Wine tasting notes can be misleading and misunderstood. Sometimes consumers expect the wine to taste exactly like the tasting notes suggests. Wine that have a hind of chocolate and caramel do not taste like a Cadbury’s Caramello Bear (South African chocolate bar).

In an article, published on C-Ville.com, J. Tobias Beard said: “Many of us misunderstand the nature of wine language. I constantly run into people who seem to actually expect to find various foods in wine. “Mmmm,” they will say, reading the back of the bottle, “I like chocolate. I’ll buy this one!” Indeed, when confronted with wines that are said to offer a “mouthful of silky-textured cherries, blueberries, plums, boysenberries, earth, minerals, and spiced oak,” people can hardly be blamed if they expect dessert. I tend to advise customers to ignore those descriptions. But why? Doesn’t wine taste like all that stuff? Isn’t that the point?”

Yes and no. Wine language is poetic—a way of describing not what a wine objectively tastes like, but what it was like for the writer to taste the wine. Good wine writing presents an experience, not an analysis.

Granted, wine can taste and smell like all kinds of weird things, some of which I personally have tasted and smelled. Sauvignon Blanc does sometimes smell like cat pee. I used to have a cat that peed on my clothes, so I know that smell. But I have never smelled or tasted any of the following, taken from actual wine reviews: liquefied minerals, animal fur, beef blood, white flowers, or scorched earth.

Maybe you’ll taste all that stuff, maybe you won’t. We all have different palates, after all, and taste is subjective. But modern wine writing has become so fixated on isolating scents and smells that we’re led to believe there’s no other way to enjoy wine. The critics strain to conjure up ever more esoteric descriptions, and the drinker is left to strain for a small hint of “new saddle leather,” lest he be seen as a wine ignoramus.

People really want to know what wines taste like. They ask me all the time, but the only honest answer I can give is to tell them to taste it for themselves, and not to be afraid to wax poetic.”

One of my favorite wines , the Arniston Bay Shiraz / Merlot 2005, was described as follows on the tasting note:

“A medium-bodied wine with intense red colour. It has subtle blackcurrant and pepper nose with hints of coffee and chocolate on the taste and a soft, round finish.”

I think this is a soft, easy-drinking wine with a great balanced body. I can’t taste the hint of coffee, but I nonetheless enjoy the taste of this wine.

Source: c-ville.com