Recent American research shows, as if we didn’t know, that wine tasting is unreliable and scatter-brained. Wines that taste feeble in the morning can be delicious at night. A wine that wins a gold medal in one tasting might be unranked in the next. There are true stories: the test in which ordinary drinkers were served the same wine twice but were told that the first cost $10 a bottle and the second $50. They greatly preferred the second. Or the tasting in Norfolk at which serious wine experts discussed three decanters of claret, chewing over the year and provenance, before being told that all were from the same Chilean bag in box.
As for the descriptions of wines, don’t get them started. It is always difficult putting flavours into words. I would much prefer to write ‘this is delicious’, or ‘you’ll find this scrummy’, but then I would be drummed out of the Circle of Wine Writers for terminal banality.
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