This one won’t be worthy of being nailed to the cathedral door. Nor do I have 95 points to make. At best, I have a few, and you might want to print them out, and Blue-Tack them to the inside of the cupboard door, next to the scheduling for the recycling bins.
More seriously, I don’t actually think of this as a manifesto. I’m not preaching or arguing my way is the only way. What I do want to do here is set out what I intend to cover in this blog, and why.
First, the wines. Those that I choose will be those that interest me for some reason or another, or that I know I like. It will become clear in the post what it is that interested me. What this means is that I have not received the wines from a producer in hopes of a favourable review. If I pick a wine and I don’t like it, I’ll let you know why as well.
Second, the words. Even if you have a good sense of smell (I presume), certain wine reviews and descriptions come across as pretentious, to put it mildly.
In fact, there are clearly perceptible hints of hydrocarbons, rennet apple and lime of exquisite finesse. In the mouth it expresses all its Nordic identity … it flows agile and nervous releasing very long memories of salt and grapefruit.
Some random dude on a Facebook wine group.
That’s from one or another of the Facebook wine groups I belong to. I don’t know what wine – apart from a Riesling – it refers to. I just came across it recently among my files as an example of an over-the-top description.
I’m going to do my best to avoid such writing. However, it is worth being aware that when you are taught to do a tasting in the wine industry, there are sets of words that are used to describe things. These tend to be things like fruit and berry flavours, leather, cedar, forest floor. These have specific connotations and can usually give further information about the wine. If you’ve been to a tasting, or read a description of a wine, you’ve probably come across these. My goal is to steer a path between industry terms I find useful, bringing in my own descriptions, while at the same time doing my best to avoid florid or pretentious prose.
Third,there is a set series of steps you are taught when you are trained to taste wine. Four, to be precise. You can read about them here. I just want to note here that they can be useful, but I do not feel obligated to stick rigidly to such a process. To me, it takes the pleasure away from wine.
I will, given the theme of this blog, pay less attention to aromas (although if I pick any up, I’ll let you know) and more to taste and other sensations.
Fourth, all the rest. By this I mean the context of the wine, why I chose it, information on the producer, and / or particular issues I think you might like to know about, or even some trivia.
Fifth, the greater sense. Of the blog, this time. I envision it being centred around wine reviews, but it will not be exclusively about them. If I have other things to write about, I will. I plan to post here twice a week (Sundays and Weds / Thurs).
There. Only 90 more theses to go.
Note: The featured image is a copy of Luther’s 95 Theses, from Basel, Switzerland. Source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ninety-five_Theses_(Basel).jpg
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