Category Archives: Wine Culture

Wine Lovers Carry On

14 Monday Oct 2019

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raising a wine glassThose of us who are fascinated by wine live in a world where we looked upon by most people as at best peculiar and at worst a total wastrel. If get your thrills tracking wine quality through variations in soil, weather, climate  and production style you’re a geek. If you provide detailed, public analysis of those variations you’re pretentious. Spending hard earned dollars on  a distinctive bottling borders on immorality. And heaven forbid if you write about wine and try to capture its complexity you’re guilty logorrhea (i.e. excessive verbosity, too much jabber jabber).

So I found Lauren Mowery’s recent article in Wine Enthusiast  to be immensely inspirational. Entitled “Pliny the Elder, the First Wine Critic and Why He Still Matters” Mowery traces some of our current practices in wine appreciation back to the ancient Romans especially the great military officer and author, Pliny, who had an interest in all things fermented.

Pliny’s extensive writings on “first growths” encompassed Falernian, the legendary wine of ancient Rome. This grape from Campania came from the slopes of Mount Massico, today the Falerno del Massico DOC.

He recorded the best sites of modern-day Lombardy, Venice, Emilia-Romagna, Marche and Tuscany. He detailed the finest vineyards south of Naples, along the Adriatic coast, where he acknowledged the high-quality estate of Mamertine from Messina, Sicily.

Pliny wrote of the healing properties of Prosecco. He recounted the rich, tannic wines of Pompeii, which was recreated recently using two ancient strains (Piedirosso and Olivella) in an experiment to taste wines of his times.

In other words, many of the preoccupations of wine lovers today have not only deep historical origins but continuity over two millennia.

The fact that a practice has such a tradition behind it does not in itself make it valuable. Some traditions are better left behind. But the fact that very different people in vastly different societies under utterly different historical conditions were serious and knowledgeable about wine appreciation shows that the allure of fine taste captures something deep in the human imagination.

Ridiculing wine tasting is a bit like ridiculing Shakespeare or great athleticism. You can do so but what you’re revealing about yourself isn’t pretty.

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Drinking Habits

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

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wine drinking rut“Drink what you like” is a common refrain among wine professionals giving advice to budding wine enthusiasts. It is advice of questionable value. The problem is not that it’s wong. It would be strange to advise someone to drink what they don’t like.

The problem is it’s incomplete. The advice should always come with a codicil—“drink what you like after you’ve tasted enough to know what you like”. You can’t really know what your own personal tastes are until you’ve tasted widely and explored the world of wine to know what’s out there.

Otherwise you’re drinking what you’re familiar with—out of habit.

There is nothing wrong with habits. We couldn’t function without them. But it’s a meager existence that limits aesthetic experience to what is familiar.

Stories and Social Media Time Wasters

07 Monday Oct 2019

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cote rotie vineyardsI’ve been banging on about wine stories a lot the last few months, wondering whether they can really be the key to sustaining interest in wine. As usual, Oliver Styles has an interesting take on this. He does uncover a story, but it’s really about whether there is a story here or not.

Many years ago Styles was invited on a press junket to the Northern Rhone where he hung out with wine impresario Alain-Dominique Perrin, at his stunning Chateau featuring a 14th Century dinner table and a vintage car collection, listened in on a conversation with renowned wine consultant Michel Rolland, and over a delicious meal,  tasted a line up of “La Las”, the top cuvees from Guigal. As a wine experience it doesn’t get any better assuming he’s sharing it with good company.

As Styles points out, if he were doing this today he’d be Instagramming the hell out it. But why?

But while of course we had pointed out that we couldn’t guarantee coverage, what was the story? What, in the words of my boss, was the top line? Wealthy bloke makes very good wine? Rich man has solid line in vintage Rhônes? When Perrin calls, Rolland answers? How to turn medieval martial architecture into a 21st-Century restroom feature? There wasn’t a story. I remember trying – I really tried – to run the angles past the editorial team but I knew it was hopeless.

