måndag 19 november 2012
Why most wine writing is useless
Do you know the feeling of annoyance when you open a newspaper or a magazine and come across a nice article with vaguely useless information? I hadn't really given much thought to why most wine writing (the most common being specific recommendations or pairing suggestions) irritates me. I guess I'd found it to not be an uncommon feeling among my colleagues, so I left it at that. But then I stumbled upon this article by Tim Atkin - and boy did the proverbial coin drop.
I get annoyed because I find mot of the tips to be useless in the sense that they are 1) misdirected and 2) unhelpful. If, as Tim points out, you think about the target audience - people who do not buy wine like they buy toilet paper (e.g treat it like a staple commodity) - why do we write specific recommendations based upon the latest releases of a quality-impervious monopoly? Forgive me if I labor the subject, but the "news" from Systembolaget has virtually nothing to do with what's in season, what's good or what's new. And secondly, specific recommendations of bottles (such as vintage and cuvée) - particularly when it comes to pairings with food - are about as useful as recommending a home cook to source a certain batch of apples from Kivik to make apple sauce. Very nerdy, yes - but not necessarily helpful. I might be chucking stones in glass houses here, but the more I think about it, the more I'd like to see vague-ish recommendations of certain types of wine to go with certain flavors. It's not as if a recipe for a particular dish turns out the same at the hands of different cooks, so why not offer a more fluid (if you'll excuse the pun) wine pairing?
It's just icing on the cake (for me) if we as consumers rather than blindly running to Systembolaget to buy the latest list of recommended bottles from dn.se wander in and ask for a young Albariño. It might force them to take notice of what their products taste like.
I get annoyed because I find mot of the tips to be useless in the sense that they are 1) misdirected and 2) unhelpful. If, as Tim points out, you think about the target audience - people who do not buy wine like they buy toilet paper (e.g treat it like a staple commodity) - why do we write specific recommendations based upon the latest releases of a quality-impervious monopoly? Forgive me if I labor the subject, but the "news" from Systembolaget has virtually nothing to do with what's in season, what's good or what's new. And secondly, specific recommendations of bottles (such as vintage and cuvée) - particularly when it comes to pairings with food - are about as useful as recommending a home cook to source a certain batch of apples from Kivik to make apple sauce. Very nerdy, yes - but not necessarily helpful. I might be chucking stones in glass houses here, but the more I think about it, the more I'd like to see vague-ish recommendations of certain types of wine to go with certain flavors. It's not as if a recipe for a particular dish turns out the same at the hands of different cooks, so why not offer a more fluid (if you'll excuse the pun) wine pairing?
It's just icing on the cake (for me) if we as consumers rather than blindly running to Systembolaget to buy the latest list of recommended bottles from dn.se wander in and ask for a young Albariño. It might force them to take notice of what their products taste like.
måndag 5 november 2012
Super tasters, the home-test kit
Have you ever wondered if you're a super taster? That is, one of the few blessed with a high number of taste buds, able to, in a blind tasting, tell the difference between a blood orange and the regular variety?
All you need is a piece of paper, blue food dye, a magnifying glass and a mirror. Or, if you hate having to squint, drop the mirror and add a friend who doesn't mind a close-up of your tongue.
All you need is a piece of paper, blue food dye, a magnifying glass and a mirror. Or, if you hate having to squint, drop the mirror and add a friend who doesn't mind a close-up of your tongue.
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