As a recovering engineer, my brain constantly analyzes data whether I want it to or not. It looks for patterns, and notices discontinuities. Your comments regarding music, and the musical experience that reoriented your thinking rings very true. The same thing can happen with any external stimulus, and those moments, those interactions become guideposts that remain forever visible in memory. Getting back to the data (spurred by your matrix discussion), there’s an uncomplicated state when a process is under control. Things stay within a predictable pattern. Basic, enjoyable wines, food, or music fit a pattern that to a great extent can sadly be little more than background. Then there’s the outlier, the data point that doesn’t fit the set, whether great or horrible. With data we have to understand the outlier and make sure it’s not a change to the pattern of the process. With wine it’s the golden moment to engage at a deeper level and feel everything that is happening at that moment, both with the wine and everything around it. That becomes another guidepost in memory like the first bottle of Selbach-Oster I ever tasted, or the first time I heard Strawberry Fields Forever.
Thank you (and Meg and Terry) for sending my data clogged brain on this path of analysis!
I've read the Maker and Theise article and written to Meg in her post.
Tasting notes at a winery level are perfunctory, at least for me. I do them because I'm requested to do them. I don't even put a blurb on the back of a bottle. Nothing but what is absolutely necessary by law. Those blurbs are boring and useless.
Tasting notes for me these days are SEO/LLM. They are searchable, indexable. The biggest wine companies do them on the most banal wine. I'm considering letting an AI write them in long form for me because they are cookie cutter. Get as many descriptors in as possible to make sure the wine appeals to everyone in some way and so the crawlers grab it for a search. Influencers pick up on those descriptors as well, let them scalp it for their own purposes. Who cares, it means more exposure. I know cynical, but I'm not wrong.
I've never taken a class in tasting or in winemaking for that fact. Not one. I learn by doing, as was said "spending time with it". Using experience, memory (even if nostalgic and imperfect) to remember why I like Sangiovese/Brunello. Or a Merlot that smelled like Jack Daniels when I was too young to drink, but when made properly can show incredible range. Or remembering what Brett or cork taint smells like. All learned by doing, tasting, experiencing.
Totally agree! The taxonomizing of flavor notes does actually have its perfunctory uses, one of them being in assisting people (or robots or influencers) in selling products. The idea of LLMs doing technical tasting notes doesn't offend me in the slightest. What AI does well is manage and recall information, so it actually seems totally fine. Part of my point here is that wine writing NEEDS to be human in order to matter in the first place.
Considering you and I did not pick writing as our first or primary profession, but are writing because of our profession I think puts some weight behind humans writing about wine from our unique positions and professions in the industry. It's a set of perspectives that have been absent, vacant, or unrepresented.
Love this idea. It reminds me of how a box score can only tell you so much about a basketball game. The information may paint a picture, but it’s a flat one without being fleshed out by actually watching.
exaaaactly. You see the score, but it tells you nothing about how the players played, the drama of the competition, the third quarter dynamics, whatever else. In other words, all the reasons you'd watch a basketball game (other than betting I guess).
Terry Theise quotes Kermit Lynch in his book, saying "Blind tasting is to wine, as strip poker is to love."
What a stunning piece, your "Matrix" theory perfectly captures why wine feels so different as we evolve—it’s not just about the bottle, but the accumulation of every encounter that came before it.
I love the idea of the tasting note as a "timestamp of consciousness" rather than a set of rules.
First, thank you for the close and careful read of Terry's and my conversation. I feel seen, and think he will, too.
I like the proposition of a matrix to describe how we manage the somatic and emotional states we experience as we taste and make memories. It brings both space and time into the discussion; I’d like to think of this matrix not as two- or three-dimensional but as n-dimensional. The matrix expands nonlinearly as our experience and understanding expand nonlinearly.
A matrix also makes think about back propagation, how signals in a neural network are constantly clattering against each other to adjust weights and influences. Don’t press me on the vector math, but it seems like an interesting analogy here. What we experience in any given moment is not only forming a memory of itself, it’s adjusting our understanding of earlier memories, elbowing for primacy or slithering away.
I’m toying with the idea of putting together a seminar of people doing this kind of thinking. It could be beyond fun.
I'm working on a long paper exploring these frameworks. I may pitch it or may issue it serially here. But in any case stay tuned.
Let's brainstorm about a gathering of wine commentator likemindeds, what that could look like. We could start virtually, of course, although the wine would certainly be better in person.
Lately I've been preoccupied with how various critical frameworks apply to wine. Twentieth-century modernism, with its certainties, describes the impulse to subject wine to technologies both literal and figurative, to assess it with grids and scores, to categorize it into good-better-best hierarchies. Wine's messy postmodern phase blew up these hierarchies (just say no to Eurocentric grids, score fixation, and Old World/New World dualism) but didn't propose anything better, and, like most postmodern phases, was propelled by a kind of ironic cynicism that wrung the joy out of everything. I think we're entering a metamodern phase (at least I'm working on it) which acknowledges the ironies while also trying to find a beating heart at the center. To re-animate wine, re-mystify it, make it fun again.
yeah! tasting and communicating about wine is a socially embedded PERFORMATIVE practice. what we choose to pull from modernism and from post-modernism and what we leave on the margins and how we justify--explicitly or implicitly--those choices, defines what wine "is" in any given era.
Separately, I'm always trying to figure out how to write a good critique of the culture of "demystification" or "accessibility." It's a worthy goal and also usually a grift, and one of those classic missing-the-point moments we see everywhere in wine media.
