Painting the taste of the wine

What words do you use to describe the wine you’re tasting?

Fruity, bold, light, round, tight? Or perhaps flavors – berry, leather, earth, peach. We’ve all been there: struggling to find the words that describe what’s in your mouth. For winemaker Patrick Reuter, he’s developed a method for painting how his wines taste. Born out of his own struggle to write wine descriptions that made sense to him months later, his “shape tasting” paintings incorporate colors and shapes in a time-based chart.

It can be as obvious as dark purples for black raspberry, pink-orange for peach, and green for herbal notes. Or perhaps a light blue to remind you of the sea when you’re tasting a hint of saline. Big round shapes are fruit, while sharp arrows represent acid and tight, little dots represent the tannins.

For Patrick, they are as much art as a technical tool. When he’s blending wines, he paints the profile of each of his wines, looking for ways they might fit together. Does one wine explode with fruit, but then fade in the mid-palate? Blend it with a wine that opens softly but finishes strong. For Patrick, it’s all in the painting.