After Vinitaly

Vinitaly wine exhibition just finished few hours ago and I’m at home, trying to put in order all the tasting notes. Well, every year it’s the same old story. I have difficult to read what I wrote.  I know what are you thinking: “you wrote so bad because you were completely drunk”. C’mon, if you taste 50 different wines in 8 hours you have to spit most of them.

I have to admit sometime I swallowed, I couldn’t resist, but that’s not the reason why I wrote so bad. The reason is that tasting at wine exhibitions is a 5 senses experience. All my 5 senses are involved in this. My eyes are watching the glass, my nose is exploring the perfumes, my tongue tastes the wine but also gives me tactile feelings. And my ears? Well, I’m listening what the producer is telling me. 5 senses, 5 feelings, 5 things to write, and one hand only.  

The result is that my notebook seems a collection of recipes written by a doctor who’s running to the emergency room. I tried many different techniques.  I tried to write numbers instead of words, giving a score according to sommeliers method, but it was so aseptic, and I was afraid that a policeman could think I was involved in clandestine betting. Then I tried to replace the entire words with some symbols, but was even worse, because it seemed an Egyptian script, so ridiculous. And without the Rosetta stone even more difficult to translate.

The best method for me so far it’s to go to tasting events with colleagues, someone I trust, and read also their notes.  One word here, one word there and the notes seem to make sense. And if they wrote even worse, at least you shared a nice experience with friends!