Tag Archives: wine aesthetics

The Problems With Wine Scores Episode 489

18 Wednesday Apr 2018

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wine scoresStats wizard David Morrison has a compelling argument that scores between wine critics cannot be compared except in the rare case in which two critics use the same objective scoring scheme. I actually think the situation is worse than David suggests, but more on that in a moment.

His reasoning is as follows.

I have finally concluded that there are two fundamentally different sorts of wine-quality scores in use: (1) what we might call an objective score, based on explicitly assigning points to a series of pre-defined wine characteristics, and then summing them to get the wine score; and (2) subjective (but expert) scores, where the overall score comes from whatever characteristics the scorer wants to express.

David is not referring to the way the scores are expressed via a 100 pt. scale vs a 20 pt. scale. Rather he is referring to the underlying method by which the scores are created.  With objective scoring there is only one scoring scheme so a disagreement among critics would be a genuine disagreement about wine quality. But when critics choose their own idiosyncratic scoring system a disagreement about scores may reflect a different scoring method or different interpretation of the method  rather than a difference in wine quality.

The same scores could mean different qualities (because the scoring schemes are different), and different scores could mean the same quality (because the scoring schemes are different). How on earth are we to know? We can’t!

I think David is exactly right about subjective scores. But I also think what he calls objective scores are also subject to varying interpretations. For example, suppose we develop an objective scoring scheme based on the following pre-defined characteristics with a numerical scale for each characteristic.

We will assess wines for intensity, complexity, balance, length, typicity, and mouthfeel. We will assess every wine using a numerical scale from 0-9 and sum the results producing a score at the end.  These characteristics don’t begin to capture wine quality but adding a more complicated scheme will only increase the problem I want to identify.

The problem is, in this scheme, all the criteria are assigned equal weight—intensity counts the same as balance, etc. But why assume each criterion is of equal value especially across all wines and all varietals? Pinot Noir will not have the length of most Cabernets. A shorter finish may not damage Pinot Noir in the way it would disappoint in the Cab.  A wine even slightly out of balance will suffer in quality despite making up for that deficit in its intensity and complexity. Typicity is important for some purposes but to give it equal weight in every case would disadvantage wines designed to be atypical.  A young, old-school Barolo will have mouth ripping tannins undermining mouthfeel so we would be forced to discount mouthfeel or make a guess about how it will develop.

For a meaningful objective scoring scheme we would have to find some objective way of weighting the various criteria but that would have to be specific to varietal, region, and style since these all require different values.

Even if we were to manage to develop such a scheme, the most important factor in wine quality at least according some critics—the degree to which a wine expresses the distinctive features of the vineyard—is not and could not be in the picture. There is no objective measure of such a quality.

The whole idea of an objective scoring system is hopeless.

So why do I use scores in my reviews you might ask? Because they are useful in assessing how much a critic enjoyed the wine. But they mean nothing more than that. They are a subjective measure of the degree of quality I found in a wine when compared to other wines I’ve tasted. Nothing more, but nothing less. This information is meaningful to the degree you find a particular critic’s palate trustworthy.

A wine score is an invitation to try the wine, not a data point in a competition.

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How Should We Evaluate Distinctive, Original Wines?

22 Thursday Feb 2018

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wine evaluationWhat is going on when we evaluate a wine (or book, film, or musical work for that matter).

Here is one way of conceptualizing it. We develop standards of quality through conversations between experts. In the wine world those standards are often region-specific and are sometimes supported by legal requirements. But the standards themselves are perceptual patterns. There is a flavor and textural profile, a complex pattern of sensations, that a typical Chianti should exhibit that is different from a typical wine from Medoc, for instance. In many regions, especially in Italy and France, there are official panels of tasters that enforce those standards. Only wines that exhibit the appropriate flavor profile are allowed to use their regional designation on the bottle. But even in the absence of official tasting panels a consensus can form about what, for example, a typical Napa Cab should taste like.

These standards are reinforced by wine education institutions. As a result, blind tasters can gain expertise in identifying the origins of a wine. Without these quality standards blind tasting would just be a guessing game. Part of developing a sense of the taste profile of a region is developing a sense of what an ideal representation of that taste profile is like. Thus, in addition to a standard about what a typical wine from a region should taste like, we get a perceptual standard for what the highest quality Chianti or Napa Cabernet should taste like. So there are two standards at work—a standard of typicity and a standard of exceptional quality.

Individual wines then are assessed with regard to how close they conform to those two standards—a typical wine from that region and the best wine from that region. This is a quantitative judgment because we’re concerned with how much order of a certain kind a given wine exhibits. Wines that are typical of a region must have all the expected elements in the right relationship. Wines of exceptional quality must have all those elements but with more intensity and complexity yet all coming together harmoniously—with more order than the typical wine.

