Tim James: The perilous path of wine-note poeticising

A style of wine-tasting note not much discussed when the topic comes up (as it must do occasionally, and has done recently a few time on this website) is one we could call “poetic”. In fact, that’s just what Michael Fridjhon did last year, when he made some points about tasting notes. He admiringly quoted in full a “poetic masterpiece” by Tamlyn Currin on JancisRobinson.com, with City on a Hill Thousand Hills Grenache as its subject. I won’t repeat it all (though it’s worth going for a look if you haven’t done so already), but here are a few phrases, which give some indication: the wine,Currin concluded, has “the sweetness of a goodbye kiss, the bitterness of winter thyme, the tannin texture of old fynbos roots clinging to cliff paths….”

I basically agree with Michael: although (or perhaps because) it doesn’t benefit from close interrogation, this is an evocative and beautiful note of a kind which we need occasionally – perhaps not too often. One problem is that it relies on a tone that’s difficult to maintain and it can start seeming like self-parody if the description slips off the edge it occupies. Writers of such effusions need to watch their footing on this perilous path very, very carefully. Let me argue my point with illustration – though I realise you might disagree.

A colleague in the wine industry, who’d better remain nameless, contacted me in response to a comment I made, in the context of discussing idiosyncracies of taste and smell, about the “professional tasting notes that reel off a more or less meaningless list of some or many aromas and flavours”. The colleague apparently collects notes that he finds ridiculous and sent me one that is his “favourite of a long list”. He wondered if perhaps the taster in question was perhaps even “having a go” at the genre. (I fear not.) This one I will quote in full; the wine (hero or victim) is Radford Dale Organic Freedom Pinot Noir 2022:

“Rosehip, bruised raspberries and, exactly as Jacques de Klerk says, a distinct cola note. There is also an under-tonal timbre of rain on black slate, firm yet smooth. And a penumbra of the underloam; wispy white mycorrhizal whispers of mushrooms in the deepest places of the forest. The tannins feel like a child’s breath through a gossamer-knit cashmere scarf, weightless, yet with crochet-knot intricacy. Persistent, insistent, and, on the end, the scent of petrichor on a summer night.”

Yes, surely there is more than a touch of self-conscious excessiveness here, reaching peaks of absurdity: “penumbra of the underloam” (following so soon on “under-tonal timbre” – one too many “unders” there), for example, sounds vaguely beautiful – but WTF? Do bruised raspberries differ from smashed or intact ones, and how deep are the deepest places of a forest? And is that cashmere scarf actually knitted (gossamer-knit) or crocheted? Basically, it’s nonsense that at length and in over-determined fashion conveys the pretty basic idea of the wine being light-feeling.

The Radford Dale website carries the note – and the equivalents for the other three Radford Dale Organic wines, which are not quite as over the top, though reaching dizzying heights.

I wonder if Michael Fridjhon would agree with this assessment. For the writer is once again Tamlyn Currin. I have long been a genuine admirer of Currin’s article-writing, from the days when I had access to JancisRobinson.com; she did also write a few pieces for Winemag, in fact, but the arrangement didn’t work out for various reasons. I haven’t come across much of her wine-note-writing, so I’m not sure if she always adopts the ultra-poetic style there (it must surely be rather exhausting, if so, for both her and her readers!); and, if indeed she does, I wonder how often it comes off and how often it just seems bizarrely excessive, something imposed on the wine rather than seeming to genuinely be evoked by it, as in the case of the City on a Hill note. I suspect she’d do better sticking to the intelligent prose that she so deftly delivers.

An interesting sidelight is that I wonder how many readers of the press release that, as I recall, Radford Dale sent out about this tasting, or readers of the website report, actually realise that Currin is the author of the descriptions. The big headline, in all-capitals, is: “New Radford Dale Organic wines shine for JancisRobinson.com”, accompanied by a full width picture of the great Jancis herself. Then follows a paragraph about “Jancis Robinson and her team of distinguished wine reviewers”, which mentions that “Her taster Tamlyn Currin recently sat down for a virtual tasting with us.” Apart from a footnote link, that’s all we hear about her. Then follows another large picture of Jancis Robinson and a paragraph about her achievements, including that “she was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth”. They actually mean an Officer of the [Most Excellent!] Order of the British Empire, but, more than gettings things right, I suspect it’s the words “Her Majesty” and “Empire” that vomitously count. As with the “poetry”, it’s the atmosphere that we are expected to absorb.

It’s presumably more cynical than accidental that Ms Robinson, who actually had nothing to do with the notes, looms so large and the comparatively little-known Ms Currin, who conjured them up, dwindles so small in the introduction. Not an attractive strategy, but I suppose that’s PR for you – though I’d have hoped for higher standards from Radford Dale.

Anyway, the extravagant Currin stuff is there for you to be convinced by or not. And I do agree (and have done so on this website, albeit in very much more sober language) that the wines are good. Christian’s review of the 2022s is also available here, and, revisiting it, I almost weep with relief at the serviceable understatement of his summary assessment of that Freedom Pinot Noir as “Well balanced and detailed, a wine that makes for pleasing drinking”. Indeed. More useful than blandishments about “white mycorrhizal whispers”. Sometimes pleasant drinking rather than bad poeticising is what one wants.

• Tim James is one of South Africa’s leading wine commentators, contributing to various local and international wine publications. His book Wines of South Africa – Tradition and Revolution appeared in 2013.