No. 2A Memory Lane, Bob Ross
You might be thinking, that's a pretty sophisticated wine note right out of the box: price, precise name, bit of history, two famous names in wine writing, "aroma", "tannin", "finish", some sort of rating system -- doesn't sound like a beginner to me.
You would be right. This note was built up over more than a year. It is, after all, my tasting note and I can write it any way I want. Here's roughly how it developed:
1. I found the name of the inn and the price of the wine in my expenses for the trip and my personal expenses after the business portion and during the period Janet joined me for a bit of travel and fun on our own nickle. Knowing how tardy I was in submitting expenses, that might have happened by the end of May, 1995.
2. Janet found her note with the name of the wine sometime late in the year when we went on another trip and she cleaned out our suitcase.
3. The history bit was added another year later, when I purchased Stevenson's encyclopedia on wine.
4. The wine characteristics were based on memory, applied as my wine vocabulary expanded.
5. The rating numbers were developed over the next year, and applied retroactively.
6. Finally, I first included and then excluded "real" tasting notes from professional tasters; it appears that to some of them at least that wine wasn't really very much: a bottle of the 1978 went unsold in a Chicago Wine Company auction a couple of years ago.
But ...
I asked Janet today whether she remembered that evening? "It was a beautiful inn -- the dining room was perfect. Remember the owner showing us the bedroom with the big feather bed. The food and wine were wonderful -- the violets -- the view of the village and the sea. We loved it."
Indeed we did.
Regards, Bob