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The Challenge of Wine Tasting as a Career
from: Maxx Guide to WineThe art of wine tasting is probably as old as the art of wine making itself. Currently, being a wine taster has actually become a career for some people. In ancient times, people used to taste their wine before consuming, but we now often rely on experts who taste all the many varieties of wine and write reviews explaining which wines they believe are the best.
A major challenge of this "job" or "career" is the ability of translating the taste of wine into language. The Ancient Greeks used different words to describe wine, but these days, with so many more wines availabe that need to be described, finding the right language to describe the essense of the taste of a wine is a real challenge.
In many wine reviews, fruits, flowers and vegetables are used as a reference point. There are experts who use the aroma of different foods to describe the taste of wines.
Victoria Moore states in a Guardian article, the 'terrifyingly organised Angela Mount applies the same exactitude to the discussion of food smells in wine'. She goes on to describe the taste of Zonte's Footstep Shiraz Viognier 2004 as ... "figs and baked apricot, cooked in the oven with a few dabs of butter."
Another challenging area of being a wine taster is the ability to spit or gob. Victoria Moore again provides information on the difficulty of learning this ability. In wine circles being able to spit like an "Icelandic geyser" is actually a critical social skill. As a wine taster, you might even be labeled according to your ability or inability to perform this important part of the job. These labels are often deployed in a the most final and cutting of insults -- at tastings, you see, there is a very clear spitocracy.
As Victoria Moor testifies,"The most experienced and revered palates scour the tables at great speed, swirl, gargle, then, with something of the swagger with which a cowboy might draw his pistol, their glance flicks in the direction of the spittoon and, at long range, a jet of liquid arcs suddenly into it"
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