QotD: Bad Wine Reviews

While reading Parker can help increase your knowledge about wine, reading bad wine writing doesn't teach you much. Here's Robert Draper in the February 2002 issue of GQ, writing about the 1999 Bacio Divino: "The '99's fruit attack soars like a meteor shower, then seethes in the palate like a cosmic bath of nearly unplumable depths . . . like an unforgettable encounter with a raven-haired ingenue, one is left feeling exhilarated, intrigued, and ultimately covetous." Pfui! That's purple prose all right, and not because it's stained with wine. Besides saying nothing, the paragraph ought to be used in writing schools as an example of mistakes to avoid. Meteor showers don't soar, they fall to earth. Things may seethe on the palate, but not in the palate. The word is unplumbable, not unplumable. And while I may have been exhilarated and intrigued by my encounters with raven-haired ingenues, I've never been covetous. But I thank Mr. Draper for such a magnificent example of bad writing.

Jeff Cox, Cellaring Wine, 2003