Unreserved Wine Talk 378: Does Formal Wine Tasting Language Strip the Emotion Out of Wine Writing? with Sarah Heller
Why is spitting essential if you want to taste wine seriously? What made Hong Kong's wine boom in 2010 feel both extravagant and generous? Does formal wine tasting language strip the emotion out of wine writing?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I'm chatting with Sarah Heller.
You can find the wines we discussed at https://www.nataliemaclean.com/winepicks.
Highlights
How did Sarah's wine career almost end before it began?
Why did her accident in southern France strengthen her commitment to the wine industry?
What was it like to represent a restaurant alone at age 20 at the world's largest wine trade fair?
How did an early lesson about spitting wine become a memorable introduction to professional wine culture?
What's the difference between wine marketing and wine education?
What made Hong Kong's wine scene during the 2010s feel both extravagant and unusually generous?
How did Burgundy tastings in Hong Kong highlight the intersection of rarity, money, and shared passion?
How did Sarah's fine art training at Yale shape the way she thinks about wine?
What inspired her to move beyond traditional tasting notes to creating visual tasting notes?
Why does Sarah believe conventional wine descriptors can feel sterile?
How do shape, color, mood, and texture form the foundation of her visual tasting method?
How does the shape of a wine differ between a plush Australian Shiraz and a structured Barolo?
Key Takeaways
Why is spitting essential if you want to taste wine seriously?
Sarah: You're really meant to spit when you try wines. There was a little bit of a macho culture around it, like, oh no, real, real, real people don't spit. And I was like, I don't know, that doesn't seem very smart. But, there I was. And so by the end of the day, the people who had been assigned to take me under their wing were decanting me into a taxi. I made it safely home, thank goodness.
What made Hong Kong's wine boom in 2010 feel both extravagant and generous?
Sarah: Something about Hong Kong that I think distinguishes it, certainly from the UK collector scene, which was sort of my reference point to a certain degree, is that people open their bottles. I mean, some people have generational collections, but most people this was the collection they started. They can remember starting it and they want to share it with people. Obviously showing off is part of it, there's no denying that. But there's also an incredible spirit of generosity in wanting to share these incredible treasures that you have in your cellar with everybody around you, with the people that you care about.
Does formal wine tasting language strip the emotion out of wine writing?
Sarah: After having finished the Master of Wine, which is very, very much a bounded problem. You have to accept that this is the way that things are done. It's very directed and clear, which I think is useful if you're trying to create a standardized certification. But having got out on the other side of that and broken my writing style down so that it was as objective as possible and as simple and direct as possible, I was just a bit done with it. I don't want to talk about red versus black fruit. It had become sort of sterile at that point for me. It's not that I don't think people should study that, but it was just the phase that I was in, and I wanted to figure out what my voice was going to be.
About Sarah Heller
Sarah Heller MW is an internationally acclaimed wine expert and visual artist whose work explores the cultural history and multi-sensory experience of wine. She is the Italian wine reviewer for Club Oenologique, Faculty of the Vinitaly International Academy and Wine Editor for Asia Tatler. Sarah has co-hosted the series Wine Masters and Wine Masters Class and has collaborated with Lucaris Crystal on a line of hand-blown glasses.
To learn more, visit https://www.nataliemaclean.com/378.