Wine is an aesthetic object as worthy of our sustained attention as works of art or the wonders of nature. Yet wine aesthetics occupies a precarious position since wines’ charms also play well as an alcohol delivery system and a commodity beverage, which detracts from aesthetic appreciation.

As an aesthetic object the appreciation of wine depends on the practices of formal wine tasting. The swirling, sniffing, swishing, choice of glass, tasting standards, and tasting notes, etc. are designed to make the aesthetic properties of wine accessible to us. But these wine tasting practices are performed at public tastings, competitions, winery tasting rooms, as well as by wine media organizations, in contexts deeply influenced by the commercial aspects of the wine trade. Reviews are written to inform consumers, wine tastings aim at selling wine, awards at competitions are primarily used for marketing —it’s only at private affairs among wine lovers that aesthetics are unencumbered by commercial interests.

The limits of these wine tasting practices get some discussion in the wine media including debates about the meaning and appropriateness of scores, the relevance of endless fruit descriptors, the prevalence of disagreements among critics, etc. But the main problem with our wine tasting practices is that they seldom take into consideration the fact that wine changes in the glass and in the bottle. Most quality wines don’t show their true aesthetic value until many years after they are released. Yet, except in rare cases where investment decisions must be made, aged wines are seldom evaluated and are written about only occasionally. Even at winery tasting rooms, it’s an exception when older, more fully developed wines are offered as part of the tasting menu.

Furthermore, most published wine reviews and awards are based on very limited contact with the wine. Typically, a wine is evaluated in a group with many other wines that share some feature such as varietal or region, and critics give at best just a few moments attention to each one. This is especially true of large wine competitions where judges may taste over 100 wines in a day. The problem is that wines change in the glass as they are mixed with oxygen and volatile aromas are released. To get the full measure of a wine it must be tasted over several minutes if not hours. Some wines are closed (i.e. lacking in aromatic intensity) and may have rough textures unless decanted and allowed time to develop in the glass. The fact that wine changes in the glass is an essential part of the aesthetics of wine yet our wine tasting practices seldom take that into account. (This is why I review wines one at a time and spend at least an evening with each one.)

Thankfully, wine lovers in their private venues are able to take account of the full aesthetic merit of wine. But it is odd and a bit disturbing that public discourse about wine only occasionally focuses on these changeable features of wine that are among wine’s most important aesthetic features.

We wine lovers are constantly accused of snobbery, pretension, and arrogance, some of it deserved but most of it misplaced. All of this sniping, often encouraged by the media, could be set aside by simply acknowledging the fact that there are many reasons to drink wine and each require their own norms.

Sometimes we drink wine to get buzzed, to enhance our enjoyment of friends or grease the wheels of social commerce, to relax after work, or to accompany a meal. The aim of all these activities is simple pleasure and, to achieve this goal, wine quality need not matter much. Truth be told, 99% of the wines on the supermarket shelf will be satisfactory for this purpose and it’s pointless to be concerned with scores, tasting notes, sniffing and swirling or any of the other paraphernalia of wine tasting if this basic form of enjoyment is all you’re looking for. People who pretentiously introduce sophisticated tasting activities in these contexts really do risk being jerks unless their expertise has been requested.

But sometimes we drink wine in order to appreciate the wine—that’s why we’re wine lovers after all. We want to fully experience the wine and discover all there is to know about the wine and its origins—what its features are and how they produce pleasure. With appreciation we’re concerned with our own experience of the wine, an experience that has intrinsic value. We enjoy experiences not because they are useful for some purpose but because they are good in themselves and the appreciation of wine is no exception. We can appreciate a wine regardless of whether anyone else does and regardless of how it compares to other wines. Since the primary focus is not on comparing a wine to others except for purposes of classification and understanding, wine scores, producers, and prices have only a minor role to play in the process of appreciation. But wine talk and our ability to articulate what we are tasting is essential, because it is through shared experience that we sharpen our perceptions and acquire knowledge.

When the goal is appreciation, some of the paraphernalia of wine tasting—sniffing and swirling, tasting notes, type of glass used, temperature at which the wine is served, characteristics of the region it’s from, etc.—become very relevant. These practices make the characteristics of the wine more available. When the goal is appreciation, clowns who complain about “know-it-all” wine tasters are being the jerks. They should find a good sports bar and belly up.

Finally, we might drink a wine in order to evaluate it. For purposes of evaluation I’m interested not primarily in my own experience but in the capacity of a wine to interest others as well. So evaluating a wine brings instrumental value into the picture.  In evaluation, we treat wine as a stable object that other people also have access to and as useful in generating aesthetic experiences.  So we’re trying to answer the question “How good is this wine in general at producing pleasure when compared to other wines?” Comparison and judgment are essential to evaluation so wine scores and prices, if they help in the process of comparison, are essential tools as is knowledge and trends in the market, what other people are inclined to like, etc. When the goal is evaluation, people who form strong opinions and express them are playing the game correctly; people who don’t like judgments should find a beach and soak up rays, with a bottle of cheap Chardonnay within reach.

If we pay attention to how drinking and talking about wine serves a variety of purposes, peace in the wine world will reign—and maybe it will spread.

Well, we can hope can’t we?

Recently in a post complaining about how the term “balance” has been abused in the wine world, I defined it as “the relative prominence of the basic structural components of a wine–fruit, sugar, acid, tannins, alcohol and oak.” When no one element is dominant, nothing sticks out as too much, a wine is in balance. Today, I  complain about confusing balance and harmony.

