I love existential shit in tasting notes, random streams-of-consciousness, copious swearing, anything to stave off boredom. Terry Theise is a master of this. Just to pick a random note from one of his newsletters…
“Polished and relatively “modern,” showing all the classic flavors of this greatest-of-great vineyards. From their oldest vines
(planted 1939) blended with a parcel that’s merely 40. A wine to study in its mint-smoke potion hookah juju; it should be served
by a Vizier instead of a somm, unless the somm comes to the table with falcons on both shoulders….”
Damn. You kind of have to be born with skill like that.
Stuff like this is the only reason to read tasting notes. Otherwise concentration, acidity, balance and length is the only thing that matters. All the rest are mainly subjective anyway.
It is, in fact, an extraordinarily difficult thing to do if you are striving to (a) give the reader some sense of what the wine is like and (b) not repeat yourself. If you want to be clever or entertaining too, it is damn near impossible to do for a bunch of wines.
I think you could make a pretty strong argument that repeating particular adjectives is actually a plus. If “unctuous” puts a particular wine in a definable class of wines reviewed by critic P, it has some incremental value that wouldn’t be gained by having him find a rough synonym. Now, of this critic P labels every wine he likes as unctuous, that value is gone.
Grading a wine critic on the quality of the writing is usually a pointless exercise. It isn’t a novel or a poem. If the thing gives me an idea of what the wine is like and how it might mature, and expresses the critic’s enthusiasm (or lack thereof) for the wine, it has served its purpose.
Like Michael, I think Schildknecht is an excellent writer. At the same time, he hasn’t always been the fastest to publish his notes. I wouldn’t call Galloni a great writer, but he does sustain a pretty high output without stooping to chain gun hackery like JS.
As for Bingo, on my Parker scorecard I’ll take “hypothetical blend” and “on steroids”. As in, “this Martinelli pinot noir tastes like a hypothetical blend of Leroy Chambertin and Chapoutier Ermitage Cuvee de l’Oree on steroids.”
Come to think of it, I want “dead ringer” on there too. “This Martinelli pinot noir is a dead ringer for a hypothetical blend of Leroy Chambertin and Chapoutier Ermitage Cuvee de l’Oree on steroids.”
It’s always interesting to see how this plays out. Between the ridicule and snorting, the universal fact is that whatever you do - as long as you actually DO something - will be exposed to possible criticism. And I literally mean WHATEVER you do. There will always be people who, for some reason, will spend their time and energy to tell you how bad some other’s work happens to be. All fair of course, but every now and then I wonder if those who have such animosity towards others and truly believe their work is crap, ever allow themselves a pause to ponder on how THEY would have done it better. To stay with our particular passion that unites us all - wine - with the professional wine critics targeted in posts in mind, and the complaints about their palates, their scoring and now also their use of vocabulary, how would YOU do it better?
To go back to the OP of this thread, if you would be a wine critic, tasting thousands of wines each year, sometimes tasting 20 similar wines from the same grape, the same vintage and the same producer in an hour, and then heading to the next winery to repeat the very same task, how would you make it differently? And not only differenly, but better, to avoid the very same criticism on display here.
I continue to think that some, if not all, wine critics play a valid role and provide a valuable service to many. One thing that I do find contradictory and confusing though is when a critique begins with the fact that a wine is presently shut down and a detailed description follows.