Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

I think not, at least not entirely.

Preferences, of course, are subjective but a judgment that something is beautiful is not merely expressing a preference. The claim that something is beautiful says something about the object as well as the perceiver.

To call a Puligny-Montrachet beautiful is not equivalent to asserting “I like Puligny-Montrachet,” which would be an unremarkable and entirely subjective claim. I am the most reliable authority on my preferences but I may or may not be an authority on what is beautiful.

To say something is beautiful invites a demand for evidence and argument that would not be demanded of a claim about what gives one pleasure.

When I am enjoying a glass of wine with dinner, no one can coherently question whether I’m having a pleasurable experience, if indeed I am. This is not something I can be mistaken about. I could not coherently say, “I thought this wine gave me great pleasure this evening, but it turns out I was mistaken. That wasn’t pleasure at all.” But such a claim is not absurd with regard to beauty. It is perfectly coherent to say, “I thought that was beautiful, but, upon further scrutiny, I think I was wrong.” This suggests that there is something more than just pleasure that beauty captures. Beauty is something that investigation or thought can discover or reject, unlike a subjective preference.

Thus beauty has a peculiar logic perched tenuously between subjectivity and objectivity.

Beauty in wine is about mystery, ephemerality, and pathos. The intrigue of unusual aromas, the stunning changes a wine undergoes in the barrel, bottle, and glass, the fading of its strength and power over the years that reveals nuance and finesse–all contribute to a wine’s beauty.

We might faultlessly disagree about which wines have these qualities. We each experience a wine differently after all. But someone who thinks these concepts don’t matter or that wine does not sometimes possess such beauty can be criticized for lacking sensitivity and understanding.