According to this conception of wine evaluation, wine scores such as Robert Parker’s 100- point scale make some sense since we are engaged in a quantitative judgment. A score of 95 indicates that a wine has more of that expected order, a clearer, more focused, and more intense sensory pattern, than a wine that scores 85. The latter may be typical but not exceptional. However, it doesn’t follow from the fact that a judgment is quantitative that we have a precise way of measuring that quantity. The degree of order a wine exhibits is something we cannot be very precise about. This is where wine scores become problematic. The scale suggests more precision than is actually available to us. Nevertheless, despite this practical lack of precision, conceptually this form of evaluation is clear enough. We have a general principle embodied in our perceptual capacities—a taste profile representing what is typical or ideal. And a judgment about how much conformity there is between the individual wine and the general pattern of either typicity or exceptional quality.

But there are deep problems with this way of conceptualizing evaluation.

The problem is that many wines have a kind of individuality to them. They express the distinctive features of a particular vineyard in a particular vintage or they may express the distinctive style of a particular winemaker. This consideration is independent of whether the wine is typical or an ideal representation of its region. In fact if it’s quite original it may lack typicity and differ markedly from an ideal expression of its type. What makes such a wine work are the relationships among its elements independently of any relationship to an externally imposed standard. For wines that have that kind of individuality, there is no independent standard or taste profile that it must conform to. Conformity would destroy its individuality. The only way to honestly evaluate such a wine is according to some standard internal to the wine, such as past vintages or by trying to assess how much of its potential for excellence is realized in the particular bottle you’re drinking, which we can know only vaguely if at all.

Of course, individuality is not the only thing we value about wine. But it is what separates the best wine from just ordinary, good wine. Although we can intelligibly ask how distinctive or original a wine is, the question of how closely it conforms to an external standard is irrelevant. At this point, it isn’t at all obvious what a wine score is supposed to measure. Such wines create their own rules.

To Know a Wine, Try a Little Tenderness

19 Monday Feb 2018

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When drinking fine wine, we tend to focus on the intensity and complexity of aromas, the lushness of the texture, how refined the tannins feel, and the length of the finish.  But, thanks to modern wine technology, most of the wine you buy above the $20 price point will have intense aromas and a plush, refined mouthfeel. Lost in our pursuit of power and luxury are more subtle features that are difficult to pin down or describe.

Great wines, even those that are powerful and impress with their size and weight have a gentle, inner beauty that emerges from nuance and subtlety. They have complexity but it’s not doled out all at once and can be sensed only by carefully observing a wine’s motion.”Finesse” is what we usually call it, and many of those industrial wines that seem of high quality don’t have it.

But to discover these dimensions of a wine you have to allow the wine to take control, giving the wine a chance to direct your attention. Like two dancers in sympathetic motion, taster and tastant melt together becoming one, as if we sense in the wine an offering, a generosity that too much aggression or impatience will destroy. Gracefulness really is a form of grace.

Discovering these dimensions of a wine takes time. A cursory tasting, a need to move on to the next flight,  and a calculative frame of mind that attempts to add up a score will not allow them to emerge.

If something hits you over the head, it isn’t nuance. If it screams it isn’t tenderness.

Wine and, according to Otis Redding, young girls share this need for tenderness.

Wine Importer Kermit Lynch Tells Us What Good Taste Is

24 Wednesday Jan 2018

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character and wineSince I’ve been banging on this topic a whole lot recently, why stop now? Especially when what I’ve been arguing is supported by a luminary such as the great wine importer Kermit Lynch who is probably more responsible than anyone else for introducing Americans to wines from small, high quality, European producers.

The issue is the modern tendency to describe a wine as if it’s a basket of fruit instead of trying to articulate the personality and emotion of wine. Reminiscing about his early years in an interview for Food and Wine magazine, Lynch says:

Now you see French winemakers, Italian wine makers, saying that this wine smells like a cherry or a berry or something—no, no, back then the wines were human beings.

You know, all that berry and cherry stuff, it’s not even a practical way to talk about wine, because even if you tasted a lot of wine, if you go in and taste the new vintage when it’s three months old, it might smell like cherry. You go back a month later and it might smell like boysenberry. You go back later and think “My God! Where did that coffee aroma come from?” So by the time your review gets in the magazine, the wine no longer smells like what it did when you smelled it. That’s always bugged me, the new way of writing about wine as if it were fruit juice. When wine was described in human terms, as a man or woman for starters, then you really got down into some interesting conversations.

He’s right about this. Wines change. They’re always in motion, in the mouth, in the glass, in the bottle, and in the barrel, always interacting with their environment and showing different aspects over time. Because wine continually changes its form, even as we taste it, we have to relate it to other things that continually change such as a person’s mental and emotional state, the features of our natural environment, or the tensions and releases of music.

Wine lends itself to metaphors associated with persons because each wine is an individual and has a unique way of unfolding just as each person or song is an individual with a distinctive character.

