Duly Noted: Your Brain on Wine
If you’re interested in getting better treatment in a restaurant or tasting room, I know of one sure way: take notes. Faster than you can say “expert in the house,” the staff will be falling all over you, indulging your every whim. OK, I’m exaggerating. The real reason to take notes is to vastly improve your knowledge of wine.
Much like music, we can conveniently relegate wine into the background without really thinking about it. This is perfectly fine. Wine and song make most things better but you aren’t going to learn about either if you turn off your brain. Consider the brain activity of a sommelier vs. a casual wine drinker when imbibing a glass of wine. The sommelier’s brain scan will show lots of activity in the frontal lobe – the region of the brain where perception, language, interpretation, etc. occur – while the casual wine drinker will have little brain activity measured at all. The sommelier is taking a note even if nothing is written down.
Smell is a very powerful sense in the way it can help trigger long forgotten memories. You catch a whiff of something familiar but strange – “that’s what Grandma’s house smelled like” – and you’re vividly transported back to Grandma’s house for a few moments. In the same way, the smell memory you get from tasting and thinking about different wines can trigger memories like: “this Côtes du Rhône tastes something like the Minervois we had a few months ago”. The mental catalogue you compile is the basis of any wine taster’s expertise and when written down can greatly accelerate your understanding of wine. It also takes very little writing time for each wine tasted, time well spent for a special bottle or one you would like to remember.
No matter what form wine tasting notes take – purely committed to memory, scrawled on the back of a napkin or business card or written on a standardized note sheet – they all share the same basic format. All take into account what the wine looks smells and tastes like. Personally I like the standardized forms since they add a sense of discipline I don’t usually have. Remember: you’re drinking when you do this!
Over the past few years we’ve developed a standardized wine tasting form that you can download and printout and use as much as you like. It may look complicated but most of it simply requires circling a choice of terms. We don’t want you to do a lot of unnecessary paperwork!
For those of you who aren’t familiar with wine tasting notes or have never done one, next week’s newsletter will include a guided note of a 2003 M. Chapoutier Belleruche Rouge Côtes du Rhône, which is widely available and not too expensive in case you’d like to taste along with us. 
Thanks to everyone who has helped us test the form – we hope you find it useful and would love to hear your feedback.
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May 18th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Great post. I never thought of wine worship as a way to get better service in a restaurant but I suspect you are right. And wine and music do make for a valuable, almost perfect analogy.
I think to think that my blog posts are my tasting notes. I’ll be downloading your form though and awaiting the newsletter.
May 18th, 2006 at 8:45 am
Thanks Marcus,
Since you already know how to dunk the metaphorical basketball (ie Docktor Wiengolb) a few fundamentals may or may not help — I’d love to hear your feedback.
May 18th, 2006 at 11:36 am
An unexpected and interesting email. I’ve been meaning to try and write something down for quite a while now, as I know it’d serve me well, but I never act on it. This just might do the trick.
Also, thanks for the heads up on the Chapoutier… I’ll see if I can get my hands on it.
May 18th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Hi Burt,
Thanks for the note. I’ve been doing detail tasting notes now for 6 years and my only regret is that I didn’t start sooner!
May 18th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Steve,
Your form is well-intentioned, however, the font size would need a lighted magnifying glass to be read in most restaurants. Hope you don’t mind if I modify it to a more readable format.
Katie
May 19th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Hi Katie,
Thanks for pointing that out. The small fonts haven’t been a problem for me but I’ve just made a larger font version as well, that can be downloaded on the same page as the original. The only trade off is that there is less space to write notes.
July 27th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I loved this formal tasting experience as I found that it really made me appreciate the wine more. But perhaps the lesser wines that I really enjoy with food what be knocked down peg under such scrutiny.
What is the official role of food for a formal tasting note, like yours say or one used at a wine competition?
July 29th, 2006 at 5:49 am
I completely agree that wines that pair well with food don’t do so well in ratings. It shows one of the fundamental flaws in how wines are judged – the ones that are best on their own do the best.
Food pairings in formal tasting notes only come into play when you’re eating during the tasting, which means one or a few wines tops. The standard pairings at completions are water and water crackers, which serve only as palate cleansers so don’t count. A fairly recent trend in wine geekery is that the finest wines are served with “background” foods (simply prepared non-aromatic breads, vegetables, and meats) or simply with a sliced baguette. Perhaps this is due to the dominance of wine ratings!
The Belleruche isn’t a fine wine but given its high alcohol and lowish acidity, would benefit from the “fine wine” approach above. It’s funny since the tasty dishyou prepared is not unlike much of the local Rhone cuisine!