Do I Have to Care About Tasting Notes to Have Great Taste?

Short answer: absolutely not. But they do exist for a reason, so let's talk about what tasting notes are actually for.

I was at a Women in Wine conference recently and, as always happens when you put a bunch of wine people in a room together, the topic of tasting notes came up.

For those unfamiliar, tasting notes are the descriptions you'll find on wine labels, winery websites, tasting room sheets, shelf talkers at wine stores, and sometimes the back of a restaurant menu. They're meant to answer one simple question: what can I expect from this wine?

Do I think they're helpful? Yes. Do I also think wine people can occasionally get carried away? Also yes — and I'm absolutely including myself in this. I've written tasting notes for my own wines that became a little... ambitious. What started as "bright citrus and stone fruit" somehow turned into a paragraph that sounded like I was describing a European summer romance.

But to be fair who doesn't want a European summer romance?

Why Tasting Notes Exist in the First Place

Walk into a bakery and you can see the cookies, the cake, the croissant. You already have clues about what you're about to experience before you spend a dollar.

Wine doesn't work that way. Most of the time, you're staring at a bottle and choosing based on a cool label. Which, by the way, I do myself sometimes, so no judgment if that's you, too. The actual product is hidden inside, which is exactly why tasting notes exist. They're the preview. The movie trailer. The dating profile. The "here's what you're getting yourself into."

And when they're done well, they're genuinely helpful. Not because they tell you whether a wine is good, but because they help you decide whether it sounds like something you would enjoy. That's an important distinction.

What to Actually Pay Attention To

When I teach wine classes, I encourage people to focus on two things:

What flavors and aromas are you noticing? Think citrus, apple, peach, grapefruit, strawberry, cherry, blueberry.

How does the wine feel? Is it crisp and high-acid, the kind that makes your mouth water? Rich and full-bodied, or lighter on the palate? Dry, with no sweetness from residual sugar? If it's a red, do the tannins dry your mouth out, or do they feel smooth?

These are the clues that help you build your own wine style over time.

Points Don't Matter If You're Not Enjoying the Glass

At the end of the day, I don't care if a wine received 95 points from someone you've never met. If you don't enjoy drinking it, what difference does the score make?

The goal isn't to agree with the tasting notes. It isn't to identify every aroma in the glass. And it definitely isn't to impress anyone at a dinner party.

The goal is to figure out what you like and that's where great taste actually comes from. Not memorization. Not jargon. Not being able to distinguish apricot from white peach in a blind tasting.

Great taste is simply paying attention. Noticing patterns. Collecting experiences. Learning that you consistently gravitate toward bright, crisp whites, or earthy reds, or sparkling wine, or whatever it is that makes you happy.

So the next time you're at a tasting, a winery, a restaurant, or one of our ECR events, don't stress about getting the "right" answer. Just ask yourself: would I order another glass of this?

Because that's usually the most useful tasting note of all.