graphite, pencil led or cedar wood. If you enjoy wine but have no use for the notes, I simply would not write any – in fact, I really enjoy the occasional dinner when I am freed from lap top, phone or notebook.
Just try not to be the person writing down song lyrics!
