Mike Steinberger has an interesting piece at Slate about how the modern wine tasting note, the "cherry-and-berry" style to use his term, came about. I have struggled to make my tasting notes readable, both here and in print, but I grew up in the "list all the aromas" school, and that's a tough habit to break. The old-school masculine/feminine language isn't any better, as it lacks the ability to communicate with anyone except wine geeks. This is a common subject at the Wine Writers' Symposium, where Karen MacNeil pushes us to write interesting tasting notes.
