You're absolutely right about building up a vocabulary. It's indispensible. I also try and pay more attention these days to the foods and fruits that are typically found in wine flavors and aromas. Do we really know what blackberry tastes like?
By the way, I'd love to (and I'll bet other readers would as well) read your blog using my newsreader, but to do that you need to enable an RSS feed for it if you haven't already.
Okay, so I'm pretty new to all this (and in fact this blog is an effort to make myself learn in a structured manner.) One thing I do towards this goal is surf wine sites for the vocabulary to describe what I am tasting. The reason for this is complex, but I'll take a stab at explaining it.
So far, the best advice about tasting wine that I have heard is that being able to identify a smell has to happen before you can describe it. The funny thing about identifying smells though, is that it is easier to do when you have a long list of possible smells in your head. It's sort of like how answers are much easier come up with on a multiple choice test than on a test that makes you fill in a blank. By building a large wine-tasting vocabulary, a person makes tasting wine easier because examining a wine is more like multiple choice than fill-in-the-blank. This all sounded kind of silly to me until I tried it, and eureka, it really does work!
"Vocabulary"
1 Comment -
Deena,
You're absolutely right about building up a vocabulary. It's indispensible. I also try and pay more attention these days to the foods and fruits that are typically found in wine flavors and aromas. Do we really know what blackberry tastes like?
By the way, I'd love to (and I'll bet other readers would as well) read your blog using my newsreader, but to do that you need to enable an RSS feed for it if you haven't already.
Here's a page which can tell you how to do it:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=698&topic=36
Cheers,
Alder
Vinography.Com
9:44 AM