Balance is the crucial standard for a wine because it characterizes a wine that is pleasant to drink.  Wines that are out of balance will always be unpleasant. They will be harsh, cloying, sour or clunky and include distracting elements that interfere with enjoyment. Even novice tasters can sometimes identify unbalanced wines.

Because people differ in their sensitivity toward various components in a wine there is a subjective aspect in judging balance. Nevertheless, all wines regardless of price should be balanced, and many wines under $10 achieve it. Of course many also fail because of mistakes made in the vineyard or in the winery. But balance is always achievable; it is the bottom line when judging wine quality. Because balance is a function of the relationship between several components there will be many ways to achieve balance and each varietal and region will have many balance points. Balance doesn’t require perfect symmetry. You can draw attention to some aspect of a wine and give it emphasis as long as the other components provide sufficient counterweight. Thus, many different styles are possible within the framework of a balanced wine.

It is important to keep in mind that wines can start out being unbalanced but come into balance through the aging process. And wines can start out being balanced but lose it as it changes in the bottle.

It is important that we have a word to describe what good yet inexpensive wines share and I think balance qualifies. But if we are going to describe the full range of wine quality, it’s essential that we distinguish balance from a related concept—harmony. Too often in wine writing  I see balance and harmony treated as synonyms. I think they are distinct concepts.

Many wines have balance but they don’t leave an impression of movement or cohesive activity. You can pick out each element analytically and none will stand out as being too much but there is no impression of interaction among the elements. By contrast some wines of higher quality will seem alive because their components are interacting, accentuating each other but in a way that seems consonant, not simply staying out of each other’s way but influencing each other. That is harmony. When the acidity is freshening the fruit and fruit is softening the angularity of the acidity and the dryness of the tannins; and the tannins provide a foundation that lengthens the taste experience, the wine evolving through many stages with no jarring sensations in the transitions, that is the beginning of harmony. But just the beginning.

Harmony is intimately related to complexity. When wines are simple there is not much to harmonize and what harmony there is will not be apparent. But when complexity is added to the picture the possibility of a unified story, a larger whole that the elements contribute to, emerges.

An analogy with music will help explain what I mean. Harmony in music refers to the combination of different musical notes played simultaneously that produce a pleasing sound. The sounds are working together to create a unified whole in which the separateness of the notes is muted and the sounds are consonant. But a simple triad (e.g. a C chord played on the piano) is harmonic but not very interesting. It describes an important structural element of music but has little to do with musical quality if it is unrelated to a larger musical whole. But when harmony, the sense of consonance or agreement, arises from complex disparate notes over time having a tendency toward resolution on the tonic, the foundation of the key signature,  then you have the basis of musical quality at least as defined in Western, classical music. The composers skill and artistry comes from being able to take contrasting, diverse musical elements and getting them to work together and seamlessly interact to contribute to an overall pattern. Complexity without harmony is cacophony although of course dissonance can be deployed if it contributes to the larger whole and the composer is able to manage it.

Harmony in wine is similarly  a function of this relationship to a larger whole that emerges through complex interaction. Great wines have tension and paradox. They have a kind of nervous energy yet feel fluent and supple. They exhibit power and delicacy, profundity and charm, yet despite the contrasts it all feels well put together in a unified whole effortlessly achieved. This goes well beyond balance.

Matt Kramer in a recent article, as well as in his book, argues that harmony is a wine fundamental, something that all wines ideally should exhibit. I’ve disagreed with some of what Kramer says in that article but on this I wholeheartedly agree. It may be the most important concept in defining wine quality.

I’ve been thinking about harmony as it applies to wine this week but got distracted by the idea of balance, a related but dissimilar concept. I think there are problems with how this word gets used in some contemporary debates and so harmony will have to wait until next week.

Balance refers to the relative prominence of the basic structural components of a wine–fruit, sugar, acid, tannins, alcohol and oak. When no one element is dominant, nothing sticks out as too much, a wine is in balance. An unbalanced wine will have one or more of these components noticeably too prominent given the style of wine in question. This is an important qualification. Balance is varietal and regional specific. A Barolo will have more prominent acidity and tannin relative to fruit than a Napa Cab. But that doesn’t mean the Barolo is out of balance if it’s balance is characteristic of the grape or region.

Balance is also subject to individual differences. Individuals differ in their sensitivity to alcohol, tannins, acidity and sugar. A person more sensitive to tannins than average will find tannic wines out of balance that others find acceptable.

Here is the issue I want to point to. Over the past several years many writers and critics have been advocating for better balanced wines with less alcohol. The complaint is that very ripe wines, especially from California, are too high in alcohol and thus out of balance. Excessive alcohol and excessively ripe fruit, it is alleged, lack nuance and complexity, feel too heavy in the mouth and are thus tiresome to drink. Granted many California Cabernets (and other varietals) are high in alcohol pushing well past 15% in some cases. But high alcohol would be out of balance only if there is insufficient fruit extract and acidity to bring them into balance. And this is typically not the case. High alcohol by itself would not cause a wine to be imbalanced since balance is a relationship between several components. There are of course California Cabs that lack acidity or show distracting hot alcohol but that isn’t generally a characteristic. One might not like these wines. I’m only occasionally attracted to then. But it isn’t balance they lack but finesse.

What those who claim to seek balance in wines are after is, in fact, a different style, not more balance. They prefer lighter wines with less fruit extract and more finesse. Not better balanced wines but wines with a different balance point.