‘No, I don’t agree with this Kate’, award-winning wine writer Andrew Jefford replied to my question: are tasting notes a form of poetry?

As I write this, cringing, I know my query was a little foolish. Tasting notes, for the most part, are commercial tools: writers are invited to taste a wine (for free) in return for their (inescapably a little biased, because the wine was free) opinion. The writer then shapes the many flavours, scents, and textures the wine stirs up (or not, depending on how good the wine is) into a list of primary, secondary, and tertiary aromas – ideally adding some contextualising information about the producer, vintage, and winemaking – all to create an impression of the wine that will help readers better understand (and perhaps purchase) said bottle. Tasting notes, viewed like this, belong in the practical spheres of journalism and marketing, not poetry.

Perhaps the best example of this linguistic exercise is the wine competition. Judges blind-taste, score, and comment on 150+ wines at a time, a practice that has more in common with an ultra-marathon than a poetry salon. In the words of Anne Krebiehl MW: ‘it is a linguistic challenge, far more than a tasting challenge, to describe [all these] wines, all from the same grape variety, all from the same country and vintage in an engaging style. But that is, essentially, the job description.’

According to Jefford, such tasting notes and scores ‘have become one of the biggest problems of wine communication. […] They dominate wine writing to an oppressive extent, and they are mostly repetitive and boring. I have to write them in order to make a living, but I almost never read them. My suspicion is that drinkers who enjoy wine in a normal casual sort of way (but who are uncommitted to wine as a hobby) find them meaningless, off-putting and faintly ridiculous.’

Even a tasting note lover like me can’t dispute this. Most people who write tasting notes have gone through some form of wine education which, by necessity, teaches students a set formula based on a flavour wheel and quality assessment criteria. This is very practical – I found it invaluable when learning ‘what to expect’ from certain grapes and styles – but inspire poetry it does not. Once we have been taught how a tasting note should be, it is very difficult to break out of that pre-defined mould, especially as wine publications can reaffirm the formula by expecting writers to mention appearance, scent, taste, and texture in their notes. We are confined within a rigid form: but, returning (hesitantly) to my original question, is the same not true of the sonnet? Of iambic pentameter and the haiku?

The Poetry Foundation defines a poem as ‘an arrangement of language that conveys a story, an idea, or an emotion’, it is ‘an emotional expression’, a ‘purposeful gathering of literary techniques, which may include the visual (imagery), the sonic (assonance, alliterations, repetition), and the figurative (metaphor, simile).’ Practical notes like ‘this Sauvignon Blanc is delightfully crisp and fruity’ does not a poet make, but I would argue there are there are a fair few tasting notes out there that more than satisfy the Poetry Foundation’s (wonderfully broad) definition.

Consider this by Anne Krebiehl MW: ‘This seems to tremble and vibrate beneath the surface, like the wine’s own energy quaking in that profound chalk, like an echo of a long-gone roar of that primordial ocean.’

Or this by Tamlyn Currin, who Jefford praised during our conversation for her ‘imagination and daring’: ‘This wonderfully juicy Chinon [by Domaine de la Noblaie] explodes in the mouth. The tannins pucker up, roll into a ball, tumble turn, jumping-jack and ta-da! Standing there: red fruit in open palms, like a clever little magician. A little parkour, street-dancing, defiant. Like a truant kid; playful and smart and will make you laugh. […] A wine that defies time, believes in Peter Pan, wants you to lie in the grass and count clouds, wants to splash you with red, red glee until you get up and dance.’

Or this irreverent example by Marissa A. Ross: ‘The Lapierre Morgon 2023 tastes like the younger lover you caught feelings for after a tryst so good you’d commit to a motherfucker after three days. It’s eager and energetic, grabbing you as soon as you greet it. It twirls you around effortlessly while pressing your face into the nape of its neck; inhaling a bouquet of crushed cranberries upon a damp slab of dusty white granite, dashed with large flakes of sea salt and muddied Gardenia petals.’

Perhaps it’s a stretch to define these as poems, but they are all, I think, inflected with something undeniably poetic. These, to me, are not ‘boring’ at all, but fun, imaginative, and enjoyable to read not just as wine recommendations, but as pieces of creative writing in and of themselves.

