Pretentious whiskey tasting

And here I thought wine snobs were the worst when it came to describing taste. Read some of these descriptions. Here is a sample:

“Vanilla pudding meets orange zest and kiwi as a hint of marshmallow drives the nose. Spicy tobacco leads the way on the palate as fresh mint lightens things up and dried roses counterpoint. The mid-palate is all about sweet spices with savory fruits leaning into figs and maybe even a touch of raw pumpkin flesh. Those figs take over on the end and create a sweet/savory fruity finish with a touch of kiwi skin.”

This one just astounds me:
“This starts with a big dose of caramel candies with a hint of honey next to toasted oak staves and soft suede on the nose. The palate holds into the caramel sweetness as subtle hints of stone fruit arrive with more oak, spicy apricot jam, peach pits, and a hint of perfumed soap (kind of like old-school Palmolive) and maybe fennel. The finish sticks with fennel and turns it into a candy with that caramel as the perfume lingers in your senses.”
A hint of perfumed soap, and not just any perfumed soap, but old school Palmolive! How many fucking bars of soap did this guy did this guy have to eat as a kid for swearing that he can tell variations of different brands by taste?

(Obligatory)

It would be funny if the tasting table got into arguments over things like this. “No.NO. Not Palmolive! Maybe Life Buoy left too long in the bathwater, but not Palmolive. Heathen.”

It is so over the top it makes parody damn near impossible.

The scary thing is, all those flavor notes make sense to me, minus the Palmolive. And perhaps the specificity of the flavors. Like I can taste a whiskey (not just American) and totally understand flavors like: caramel, honey, leather, iodine, smoke, prunes/raisins, oak, vanilla, and things of that nature, and I’m hardly a whiskey expert. (Though, when I drank, I was an enthusiast.) Those are all reasonable descriptors of flavors I could note/taste.

My favorite quotes, along with the already-cited Palmolive bit:

Worn leather draws you in . . .
There’s zero “pie crust” or “biscuit” or “pancake batter” vibe so this has to be a sweet mash.
This draws you in with a nose full of stale popcorn next to pecan Sandies . . .
This smells like Special K with a supporting lineup of summer flowers, mocha lattes, soft cedar, and a hint of vanilla extract.

Good stuff.

What are the odds that, if this guy was presented with another ten bourbon samples for blind tasting (and didn’t know he was getting the same stuff he drank before), he’d come up with completely different “notes” and guesses?

…so, clickbait made all’y’all click? Huh, imagine that…

“Palmolive” made me click. “We Tasted 10 Bourbons ‘Double-Blind’ & Tried To Guess Each Bottle” wouldn’t have.

Nope. I didn’t click on the story or read it. I’m just here for the comments.

How many tastes do you get before the pretention gets sloppy and slurred?

Or that if two people of equal skill tasted the same set of whiskies their results would be anywhere near the same?

I don’t really know that it was double blind in the classic sense. He still knew what was in his liquor cabinet and that they were all high end. I wish they had sneaked in some cheaper stuff. They did a vodka tasting segment on Mythbusters and by golly, the expert managed to separate the pit vodkas from the better brands. They made no attempt to identify brands but there probably isn’t enough flavor differences in vodka to pull that off.

I saw a video where some red food coloring was added to a white wine. And then several professional wine tasters sampled the wine without being told.

They gave the same kind of foolish descriptions that were quoted in the OP, supposedly noting subtle tastes . But none of them noticed they were actually drinking a white rather than a red.

I sometimes wish instead of these florid descriptions for wine and for harder spirits, they could just be honest about the whole think. Spirits and alcoholic beverages arent really drunken because they are great tasting, but because of the effects of alcohol. YMMV for sure!!! (yeah I think this grapejuice has spoiled, its smells funny)
So I would prefer descriptions such as “ours gets you buzzed on the first swallow”. or “this mellow wine packs a punch and you’ll be lying on the floor after 2 glasses” etc etc…Comedy gold.

I do like the newer ciders people are making nowadays.

I visited a winery with a group of friends a few years ago. The facility was beautiful, as were the views, but I was disappointed with the wines we drank.

At one point I couldn’t just sit there, so I went on a long diatribe about the wines. I explained what I found lacking, using terms like “insipid” and “shallow”. I totally get that I was coming off like a wine snob, but my friends were cool about it and it became a private meme for us.

Fast forward a month. There was an exposé about the winery. They were paying a third party to make wine, then slapping their labels on the bottles. Several “wine experts” commented that the wines were awful, but the beautiful location was the draw for most people.

I can totally see some whites being mistaken for some reds blindly. But I’d be surprised if some reds could be mistaken for whites. There’s areas where the flavors overlap, but areas where they’re quite distinct. I would be surprised if most people can’t blindly distinguish, say, a cab from a pinot grigio.

Also, that story, as told, is not quite accurate:

The guy in the link may or may not be full of bullshit, but (as @pulykamell points out) peaches, honey, vanilla, smoke, etc., are not made-up flavours; I think we can all pretty accurately picture them.

As for “this ‘wine’ tastes like aldehydes and gasoline and fucks you up”, someone already linked to the reviews:

I recall an interview with one of the Mogen David 20/20 people who mentioned that “you can make wine out of other things besides grapes”.

Him? I don’t know. Rex and Daniel, definitely.

While there is a great deal of pretention in wine, whiskey, et al, I personally think most of the derision is from people who have naugahyde palates who have never put the slightest effort into appreciating the tastes/flavors/aromas that wine and whiskey can bring. The whole “I can’t taste it, therefore you can’t either and have to be faking it.” Ditto foodies and the people who go to great lengths to mock them.

(Characterization redacted) the lot of them.