Even if he were Instagramming with photos there is still no story:

But there wouldn’t be a story, would there? There would be a feed but nothing nourishing. I would have been passing of my experience as a lived event but it wasn’t my life – it was someone else’s.

He’s right. There isn’t anything here that anyone ought to be interested in. This is not to say there are no stories in the wine industry. But not every great experience is a story and not every great wine has a story behind it.

Is the rest of our time on social media going to be filled with anodyne summaries of classic French sub-regions written for neophytes and commented on by sycophants; unboxings and “reviews” of wines clearly compromised because they are freebies; and my pet peeve – the guess what this wine is/what I’m drinking/where I’m going/what I’m doing next? Does anyone comment positively on any of this without an ulterior motive?

He self-deprecatingly calls himself a “jaded ex-hack” and the headline of the article suggests this is a peculiarity of “one-percenter wine”. Granted there are more interesting stories among the hard-scrabble up and comers than among the well-heeled.

But the hard truth is wine is about the wine—when there is a good story that certainly enhances the wine but it’s more rare than we are led to believe by all the social media baloney.

A Fight Worth Having?

30 Monday Sep 2019

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emojiIn a world threatened by climate change and the insidious emergence of fascism within democratic governments, today I came across an issue that certainly “trumps” all the others, a debate poised to stir the annals of history, on which fortunes will be made and squandered.

Should there be a separate emoji for white wine?

Apparently, there are vast resources, both intellectual and monetary, being deployed to influence this debate.

I must confess that I’m not on the emoji bandwagon. I don’t use them or pay any attention when someone else uses one. I had no idea there was an official organization deciding which emojis see the the light of day and which must be buried in obscurity. So maybe I’m not the right person to consult on the cultural significance of emojis.

But anyway. Apparently, there is a wine emoji in which the wine in the glass is depicted as red. Some people are incensed about this insult to white wines. Corporate behemoth Kendall-Jackson, makers of a famous, blowsy, buttery “reserve” Chardonnay along with La Crema  and Yellowtail have invested thousands in a P.R. campaign devoted to getting a white wine emoji approved. Philosophers are weighing in on whether emojis constitute a language or not. Other guardians of the civilizational flame have taken to the battlements to secure the rightful place of emojis:

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch has proposed that emoji are simulating body language to make our digital communication more like talking face-to-face. Great literary works are currently being translated into emoji form, and courts are increasingly tasked with interpreting emoji in legal cases.

Since 1635, France has had the Acadamie Francaise, an official board that approves changes in the French language. The U.S. has never had such a thing. But now apparently we have the Unicode Consortium, dominated by the tech giants like Google and Facebook, to make decisions about the official emoji-language.

You may or may not be excited to learn that the white wine emoji was voted down for now, apparently based on slippery slope concerns.

If it accepts the white-wine emoji, it might soon be asked to add many other color variations, including other beverages—light vs. dark beer, black coffee vs. lattes instead of the catch-all “hot beverage” we have currently—and potentially all other emoji, from rocket ship to frog.

That would surely threaten civilization.  So the philosophical debate will likely continue, and it is to be hoped that the rest of the wine industry can be roped into pressuring the consortium to rule on social justice criteria rather than crude utilitarianism.

In the mean time I will continue to ignore emojis.

Drinking Liquid Poetry

26 Thursday Sep 2019

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pouring wine into glassI recently argued that wine writers face a daunting task. Their main job is to describe the individuality and distinctiveness of a wine. These dimensions of a wine are not easily captured using conventional categories or generalities referring to what’s typical of a region or varietal. If a wine is distinctive it can’t be typical, by definition. Yet the writer must provide that description of distinctiveness using a conventional, familiar vocabulary that readers will understand. That is the wine writer’s dilemma.

Given this daunting task and the need to describe the kinds of experiences a wine makes available, what is a wine critic to do?