As a recovering engineer, my brain constantly analyzes data whether I want it to or not. It looks for patterns, and notices discontinuities. Your comments regarding music, and the musical experience that reoriented your thinking rings very true. The same thing can happen with any external stimulus, and those moments, those interactions become guideposts that remain forever visible in memory. Getting back to the data (spurred by your matrix discussion), there’s an uncomplicated state when a process is under control. Things stay within a predictable pattern. Basic, enjoyable wines, food, or music fit a pattern that to a great extent can sadly be little more than background. Then there’s the outlier, the data point that doesn’t fit the set, whether great or horrible. With data we have to understand the outlier and make sure it’s not a change to the pattern of the process. With wine it’s the golden moment to engage at a deeper level and feel everything that is happening at that moment, both with the wine and everything around it. That becomes another guidepost in memory like the first bottle of Selbach-Oster I ever tasted, or the first time I heard Strawberry Fields Forever.
Thank you (and Meg and Terry) for sending my data clogged brain on this path of analysis!
I've read the Maker and Theise article and written to Meg in her post.
Tasting notes at a winery level are perfunctory, at least for me. I do them because I'm requested to do them. I don't even put a blurb on the back of a bottle. Nothing but what is absolutely necessary by law. Those blurbs are boring and useless.
Tasting notes for me these days are SEO/LLM. They are searchable, indexable. The biggest wine companies do them on the most banal wine. I'm considering letting an AI write them in long form for me because they are cookie cutter. Get as many descriptors in as possible to make sure the wine appeals to everyone in some way and so the crawlers grab it for a search. Influencers pick up on those descriptors as well, let them scalp it for their own purposes. Who cares, it means more exposure. I know cynical, but I'm not wrong.
I've never taken a class in tasting or in winemaking for that fact. Not one. I learn by doing, as was said "spending time with it". Using experience, memory (even if nostalgic and imperfect) to remember why I like Sangiovese/Brunello. Or a Merlot that smelled like Jack Daniels when I was too young to drink, but when made properly can show incredible range. Or remembering what Brett or cork taint smells like. All learned by doing, tasting, experiencing.
Totally agree! The taxonomizing of flavor notes does actually have its perfunctory uses, one of them being in assisting people (or robots or influencers) in selling products. The idea of LLMs doing technical tasting notes doesn't offend me in the slightest. What AI does well is manage and recall information, so it actually seems totally fine. Part of my point here is that wine writing NEEDS to be human in order to matter in the first place.
Considering you and I did not pick writing as our first or primary profession, but are writing because of our profession I think puts some weight behind humans writing about wine from our unique positions and professions in the industry. It's a set of perspectives that have been absent, vacant, or unrepresented.
Love this idea. It reminds me of how a box score can only tell you so much about a basketball game. The information may paint a picture, but it’s a flat one without being fleshed out by actually watching.
exaaaactly. You see the score, but it tells you nothing about how the players played, the drama of the competition, the third quarter dynamics, whatever else. In other words, all the reasons you'd watch a basketball game (other than betting I guess).
Terry Theise quotes Kermit Lynch in his book, saying "Blind tasting is to wine, as strip poker is to love."
What a stunning piece, your "Matrix" theory perfectly captures why wine feels so different as we evolve—it’s not just about the bottle, but the accumulation of every encounter that came before it.
I love the idea of the tasting note as a "timestamp of consciousness" rather than a set of rules.
Thanks for reading, Caroline!
I love your writing style. You just warped me into the story without even nudging me. Made my day.
First, thank you for the close and careful read of Terry's and my conversation. I feel seen, and think he will, too.
I like the proposition of a matrix to describe how we manage the somatic and emotional states we experience as we taste and make memories. It brings both space and time into the discussion; I’d like to think of this matrix not as two- or three-dimensional but as n-dimensional. The matrix expands nonlinearly as our experience and understanding expand nonlinearly.
A matrix also makes think about back propagation, how signals in a neural network are constantly clattering against each other to adjust weights and influences. Don’t press me on the vector math, but it seems like an interesting analogy here. What we experience in any given moment is not only forming a memory of itself, it’s adjusting our understanding of earlier memories, elbowing for primacy or slithering away.
I’m toying with the idea of putting together a seminar of people doing this kind of thinking. It could be beyond fun.
damn, that's a wild idea. I would love for a seminar on this topic to exist. obviously, there should also be a book!
I'm working on a long paper exploring these frameworks. I may pitch it or may issue it serially here. But in any case stay tuned.
Let's brainstorm about a gathering of wine commentator likemindeds, what that could look like. We could start virtually, of course, although the wine would certainly be better in person.
super down! I cannot wait to read this.
Great! You will be my one reader! 🤪
lol exactly.
Lately I've been preoccupied with how various critical frameworks apply to wine. Twentieth-century modernism, with its certainties, describes the impulse to subject wine to technologies both literal and figurative, to assess it with grids and scores, to categorize it into good-better-best hierarchies. Wine's messy postmodern phase blew up these hierarchies (just say no to Eurocentric grids, score fixation, and Old World/New World dualism) but didn't propose anything better, and, like most postmodern phases, was propelled by a kind of ironic cynicism that wrung the joy out of everything. I think we're entering a metamodern phase (at least I'm working on it) which acknowledges the ironies while also trying to find a beating heart at the center. To re-animate wine, re-mystify it, make it fun again.
yeah! tasting and communicating about wine is a socially embedded PERFORMATIVE practice. what we choose to pull from modernism and from post-modernism and what we leave on the margins and how we justify--explicitly or implicitly--those choices, defines what wine "is" in any given era.
Separately, I'm always trying to figure out how to write a good critique of the culture of "demystification" or "accessibility." It's a worthy goal and also usually a grift, and one of those classic missing-the-point moments we see everywhere in wine media.