During our discussion, Jefford observed that ‘most readers of wine writing (99%+) will never taste and drink most of the wines they read about in tasting notes (99%+). They can’t find the wines. If they could find the wines, they couldn’t afford the wines. If they could afford the wines, they’d have nowhere to put the wines. If they did have somewhere to put the wines, they wouldn’t have enough time in their lives to drink the wines. They’re all chasing chimeras. True of you; true of me; true of everyone.’

This is undeniably true, but perhaps what I’m chasing is a chimera of a different sort. I don’t read tasting notes – or wine writing, for that matter – to help me with my shopping list. I read them for the pure pleasure of reading them, for the delight I feel when I stumble across a beautiful observation or a new way of thinking about scent or texture. The same is true, I think, of food writing: I’ve read Nigel Slater’s books cover to cover, but I have never made a single one of his recipes (sorry Nigel). Not because I don’t like the look of them, but because they are not all he offers me as a reader: I relish his language and humility; he helps me take note of simple joys.

To me, there are two styles of tasting note: there’s the informative kind – designed to help people buy and sell wines – and then there’s the emotional kind, a combination of wine journalism and lyrical writing that attempts to capture the emotional experience of tasting a wine in a particular moment. I think Caves de Pyrene’s Doug Wregg captured the latter perfectly in the latest episode of Just Another Wine Podcast, ‘Wine Critics or Judging the Critics’: ‘I liken [writing tasting notes] to […] a sunset or a walk through the woods, [tasting] evokes a really strong, almost poetic sensibility and reactions, and there’s a lot of words churning around – at that moment, you couldn’t put them together, it’s almost like a burst of energy. But, in a Wordsworthian way, to recollect emotion in tranquillity, when you’ve had time to put perspective on the experience, suddenly you find harmony – an intellectual harmony and an emotional harmony – they come together and suddenly you almost recreate the experience, it’s sort of filtered through time […] you come to a sort of agreeable language, whereas at the time it’s too explosive.’

For some, the poetic or emotion-driven tasting notes I enjoy so much might be considered ‘over the top’, too great a departure from the practical purpose tasting notes were originally designed to serve. But, in a world where AI is snapping at the heels of writers and creators everywhere, I would argue this more imaginative style has a competitive edge – it manages to connect readers to wine on a sensory level beyond the traditional format in much the same way that Nigel Slater, Diana Henry, and Nigella Lawson do with food.

I know that comparing tasting notes to poetry is extremely unfashionable. Wine communication has long been criticised for being exclusionary, overly serious, and excessively geeky – adding poetry to the mix is probably the last thing I should be doing. But ChatGPT has changed the way I feel about writing. Now, I’m craving slowness, emotion, and playfulness in the words I read; I want linguistic treats to be savoured, wine writers having fun with words. There’s no denying large language models can copy (if crudely) the traditional tasting note format, but I don’t see them coming up with the kind of synapse-bending, eminently human, creative tasting notes cited above any time soon.

To test the theory, I asked AI to come up with a poetic tasting note:

‘I lift thee to my lips — ah! rich perfume,
Like violets pressed in lovers’ ancient books,
And cherry ghosts that haunt a vanished bloom
Of summers stored in cellar’d, shadow’d nooks.
There lingers spice — cinnamon’s dusky flare,
And echo’d plum in mellow, wistful tone;
But lo! the finish—long as love’s despair,
With tannins fine as frost on ancient stone.’

I don’t know about you, but I think Krebiehl, Currin, and Ross have the edge.

I’ll leave you with this (human) description of a Petit Chablis by Jefford in his Drinking With the Valkyries, which, I’d argue, is a pretty lovely example of just how poetic tasting notes can be: ‘Why is it that a shy scent of this sort can engage the attention so, or set the mouth watering even before the first sip? There’s no yeast here; it’s flayed plant, stripped juice. It’s the presence that is almost an absence: the clearing in the boreal forest, filled with cold light, with crusted snow. […] Here we feast on an ice-jewelled absence.’

Photo by Nicole Bomar on Unsplash