1er Pensée: Wine Tasting - Beyond Ratings and Numbers
Elizabeth Spencer Winery, Rutherford (Napa Valley, CA) 16 August 2024
I have never quite understood the impulse to reduce wine to mere numbers, to break it down into its component parts as though it were a mechanical contraption rather than a thing of art, mystery, and time. A numerical score, however meticulously calculated, cannot capture the moment when a wine takes you by surprise—when its aromas stir something deep within you, like the first glance at an impressionist painting, where the beauty lies not in precise lines but in the play of color, light, and suggestion viewed from a distance. For me wine tasting notes, at their heart, are poetic expressions—itself an art form that transforms a mere sip into an experience of emotion, memory, and sensory delight - a snapshot of one’s self at that moment.
A bottle, like a well-penned letter, is an invitation to self-encounter. And what better guide to such contemplations than Rainer Maria Rilke, who, in Lettres à un jeune poète, reminds us:
« Cherchez en vous-même la réponse. Et si elle vous est dictée, si elle est un « oui », si vous pouvez y faire face sérieusement et simplement, alors construisez votre vie selon cette nécessité. »
“Look within yourself for the answer. And if it is dictated to you, if it is a 'yes,' if you can face it seriously and simply, then build your life according to this necessity.”
He addressing a young poet who was seeking his advice on writing poetry - asking him to provide his analysis and criticism as he offered his own writing for dissection. And of course, Rilke responds as a poet would, wisely advising the young poet not to seek another’s analysis, but to listen. One, however, need not be a poet to listen deeply, and wine, like a work of poetry penned by its terroir, the vigneron, and by its slumber in the cellar, does not reveal all at once; it requires time, patience, and a willingness to engage. There is no rush—prends le temps. Let the wine open, it seems to say, as one should open oneself to life.
Beyond the Checklist: The Subtle Art of Tasting
When I first began intentionally exploring the world of wine, progressing through WSET 1, then WSET2, and now onto WSET3, I was captivated by the precise language: tannins, acidity, the measure of body, and the finish. Yet, it wasn’t long before I noticed that these technical terms, while essential, felt cold and only sketched the surface of the wine’s character. They are, at most, the opening lines of a poem, only hinting at the hidden layers of memory and emotion.
More and more I was finding the irony with assigning a wine a score, as though its worth could be distilled into a tidy mathematical truth. If we applied the same logic to literature, what would we say? Madame Bovary: 92 points, strong narrative structure, excellent use of realism, slightly overindulgent in despair. Or to art: Monet’s “Impression, soleil levant”—95 points, masterful color technique, slightly lacking in definition. And yet, it is precisely that lack of definition that makes it extraordinary. If I said “Deep ruby. medium + body, primary blackberry, licorice, vanilla. Medium acidity. Dry.” have I said anything at all? To seek only numbers—90 points, 95 points—is to treat wine as a mere commodity, rather than a reflection of life’s ephemeral beauty. I shudder at the thought that a wine patiently waiting in the cellar is cast aside for want of a single point.
Wine, like art, speaks in impressions, not absolutes. To reduce it to a rigid scale is to miss the point entirely.
A Personal Reflection: When a Wine Became a Revelation
I remember vividly when a wine spoke to me—not in the staccatoed language of tasting notes but in the quiet poetry of experience. It was the first taste from a bottle of 2010 Château La Tour Blanche, my first Sauternes. I was in my kitchen one Saturday morning. I did not expect it to move me, to unsettle something within. But as the golden liquid touched my lips, its honeyed richness spread like sunlight across water, its shimmering depth unfurling in layers of warmth and shadow. It was not merely a matter of tasting—it was as if I were standing before a canvas, watching color come to life.
Years later, when I stood at Château La Tour Blanche, I recounted this moment to those who had dedicated their lives to this wine, and I saw in their eyes a quiet recognition. They understood, as I did, that wine is more than a matter of residual sugar and acidity—it is a vessel of time, a bearer of personal truth. It was a moment of rare connection among us in that tasting room, where words became secondary to the silent understanding that passed between us. Perhaps that is the true measure of a great wine—not its numerical score but its ability to make us feel known, - to others, to ourselves, if only for a moment.
After a moment of collective lingering in that wondrous, silence, I watched as one of them disappeared to the back room, returning with a bottle of the 2010. The uncorking of it, for her had new meaning in that context, and my revisit of it, had come to full circle in that setting. As we shared that bottle, there were no technical words - just nods, smiles, sighs, and laughter. It was there and on that day that I first bought a bottle of my birth year: a 1989 Château La Tour Blanche. The sommelier handed me the bottle with the same reverence as a nurse hands a newborn to their father. But I couldn’t help muse that this Sauternes and I came into existence into this world at the same time: we share the same vintage. They all signed their names and wrote messages on the bottle.
The natural question that follows, as I departed from the chateau with my kindered Sauternes, is when will I open it? What would the occasion be? A birthday celebration perhaps? If so, what year - and why? Will it be considered, as the critics say “past its peak?” Will I be? Who would be there at that uncorking? Special people whose lives have intersected with mine to share that ambered drink as a refreshment by the roadside of the journey? Perhaps the heavier question: who would not be there? What was the nature of their departure? The existential thought came to mind - will I be there? Will I even have the option of determining when to open it? Or will, by some tragic turn of events - my departure will come suddenly and unexpectedly, and my co-vintage outlive me? How can you assign a number to these thoughts that a bottle evokes?
The Poetic Nature of Wine
Shakespeare knew this well, for he understood that wine—like life, like art—is a stage upon which emotions play. Is it not in Henry IV that Falstaff muses upon the virtues of a good bottle, laughing at those who would scorn it for mere indulgence? And do we not hear the echoes of that same wisdom in our own hearts when we raise a glass, when we allow its story to merge with our own?
“Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.”
What is it to “use” wine well? Surely not to measure it with ruthless objectivity, to strip it of its mystery with the clinical edge of a rating scale. Instead, we must treat it as we would treat a Monet painting or a line of poetry: with patience, with reverence, and with a willingness to let it shape us as much as we shape our understanding of it.
A Toast to Life, and the Notes Left Unwritten
And so, my tasting notes have become more than lists of cassis and cèdre, of opulence and structure. They have become reflections of self—of who I was when I first tasted that 2010 Sauternes, and who I am now, years later, with new vintages awaiting their own moment of revelation. Wine, like life, unfolds in its own time. Its meaning is not fixed in a numerical rating, but in the emotions it stirs, in the stories it calls forth.
So, let us lift our glasses non pas à la perfection, mais à l’impression—not to sterile analysis, but to the full-bodied experience of life itself: to the tasting notes that cannot be put to words, and so left unwritten. As Rilke once wrote,
« Aimez vos questions. Peut-être, un jour lointain, entrerez-vous ainsi, peu à peu, sans vous en apercevoir, dans la réponse. »
“Love these questions of yours. Perhaps, one distant day, you will enter into the answer, little by little, without realizing it.”
Perhaps the wine we taste today is such a question, the answer yet to unfold in the quiet patience of time. And that, dear friend, is a far greater mystery than any rating could ever express.
À la vôtre—et à l’inconnu que chaque gorgée nous murmure.