Wine Tasting for Dummies (Hint: We're All Dummies)

I really enjoyed the visit from our guest speaker/wine blogger, Alder Yarrow. I was expecting someone who has tried thousands of wines and blogs about them on a daily basis to come across as much more...snooty. Instead, he made wine tasting an enjoyable and approachable concept. I particularly liked his and Alyssa's point that wine tasting takes practice because humans generally experience difficulty with verbally expressing the inputs to their olfactory systems. This is why practice is so necessary for refining one's wine palace--we're all kind of wine dummies to begin with. This is especially encouraging for a novice like myself, who really enjoys wine, but often slurps it down without considering whether it smells like cat piss on a gooseberry bush or tar and roses.

I thought the most helpful tip Alder gave was using aroma cards or the AromaApp to practice identifying aromas and flavors when tasting wine. Doing so will likely make the process of identifying wine tasting notes less nebulous and will also help build out one's tasting note lexicon. Having the AromaApp handy would have been particularly helpful when Alder shared a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir with the class. He described it as having notes of vanilla, blueberry, and mocha. I described it as smelling like a muffin. I think we were basically picking up on the same things, yet he sounded like a sommelier, and I sounded like an unrefined ogre. I am going to download the AromaApp as soon as I finish this blog post.

Another piece of Alder's session that I found enlightening was his insistence upon finding wine critics whose tastes and perceptions align most closely with my own. I had previously assumed that all wine critics were i) roughly in agreement with their assessment of various wines' tasting notes and ii) right. It was interesting to learn just how individualized taste is (especially in light of the studies we read that show that most people have a really difficult time even discerning whether two wines are the same or different!). Thus, I really liked the idea that some wine critics share a similar palate and perceive tastes and smells the way I do, and those are the wine critics whose advice I may benefit from the most.

Lastly, what really resonated with me from Friday's session was the following concept: We like what we like, and at the end of the day, who really cares what the wine critics have to say?

Cheers!