What Matters When You Taste Wine
By Karen MacNeil
The pursuit of beauty in wine matters more than technical analysis or emotional response. Rather than relying solely on tasting grids and flavor identification, the true purpose of tasting wine is a personal connection with what is beautiful in the glass
The Problem with Calling Wine “Pretty”
I once had an employee (a woman who was smart and knew a lot about wine) who, when she loved a wine would always describe it as “pretty.” It drove me crazy. Just about every time she used that descriptor, I’d ask her what she meant by it. “A pretty wine is… pretty,” she’d say unhelpfully. Describing wine as beautiful, or even pretty, is harder than it sounds.
If she’d been a man, I’d have probably challenged him for (possibly) being misogynistic. But she was a woman. I had to let it go.
Reconsidering Beauty as a Wine Description
But now, years later, I wonder if pretty isn’t a wonderful word to use to describe wine. Or a word that I like even more, beautiful.
Beauty stirs human emotion. To describe anything as beautiful is to say that you are moved by that thing. It has touched you in a way that evokes awe. Is there a better way to describe a wine? How to appreciate wine goes beyond finding the right words.
We’ve all heard the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and in fact, one of the things I like most about the concept of beauty is its subjectivity. Beauty cannot be challenged. If you find something beautiful, you are describing a kind of intimacy, a powerful passionate connection with that thing. What makes a wine beautiful is precisely that, you don’t need a reason, a justification, or a validation. What anyone else thinks is beside the point.
Wine Tasting Grid Limitations
Many in the wine industry have, for too long, pretended that wine can be analyzed along a quantifiable “grid” of factors. A lot of tannin; little tannin. High acid; low acid. And so on.
But the wine pursuit of beauty is what the tasting grid, now ubiquitously taught in wine schools around the world, causes us to miss.” Tasting a wine is not really about “finding” blueberries or black currants or brioche.
Tasting wine is about the pursuit of beauty in wine.
About Karen MacNeil
Karen MacNeil is the CEO and President of Karen MacNeil & Company LLC, and the author of the best selling book The Wine Bible. She gives keynote addresses and exclusive wine tastings for companies and individuals around the country. You can find out more and contact her at www.karenmacneil.com
