My dog's reaction to a Bordeaux made me reconsider everything

I used to think tasting notes were just pretentious jargon, but then my corgi sniffed my glass and immediately started howling at the cherry notes. Now I'm convinced animals have a better palate than most sommeliers, and I take my wine reviews with a grain of salt.

5 comments

5 Comments

diana_grant313h ago

Is the VALUE of a tasting note in its objectivity or in the shared experience it creates? The dog might be honest, but it can't build a CULTURE around that honesty.

lisa_shah3h ago

Consider that your corgi was likely howling at the alcohol or the sharp, fermented scent, not the abstract concept of cherries. An animal's olfactory prowess is geared toward survival, not parsing the nuanced layers of a wine's bouquet. Human tasting notes, even the flowery ones, are an attempt to build a shared vocabulary for subjective experience, something a dog fundamentally can't contribute to. Dismissing that entire endeavor because an animal had a visceral reaction seems like missing the point of communication altogether.

xena_brown5014m ago

Doesn't it all come down to the fact that we're trying to bridge the gap between raw sensation and shared meaning? My old beagle would lose his mind over certain cheeses, not because of any nuanced flavor profile but just the sheer pungency, and that always reminded me that our fancy words are an attempt to climb out of that purely reactive state. Without that climb, we're just animals reacting to stimuli, and half the joy of wine or food is in the conversation it sparks.

rubyb213h ago

But what if the dog's howl is the most honest tasting note in the room? It bypasses all the learned jargon and hits you with pure, undistilled reaction. Our elaborate vocabularies are useful, but they can also become a kind of performance. The corgi isn't concerned with bouquets or nuances, it's just telling you the smell is intense and weird. That seems like valuable information, even if it doesn't come with a star rating. Reducing it to mere alcohol detection feels like dismissing a critic for not using big enough words.

lisag601h ago

Actually, the corgi's howl is a raw data point, not a critique. @lisa_shah makes a solid point about survival instincts, but even if the dog reacted to pure alcohol, that's still useful information. The entire project of tasting notes is about translating that raw, animal sensation into something communicable between humans. Dismissing the translation because the original signal was pure misses how culture works. Isn't the beauty found in building a shared language around those subjective experiences, flawed as it may be? Otherwise, we're all just howling at the same smell without ever understanding what the other one actually perceives.