What do human beings do when confronted with something that needs description and characterization for which there is no conventional category? We turn to metaphor. Wines are commonly described as brooding, assertive, playful or sexy—all are metaphors. Although it is seldom mentioned, the aromas standardly attributed to wine are usually metaphors. A Cabernet Sauvignon contains no black cherry. It may smell vaguely like a black cherry but the word “like” there is important. “Black cherry” is a likeness, a metaphor that approximates the aroma of some Cabernets. But these descriptions have become so commonplace that they are no longer treated as figurative just as “that is a deep problem” or “a road runs through my property” are considered literal even though they started out as metaphors.

It is with regard to the texture and mouthfeel of wine where metaphorical references become explicit although these too are so familiar they have become conventional elements of our wine vocabulary. We routinely speak of wines as having length, as caressing and round, as assertive or having an acid kick, as languid or soft as if these were literal descriptions. Without metaphor there would be very little to say about a wine. Of course, we are in full- blown figurative territory when tasting notes include reference to a wine’s personality as sexy, brooding, reserved or exuberant. “Wine is a person” is perhaps the most ubiquitous source of metaphor to describe the distinctiveness of a wine. It is also the sort of metaphor that is the source of the vociferous objections to contemporary winespeak that have become a staple in the press and in some academic papers.

These complaints seem to add up to the claim that metaphorical attributions are too subjective and ambiguous. When a wine is described as “a streetwalker” or “sinewy” it’s unclear to some readers what features of the wine are being described. The further inference drawn is that these are just attempts to make wine descriptions less monotonous or to call attention to the writer’s talent for verbal calisthenics without getting at something important about the wine.

I think these objections are misguided. Beginning next week in a series of posts I will show why.

Defending the Wine Critics

25 Wednesday Sep 2019

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wine criticismIt’s fashionable to criticize wine critics for a variety of sins: they’re biased, their scores don’t mean anything, and their jargon is unintelligible according to the critics of critics. Shouldn’t we just drink what we like? Who cares what critics think?

In my Three Quarks column this month, I defend wine criticism by showing how wine criticism contributes to wine appreciation.

A $300 Sagrantino?

23 Monday Sep 2019

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arnaldo capraiW. Blake Gray reports that Arnaldo-Caprai, the winery largely responsible for putting the grape Sagrantino  and the Umbrian region of Montefalco on the wine map, plans to release a $300 wine, called Spinning Beauty, to compete on the global stage with other high end international wines.

Hmmm. If you have never heard of Montefalco Sagrantino you are not alone. I have dropped into several good wine shops looking for it and I usually get blank stares. It really isn’t on anyone’s radar here in the states. Which I think is the idea behind this wine. The price alone will turn heads as will the fact that it ages 10 years before release.

Spinning Beauty is not released until it is 10 years old. The current release is the 2009. Most of that time – eight years – was spent aging in new French oak barrels. This came after it was fermented inside DIFFERENT new French oak barrels.

Blake enjoyed the wine after letting it sit open for a day to calm the tannins.

I visited Montefalco last summer and tasted through the lineup at Arnaldo-Caprai, a tasting which did not include this new release. Their flagship Sagrantino, called Collepiano, 2011 vintage, was far and away the best Sagrantino I tasted on my visit to the region. My review is here.  It’s an excellent wine in its own right, dense, complex and lively, but also robustly tannic. It’s a good value at $50 if grippy is your thing.

My guess is this release is likely to succeed. Italy could use a hot, new grape and the region of Umbria surrounding Montefalco is gorgeous, what Tuscany used to be before it got too popular. My general objection to Sagrantino is that the fruit often tastes stewed and the wines can be over-oaked in an attempt to control the mouth-ripping tannins. But Arnaldo-Caprai avoided those pitfalls; they are probably the right winery to pull this off. It will be interesting to see what the critics say about it since it’s competing on price with established wines of reputation such as Ornellaia, Grange in some vintages, and Vega Sicilia.

The wine will be powerful and complex, and when the somms in the know lose their fascination with glou-glou and minerality (and they will because variation is what matters) I won’t be surprised to see this appearing on high priced wine lists in New York. The challenge will be creating a market for younger wines to take advantage of Spinning Beauty’s reputation—the tannins are an obstacle.

