Dan Trcka

When it comes to tasting, I dive in with all of my passion.
When it comes to rating, only brute honesty remains.

ABOUT MYSELF
....... I started drinking wine sometime before the year 2000 (my early 20’s) and just like most people of that age, I began with the 1.5 L household bargain wines. I quickly became intrigued with the complexity and the range of “tastes” and wanted to know what makes good wine good. Due to my scientific and inquisitive nature, I began learning about oenology and viticulture by reading several books including a 926 page book titled WINE by Andre Domine (highly recommended). This knowledge, however, still left a gap in understanding what makes divine wine – divine. One day, I was given a 54 scent Les-Nes-Du-Vin kit (Christmas present) that allowed me to train my sense of smell and that has really gave me an understanding of what I look for in wine to make a bottle ‘that’ special one. Next thing I needed to do was to quantify what I thought about a particular wine and so I designed an elaborate tasting table allowing me to consistently rate one bottle after another. Now I feel that I am ready to set out on a search for bargain wines (under $25) which I can place in my cellar and on the endless joy of ‘developing’ my skills.

MY RATING RULES
....... Not finding any rating system to my liking, but wanting to express myself I set out to make my own rating system. After all, I am sure that the idea or a question directed to one-self whether a personal rating can withstand the influence of ‘delight’ and one own’s impression or whether it can be truthfully transposed and empower other people, has struck anyone who time-and-time-again has attempted to describe their own sensations and judgments.
....... To tackle the problem, I generated a table that allows me to consistently rate (after some tweaking) wines in two ways: 1. Analytically - a consistent, emotionally impartial way unaffected by alcohol’s influence (my tasting includes swallowing) or by failing memory AND 2. Emotionally - describes how I feel about THAT particular wine at THAT particular time in meaningful, yet subjective manner. Here is my table and rating system (unfortunately I cannot copy and paste the table I use, so I have to write it out).

MY RATING SYSTEM FOR RED WINES:
BODY: Very light, Light, Medium, Full, Thick (Very light and Thick have 1 pt deduction, otherwise no points are awarded).
TANNINS: None (0), Subtle (2), Refined (2), Tannic (2), Very Tannic (1).
FINISH: None (0), Short (1), Medium (2), Long (3), Extra Long (5).
TIME TO OPEN: 15 min, 30 min, 1 hr, 2 hrs (-1), greater than 2 hrs (-2).
AGING POTENTIAL: None, 1-2 years, less than 5 years, 5-10 years, more than 10 years (none is scored)
STAGE OF EVOLUTION: Fruity, Integrated, Aged (none are scored – subjective)
SENSORY PROPERTIES: Aromatic (0 to 2 pts depending on the intensity, most wines = 0, wine that you want to smell more than you want to sip = 2); Smooth (0 or 1), Silky (0 or 1), Chalky (no points)
COMPLEXITY: each distinct aroma receives a single point independent of what it is or its intensity.
Banana; strawberry, raspberry, red currant, cherry, almond; black currant, blackberry, bilberry, blueberry, black cherry; prune (plum), caramel, coffee, dark chocolate; smoke, Earth (soil, dirt); truffle, leather, musk; rose, violets, cedar, pine, green pepper, cut hay; oak, coconut, vanilla; cinnamon, clove, liquorice, thyme, pepper.
FAULTS: acidic, bitter, alcoholic, sweet, metallic, corky, bretty. Each of these receives a 0.5 deduction if slight or a full 1 pt deduction if the attribute is quite noticeable. If more than one fault is present, 1 additional pt is deducted. If any of these faults are too strong, the wine may be deemed undrinkable and hence there is no need to rate it – the bottle is most likely spoiled.
DEDUCTIONS – anything that is off: unusual color – deduct 1 pt (e.g. color is too light even for Pinot Noir),
wine has too much of a vegetal note (i.e. green pepper notes are too overwhelming and become overly rancid – one point is added in the complexity section and 1 or more pts are deducted in this section).
SUMMATION: The sum of these points is added to an 80 pt baseline (any drinkable wine automatically receives 80 pts) to receive a final score. If a certain wine attribute can’t be determined for certain, average of the two is taken (e.g. finish is somewhere between medium (2) and long (3), which equals 5/2 = 2.5). In the case of 0.5, the number is rounded up (e.g. 88.5 becomes 89).
MY IMPRESSION: A rating which is completely subjective and depends on my mood and what my palate likes, always written in capital letters. These are: UNDRINKABLE, DRINKABLE BUT WHY, NOTHING SPECIAL, NICE, BEAUTIFUL and DIVINE.

....... If you do the math, my scoring system allows (even though its improbable) for more points than 100. That is: Tannins receive up to 2 pts, finish up to 5, fragrant wine up to 2, smoothness and silkiness 1 pt each, and complexity up to 35, although I was never able to sense more than 7 different aromas in a single bottle, and hence totalling 98 (has anyone tried 100 pt wine?).
....... Most of the time the score awarded matches my impression, but on occasion it has happened that wine received high score (due to complexity) but my impression was unfavourable.

MY PALATE
....... If you would like to understand what my palate is all about; I look for highly fragrant, integrated to aged wines that are still full of fruit and that contain aromas of wood (oak, cedar, pine), vanilla and leather and have a slightly dry/tannic (refined) structure. I realize that my palate predominantly favours Spanish wines (my cellar contains 36% from Spain), mainly due to woody scents, tannic structure and due to the high quality to low price ratio. However, I will not pass up the opportunity to taste wines from the rest of the world including Niagara-on-the-lake, BC, California, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Chile, Argentina, South Africa and Australia.

MY MISSION
....... Since summer of 2009, I’ve been looking at all the new vintage releases, that the LCBO brings us every two weeks, looking to see what catches my eye and what perhaps may land in my cellar. Per vintage release, I am capable, with the help of my friends, to taste up to 10 different wines and have just decided (as of February 27th 2010) to make my opinion public on Wine Align and hence will slowly add my past reviews.

MY AGENDA
....... In the future I would like for my passion to be able to support me. So if you have any suggestions on how I may accomplish this or if you find my reviews are helpful, please drop me a line at dtrcka@hotmail.com with winealign in the subject line.
Cheers – Dan.

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