Once again, it’s Wine Blogging Wednesday.  The one day each month when wine bloggers around the world all write about a common theme.  The theme this month is Just Seven Words, hosted by Andrew at Spitoon. 

The idea with Just Seven Words is to limit the tasting notes to seven words.  Here’s how Andrew clarified the rules:

The finished tasting note must make sense, be grammatically correct(ish), punctuation will help of course. The wine name, type, producer, vintage do not have to be included in the 7. But a reference to aroma, flavour, length, food matching etc etc should be considered. Inventiveness is the key.

When I first heard about this, I thought it was right up my alley.  Concision is something I greatly appreciate and learned how to deliver early in my professional career.  I used to work in television creating commercials and most of my clients wanted to say 20 things in 15 seconds.  Those days gave me a lot of practice at cutting out the garbage and refining language to say a lot in as few words as possible.

It’s what has to be done in commercials, and frankly the same thing applies to writing online.  People just don’t like to read a lot, they scan web pages for the stuff they’re looking for.  While some of my critics might say that my posts are too short, I can’t tell you how many times I pull up articles that others write and just say “too many words” then I move on to another website.  So… concision is my style.

One other rule for the theme this month: It must be about an Italian Wine. 

My choice is Masciarelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2003.  Once I’ve finished my series on Cabernet Sauvignon and posted the big summary for that, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo is the next varietal in the queue.  Look for an upcoming short series on this style.

My initial notes for this wine were over 40 words:
Slightly smokey and dusty nose with dark berries and leather.  Very good concentration in the palate.  Cherries, blackberries and chocolate. There is a lot of fruit, but the fruit is a touch young tasting.  Smooth tannis and a hint of chocolate.

Here goes, Just Seven Words

Leather clad cowboy embraces innocent luscious berries.

I don’t know if this is breaking the rules, but I have to include my at-a-glance rating summary.

Wine: Masciarelli
Varietal: Montepulciano d’Abruzzo
Vintage: 2003
Alcohol: 13% 
Rating: 87
Price Paid: $8.99