Stories Are Compelling but Cannot Replace What’s in the Glass

18 Wednesday Sep 2019

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storiesI noted recently that wine writing is faced with a dilemma. It must  describe the individuality of wines and capture the full range of their expressiveness using a conventional vocabulary and general concepts that really aren’t  up to the task. A list of fruit flavors and oak derived aromas don’t capture the wine as a whole. Yet, when wine writers stray beyond a conventional vocabulary they are criticized for being obscure.

In most contemporary wine writing, the problem of describing the individuality and uniqueness of a wine has been solved by focusing on a winery’s story. The path to quality winemaking is often circuitous, full of problems to be confronted, and requiring vision, courage and dedication. Winemaking is usually a story about the uniqueness of a particular place and if the personality behind the wine is also distinctive that may go some way toward explaining the distinctiveness of the wine. The individuation and novelty of the wine is captured by the individuality and novelty of the story behind it. This is a reasonably successful strategy—we love stories, and when they are about places and people, uniqueness and individuality can be evident in the unfolding tale.

However, there are limitations to this approach. The first is that the features of the wine itself may slip into the background, especially those holistic properties that descriptions of aesthetic attention must point to. The distinctiveness of a winery’s story may have some aesthetic appeal on its own since narratives can be aesthetic objects. But the wine itself is the primary locus of aesthetic attention; if the wine is not distinctive, the aesthetic appeal of the winery’s story is diminished. Secondly, there are many outstanding wines that are blends of grapes from several vineyards, in some cases, several regions. Thus, they lack the sense of place that is seemingly required by a compelling backstory. Furthermore, many wineries that make compelling wines lack a long and storied tradition and their owners and winemakers walked a conventional, unremarkable path toward their achievement. In other words, what is distinctive is their wines, not the story behind them.

The stories of place and struggle are an essential part of wine discourse; the wine world would be a poor place without them. The historical story often plays a central role in explaining the appeal of a wine. But telling that story cannot replace the need to describe and evaluate what is in the glass. In the end, this fascination with stories, to the extent they replace a concern for what is in the glass, will not serve wine culture well. We drink wine to enjoy flavors and textures; we have other media for telling stories.

Nothing can replace the need for compelling tasting notes.

Is Stupid but Entertaining Worth Praising?

12 Thursday Sep 2019

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stupidSince I’ve been writing and thinking a lot recently about the role of the wine writer, I couldn’t resist commenting on this post by Tom Wark. Tom links to an article in The New Yorker by Troy Patterson, Jr. entitled, “How the Orange-Wine Fad Became an Irresistible Assault on Pleasure” .

The linked article is a take down of wine drinkers who have latched on to “orange wine” as the latest hot trend in the wine firmament.  (Orange wine is a white wine allowed to macerate on the skins like a red wine giving it some color and tannins.)

There was honey in the aroma. An intense whirligig of tannins metallically attacked my mouth and, on the finish, there was an astringent sizzle, with undertones of acid reflux. Tasting notes described this as a “long persistence.” I found it to be a test of stamina. While I waited for the wine’s acrid smack to wear off, I meditated on how this chic but peculiar elixir reflected the terroir of the urban social landscape.

OK. So he doesn’t like orange wine. Most people don’t.

But Tom writes that there is larger issue at stake:

Patterson is not so much communicating his dislike of the Orange Wine genre or the challenge of many of its examples. Rather, he has his cultural critic hat on and is attempting to make sense of the embrace of difficult drinks by Nicheites. What is it, Patterson is asking, that draws a certain type to these new, challenging and oh so nouvelle drinks? …he is questioning the propriety of elevating unpleasantness to a point of trendiness and proof of superiority.

I agree with Tom—that is exactly what he’s doing. The problem is it’s bullshit. Patterson is claiming that people who drink orange wine don’t really like it—they just drink it because its trendy. Because many conventional wine lovers don’t like it,  it gives the “nicheites” a sense of moral superiority.

