If you want a community, you need a conversation; if you want a conversation, you need a shared record; and if you want a shared record in wine, you need detailed reviews—the kind that actually say what the wine does, not just whether it’s “tasty.” Wine is an aesthetic practice stretched across time and space; vintages change in the bottle, regions change their mind about style, and bottles evolve in ways that feel philosophical. Without descriptions that track these changes, we’re not a community—we’re just a crowd that drinks wine.
This article in World of Fine Wine by Nick Ryan reporting on Penfolds’ ongoing Rewards of Patience tastings as an instructive example: a multinational panel convened across Paris, London, Hong Kong, and Adelaide, opening not just “a bottle” but several bottles, especially of the older wines, to see the best a vintage can be and to log what, precisely, that “best” looks, smells, tastes, and feels like. This is review as public memory and quality control; it’s the institutionalization of attentiveness so future drinkers can join the same conversation with evidence instead of vibes.
Every winery that aspires to greatness (and can afford it) should do something similar.
Notice what such a record allows. First, it enables communication across time: a 1972 that once seemed overshadowed by its lionized neighbor can be rediscovered as “sprightly and poised,” not by legend but by description so that later generations can test and refine the claim against their own bottles. Second, it enables communication across space: if London notes cool red-fruit inflections and Adelaide finds a firmer tannic frame, the comparison isn’t mere chatter; it’s a coordinated calibration of experience made possible by shared language and publicly available notes. Detailed review is the postal service of taste.
It also democratizes expertise. When a panel opens multiple bottles of a rare wine to understand variation and bottle condition, it models a communal ethic: “we will spend for the sake of clarity so you don’t have to.” That labor becomes an archive any engaged drinker can consult, argue with, and build upon. Review here is not gatekeeping; it’s bridge-building—both a framework for novices and a sparring partner for experts.
The kind of detail provided in the review matters. Lists of aroma nouns are helpful, but the most valuable notes track structure: how acidity pulls the line taut, how tannin knits or frays, how fruit shades from primary to savory, how time in the glass modulates the wine’s voice. These are not idle poetics; they’re the coordinates that let us re-enter a wine later and ask, “Has the tension softened? Has the mid-palate filled out? Is the finish still articulate?” In other words, detail is repeatability—a scientific virtue repurposed for a sensuous art.
Finally, detailed reviewing enlarges the canon. When so-called “minor” vintages are given their own stage, the community learns to hear about vintages beyond the blockbusters. That revisionary attention—re-tasting, re-describing, re-valuing—keeps the discourse alive and honest. Aesthetic communities die when they stop updating their memory; they flourish when description remains an open file.
I know they are not popular at the moment but keep the tasting notes coming. Not because we love adjectives, but because we love each other’s attention—and attention needs a record or its forgotten. Detailed reviews are how a dispersed, multigenerational public stays in the same room with the same wines, arguing in good faith about what we tasted and what, together, we learned.
Exploring the Philosophy of Food and Wine 