The 18th Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that when we make aesthetic judgments about what is beautiful, we rightfully expect others to agree with us, although he was quite aware that in practice disagreements are common. What Kant had in mind is that implicit in our judgement that something is beautiful is that there are standards of correctness for such judgements. Judgments of beauty are not merely a matter of what one likes.
This idea has been enormously influential and is endorsed by Burnham and Skilleas in their book The Aesthetics of Wine:
When I form a judgment, I thus expect others to agree – with something like the force of moral authority. What Kant does not do, however, is look at matters the other way around. Others expect me to agree with them, and thus I bear a kind of responsibility to represent others through my judgments. (p.28)
Something like this view is behind the always present demand that judgements about wine should be as objective as possible. That we should have clear standards and rigorous training for judging wine.
But to my mind, judgments in aesthetics including wine aesthetics are not like this at all. Aesthetic judgements are not general claims about what is good or bad. A great piece of music, work of art, or bottle of wine does not create a single large community to which one is responsible for the accuracy and rigor of one’s judgment. Instead, such works create many, smaller communities of like-minded individuals. And each community, although porous and unstable, from the point of view of its members sets the “correct” standard. Aesthetic judgments are not subjective but neither are they universal.
Kant, Burnham and Skilleas, and others who demand objectivity,dream of a world where aesthetic judgments provoke no disagreement and in which everyone’s reasons for making the same judgments would also be the same. This is an ideal in science where independent researchers looking at a sufficient body of evidence should come up with the same conclusion and for the same reasons. But in aesthetics, if this is a dream, it would be a nightmare. A world in which everyone liked the same things would be a bleak and gloomy place, a world so uniform as to be utterly uninteresting. A world in which everyone liked only Burgundian Pinot Noir would be as forlorn as a world in which everyone adored 19 Crimes Red Blend.
If the Kantian view is theoretically correct, that we should strive for perfect objectivity with regard to wine preferences, in the actual world in which we live that would mean each of us holds those who disagree, i.e. most of the population, in utter contempt. That is a seriously distorted state of affairs.
Although we often think of aesthetics as being inconsequential when compared to ethics or politics in fact it matters deeply for all of us. Our aesthetic judgments guide the course of our lives. They determine who we interact with, which objects we pursue and what we leave behind, and aesthetics guides the variety of habits we acquire as we go through life. Think of the many decisions we make each day—what to wear, how to move, what to eat and drink, whom to talk to, befriend or love, how to converse with others, what recreational activities we pursue. All of these involve aesthetic judgments about what is beautiful and what is not. In other words, aesthetic judgements determine each person’s style and sensibility. And that is what distinguishes each of us from the rest of the world. It is our aesthetic judgments that make us individuals.
But these aesthetic judgments do not range over all of humanity. We don’t need agreement with everyone on these matters. What we do need is a few like-minded people in each area of life who share our preferences.
As to those people with whom we disagree, we can admire the consistency and intelligibility of their style without agreeing with it.
Who, then, has bad taste? Perhaps only those whose judgments are so haphazard and incoherent that they appear to have no taste or people who prefer dull uniformity.
When I come across aesthetic judgments I disagree with I still want to understand how they hang together, how they exhibit their own style. There is usually something there to connect with and there may be something genuinely surprising in their stance.
The one thing that undermines all style is uniformity. That in the end is bad taste and we shouldn’t tolerate it even in the guise of seeking objectivity.
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Exploring the Philosophy of Food and Wine 