Mick Hartley

Generally the language of wine appreciation passes me by. A hint of strawberries…burnt cork…squashed bananas…rotting watermelons….sodden tobacco. Clearly wine journalists, to justify their existence, have to offer more than simply rather nice, a super wine, jolly good, but the attempt at some kind of vocabulary of taste, as though these were readily verifiable descriptions, always struck me as optimistic at best and absurdly pretentious at worst. And it's spread to other drinks now – whisky, rum, brandy. As with so much else, I blame the French.

At least you know what they're getting at, if it is all a bit de trop. But at the Whisky Exchange – where you can buy a bottle of 1937 Glenfiddich for £50,000.38 – the producer's tasting notes for Ron Zacapa Centenario Sistema Solera 23 (via), a world-beating rum, say this:

Body:  Dense, with marvellous complexities of aroma and flavour; thick legs that fall slowly.

I can't even begin to understand what that's supposed to mean.