Wine Reviews: Taste the Pretension

When wine lovers say they taste notes of cherries or hints of tobacco, “usually all I can detect is a whole lot of jackass,” Joel Stein writes in the LA Times . Wine dialogue has devolved into a meaningless string of obscure scents, Stein says. It’s boring—too boring even to make fun of—and it says virtually nothing about the wine.

Why not talk about what the wine is actually like? Reviewers should be explaining whether a wine is loud and rough, smooth and friendly, or boozy and deep. “The reason there's a problem is that there's a lot of people who suck at communicating,” says one wine reviewer. “It’s a lack of self-esteem and pretension. Nobody has guts.” (More wine stories.)