Really? They’ve been making orange wine in Eastern Europe for millennia. Those folks would be surprised to learn they really weren’t enjoying themselves. As for the current wine scene, wine lovers seek out alternative production methods because differentiation is the beating heart of wine culture. We naturally seek out differences because we get bored drinking the same thing all the time. Part of the excitement of wine are the differences that nature and culture conspire to produce from wine grapes. That’s not being trendy—it’s an essential element of being interested in taste.

Of course, not every difference and variation is worthwhile. The wine has to taste good and give pleasure. When made by people who actually know what they’re doing, orange wine is delicious.  I traveled to Friuli and Slovenia last year and had stunning orange wine that was not at all difficult to drink. I recently poured a Gravner (mentioned in Patterson’s article) for a group of knowledgeable, conventional wine drinkers skeptical of anything trendy and it stole the show. Granted, there are some bad ones out there. I tasted one last month in Prince Edward County, Canada that Patterson’s description fit perfectly. But there is a lot of bad Pinot and Chardonnay out there as well. Why would the bad examples define the whole category?

As to Patterson’s larger point that there is something inauthentic and feigned about people who pursue difficult tastes, Scotch drinkers would also be surprised to find out they aren’t really enjoying themselves. Dark chocolate, black coffee, stinky cheese, cured anchovies, sushi, durian, raw oysters—all difficult to eat at first but we persist and learn to like them. (Well, Duran not soo much) Were we just being trendy and sanctimonious when we persisted or did they offer something intriguing despite being challenging? There are people in all sectors of culture that merely follow trends and mimic what’s hip. That is not unique to orange wine drinkers, natural wine drinkers, or people who pursue “difficult tastes”.

Tom doesn’t necessarily endorse Patterson’s views on orange wine but he thinks Patterson is a talented writer and the wine world needs more like him:

He is fun to read. Very thoughtful. He possesses the ability to make intriguing connections between subjects and ideas….The problem with wine writing is that there are no Troy Patterson Jrs in the wine writing club.

No doubt Patterson has a way with words but his article is frankly stupid. I agree, we need more talented wine writers. But I shouldn’t have to swallow ignorance with my hyperbole.

If You Don’t Like Our Wine Vocabulary, Suggest an Alternative

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

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wine descriptionsIf the wine critic’s job is to enable the reader to grasp the kinds of responses it is appropriate to have to a wine, then good wine writing must solve the problem of how to describe sensory experience. Thus, it is no accident that as wine grew in popularity and the culture of wine gained depth and maturity in the latter part of the 20th Century, wine writers began to expand the descriptive vocabulary they used in tasting notes. Finding a way to communicate about the flavors, aromas, and textures of a wine became essential to the health of the wine community. Robert Parker led the way with this trend toward a more expansive descriptive vocabulary. Some of his tasting notes have become legendary for their florid descriptions:

[T]he 2001 Batard-Montrachet offers a thick, dense aromatic profile of toasted white and yellow fruits. This rich, corpulent offering reveals lush layers of chewy buttered popcorn flavors. Medium-bodied and extroverted, this is a street-walker of a wine, making up for its lack of class and refinement with its well-rounded, sexually-charged assets. Projected maturity: now-2009

The reference to “street-walker” might strike one as over the top, although it seems to me its meaning is clear. However, this approach to wine writing has come under sharp attack. For example this essay by Richard Quandt seems to suggest that any use of metaphor to describe wine is “bullshit”.

Even the author of Cork Dork, Bianca Bosker, has reservations about the accuracy of such descriptors. After taking writers to task for using descriptors such as “sinewy” and “broad-shouldered” she writes: “It seems possible that what we “taste” in a fine wine isn’t so much its flavor as the qualities of good taste that we hope it will impart to us.” She seems to be suggesting that wine writers just make stuff up to sound impressive.

But what is the alternative? How can wine writers capture the uniqueness and individuality of wines without resorting to metaphor? When critics of our wine vocabulary complain about imaginative wine descriptions it would be nice if they suggested an alternative. But what we get is usually just crickets.