Against Tasting Notes That Describe Rocks

I have read a tasting note describing a wine as evoking "crushed gravel after rain." I have read another citing "wet slate." I have read, and I am not inventing this, "the smell of a quarry."

Nobody in the history of drinking has eaten a rock. These notes describe an association, not a flavor, and they are passed between writers like a cold.

The purpose of a tasting note is to help another person find the thing you found. If you write "gravel," they search their memory for gravel, discover they have no gustatory memory of gravel whatsoever, and conclude their palate is deficient. It is not deficient. Your note was.

Write what you actually taste, in words a person could act upon. Sour cherry. Green apple. Toast. Black pepper. Butter that has gone slightly further than intended. These are things people have eaten and can recall.

If you must reach for the minerals, reach instead for the sea, which at least has the decency to be salty, and which people have genuinely tasted whether they wished to or not.