How do we find the right words to describe taste? This is Part II on using machine-learned maps to help us explore the dimensions of taste with mere words. Part I is here.
We looked at what WQTaster has to say about chocolate as a wine descriptors and were surprised by one of the chocolatey associations.
Top 10 chocolate related descriptors
- cocoa
- coffee
- pepper
- tar
- mocha
- licorice
- truffle
- fennel
- vanilla
- espresso
I would not have made an association between chocolate and fennel myself.
It turns out that only a few writers make direct connections between chocolate and fennel in a tasting note. You can verify this yourself. For example on jancisrobinson.com you find that there are only six tasting notes including fennel and chocolate. Out of these, five are written by Tamlyn Currin and one is by Richard Hemming.
None of these notes are in our data-set, so it’s a good test to look at them in a bit more detail.
Chocolate and fennel, really?
Richard Hemming’s description of an Alvaro Palacios Priorat (65% Carignan) features “leather and fennel aromas” with “chocolate-covered cherry”.
Tamlyn Currin describes a “delicious mouthful of sweet red pepper and dried herbs, liquorice and chocolate” followed by a long finish with “a thrill of fennel and aniseed” in a review of a 2004 Barolo by Mascarello.
The order is reversed in her review of a 2002 Pravis ( Trento Cabernet / Merlot mix) — see link for a more recent version. “A seductive nose… with fennel and cumin…” later a finish that “teasingly suggests dark chocolate”.
Most intriguing perhaps is a joint Tamlyn Currin / Michael Schmidt review of a Becker-Steinhauer Mosel Riesling Auslese (2011). They said you could “smell the botrytis… dusty aromas with a hint of fennel and tea leaf and caramelised stone fruit and dark chocolate”.
This is only a sanity check. WQTaster isn’t just looking for the joint-occurence of chocolate and fennel in a tasting note. It is finding words that are deployed in a chocolatey vein. The words don’t have to appear in the same notes to flag up.
Nevertheless, I feel somewhat re-assured. Who am I to be unhappy with the chocolate-fennel link when the Queen of the jancisrobinson.com wine-note database has used it to good effect?
So what do the pictures say? Let’s look through two lenses. First, here’s chocolate through the PCA lens.
Espresso and truffle get a bit close in the picture! I find that a bit surprising as well. Perhaps that’s a story for next time.
This perspective does a good job at seperating descriptors thematically. There’s the chocolate theme, which moves into the general structure/gut-feel theme (smooth, terrific, intensity) to the right. Up above chocolate we get into sweeter, fragrant oaky notes then it goes nuts at the top. (Botrytis was a late addition inspired by the Michael Schmidt / Tamlyn Currin Mosel Riesling Auslese note, which is clearly special!)
A note to PCA fanatics: the explained variance ratios for the three components are: 22%, 14%, 7%.
So then I wondered whether a different lens might mix things up a bit more. What I like about the MDS lens is that chocolate moves a bit closer to terrific.
Which picture do you prefer? Which of them lies closer to your chocolatey associations?
