Wine tasting descriptions

[Bacchus]

A thought piece: Some of my drinking buddies complain about the ratings they find on CellarTracker. They have a difficult time understanding how some can rate a wine in the low 80s, while others will rate that same wine in the high 90s. I generally have no problem with this issue, and explain the differences thus: 1) people have different tastes. One person's elixir is another's Baby Duck. Some like big, over-extracted aussie Shiraz, some don't. I'm okay with that. 2) different people use different scales, even if they're all scoring out of 100. For a guy who scores everything low (in the 80s) a score of 89 represents a very high mark, while for a guy that scores everything in the 90s, that same 89 represents a mark on the low side. But what I have more difficulty with is the remarkably different descriptions that any given wine can garner. For example, I was checking out the comments on the 2005 Ch. Haut-Bailly. I can understand that some might love the wine and that some might not, but it's tough to understand how some can describe it as rich and complex with gobs of dark fruit, while another describes it as thin with light red cherry flavours at best. What's going on here? I know bottle variation can account for these sorts of differences, but I doubt that's the case here because some of these reviewers have commented more than once on the wine. Is something going on at the psychological level? Although the '05 HB is frightfully expensive up here, I might have to spring for a bottle just to see what's up with these reviews.

[JonoB]

That is a bit odd... I could understand gobs of fruit 100 pts with overextracted 75pts side by side, but one extracted, the other thin is very strange... Maybe Mr. 'Thin' normally only drinks Barossa Shiraz of the over alcoholic style.

[Bacchus]

Maybe so JonoB, but although I used the '05 HB as my example, I find this sort of disparity to be quite widespread. And it's not just on matters of weight. Length of finish is another area where there can be incomprehensible disparity. Sticking with the example of the '05 HB, one contributor writes that it has a "short finish," while another writes that it has a "ridiculously long" finish! Zounds, that type of disparity is tough to understand. I guess it just makes it tough to get a bead on a wine when there can be such disparity over things that have an objective aspect to them, rather than, say, the flavour profile, which is all by analogy, innuendo, hint, etc.

[JonoB]

Could it be how long they decanted for...??

A long decant will let the wine blossom, but not doing it will have it closed, and if you don't know what a closed wine is like, it can taste short and watery.

My closed epiphany was a cheap Spanish wine, literally was dark in colour but tasted of water, honest water and nothing else and with 20 minutes in the glass blossomed into something very very different. Many who claim to know about wine don't always understand this aspect of it. It takes time to really understand it.

[JonB]

I did a quick cellar tracker search. It appeared that a good number of reviews were for the 2nd wine, which I'm sure you filtered out.

Then there appears to be one person who panned it twice. (Alex H, who wrote tasting notes of it at 2 different events in Singapore). One of the notes in particular is short and he has descriptors for the wine like "fart" and "gay". If you click on the user i.d. for this poster, they have no wine in inventory but thousands of reviews. Click on the review count, and you'll get the actual reviews....and see if you align with his palate. It appears almost all wines are reviewed from the low 70s to mid 80s, although there's a couple of 90s with descriptors like "cockroach legs" and "beatles" for aroma and palate. If you think your tastes align with this person, use the notes, otherwise throw them out.

The other notes aren't that inconsistent. Particularly the 2010 notes (just a few) mention the wine has shut down. Don't expect high scores for a wine devoid of fruit.

The UGC tasting notes I'd also take with a grain of salt. These are large tastings (+/- 100 wines) in a 3 hour or so setting and at least for me most wines I'll spend less than a minute combined on tasting a wine and notes.....so a very brief snapshot on a wine that is young and evolving relatively fast. I tasted the '05 Haut Bailly at one such event, and it did taste a little thin but my overall perception of it was that it was a stunning wine. I bought some, but it is still pre-arrival.

[marcs]

If you're more used to new world wines, then a more traditional-style French or Italian wine can seem devoid of fruit if you taste it in any kind of awkward middle-aged stage. Also, I think peoples' expectations have a lot to do with their notes -- a fair number of notes have that tone of somebody throwing a temper tantrum after spending $100 on a wine that didn't work out.

[DavidG]

Lots of possibilities to explain different descriptions:

Palate variation - some people's palates vary immensely
Different points of reference - as noted above, comparing to a Beaujolais vs an Aussie Shiraz?
Different descriptors - not everyone attaches the same meaning to the word "long" or "rich" or "thin"
Bottle variation
Different temperature while drinking
Different amounts of air exposure
Different accompanying drinks or foods
Mood of the taster
Health or alertness of the taster