The fruit basket approach to tasting notes does capture a part of what we taste but leaves the most important part, the wine’s process, out of the description.

Alas, I see no prospects for a change in our approach to writing about wine—we seem to like our fruit basket if only because it’s comfortable and familiar.

The Art of Wine: Cain Vineyard and Winery and the Art of Brett Management

16 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in The Art of Wine, Wine Culture

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Cain spring mountain Charles OrearIn the wine world today, the “spirit of the age” is the pursuit of pure fruit expression. Find a healthy vineyard site where the grapes have character and will ripen without losing acidity. Experiment with fermentation until you find that magical extraction point where fruit, tannins, and color are in balance. Give it a kiss of oak to add complexity and roundness. Filter and fine to get rid of off flavors and aromas, and you’re well on your way to high scoring nirvana. This approach has created the modern, hugely successful wine industry and critical standards have developed that reflect that success.

I respect and enjoy polish, clarity, and clean, focused fruit power. But it doesn’t make me fall in love. Maybe it’s the old drummer in me, but what I really love is a bit of funk, aka “barnyard”, “animal”, or when euphemisms are in order, “savory”. Often, these flavors are the result of a brettanomyces infection that most winemakers go to great lengths to eliminate from their wine and which all the wine tasting certification agencies treat as a fault.

I guess I’m a bit out of step with the spirit of the age. It wouldn’t be the first time.

tractor

Winery Entrance

So I was excited to visit with Christopher Howell, winemaker at Napa’s Cain Vineyards and well known for his use of brettanomyces as a flavor element. Chris is also one of the most thoughtful winemakers I’ve met, very comfortable putting wine in the larger context of the humanities and talking meaningfully about his philosophy of winemaking.

Brettanomyces bruxellensis, or “brett” as it’s called, is a yeast which, along with its close cousin dekkera bruxellensis, infects winery equipment, barrels and sometimes grape skins. They create compounds that result in various aromas some of which are intriguing, such as sweaty saddles, bacon fat, or barnyard, and some that are just unpleasant such as band-aid or rancid cheese. Some people are quite sensitive to these compounds and will be put off by even a whiff. Thus, many winemakers strive mightily to eliminate any trace of it. In some cases an entire winery will have to be dismantled and rebuilt to eliminate the yeast spores that keep on giving vintage after vintage.

However, for others, the presence of a modest brett aroma gives wine character and interest and some of the great wines in history have been influenced by brett.

“How did we learn that this was wrong?” Chris Howell asks. “We value civet in perfume. Why not wine? It’s all about context”, he says, as he goes on to explain that our preferences for particular aromas are very much a cultural artifact, learned from the social environment around us. The clear implication is that maybe our tasting practices and wine education materials should not lump brett in with cork taint or the presence of hydrogen sulfide which are always unpleasant.

Cain winery; Cain Five; Napa; Napa County; California; USA; North AmericaThe trick of course is to know how to keep brett  at acceptable levels. “We don’t know how to manage brett yet”, says Chris but adds optimistically, “it always stops. It’s a fermentation and we kind of know when it’s going to stop.” The science of brett management is still nascent. After all, why study something that most people want to get rid of. But clearly Chris’s 28 years of experience with these vineyards and his wine education in France give him an instinctual understanding of how to assess brett levels and potential development. As you can see from my tasting notes below, the brett character is subtle and more of a background note. “It shouldn’t be the dominant flavor component”, says Chris. It adds character without being the character.

The value of brettanomyces is not the only issue about which Chris Howell walks off the beaten path. Another bête noire of modern winemaking is the presence of bell pepper aromas in Cabernet Sauvignon. The result of compounds called pyrazines, they do mar fruit expression when too dominant. Yet, not all green notes are  unpleasant. “Cab should carry green notes if that is what your vineyards give you. Everyone thinks it’s bell pepper so they just get rid of it”, according to Chris. “But it’s part of what makes our vineyard distinctive.” Once again it’s a matter of degree. If there is enough complexity and evolution in the wine, the smell of green herbs—mint, sage, rosemary– becomes complimentary adding character to what otherwise tastes like fruit juice. “I like wines that transcend fruit” asserts Chris, and indeed his wines have an herbal character that hearkens back to an older style of Napa Cabernet before the the fascination with fruit bombs became the rage.

“We don’t have to please everyone. Some people don’t like our wine and that’s fine. I just want them to suspend judgment and approach them with an open mind.”

That said, Chris’s wines nevertheless have that glow of California sunshine–rich, dense and powerful, with exuberant fruit expression yet with an complex array of non-fruit flavors creating contrast and intrigue.

I would be remiss it I didn’t mention one other important contributor to Cain Vineyards’ signature wine, the Cain Five. That would be elevation.valley The estate vineyards slope downward from near the crest of Spring Mountain with a spectacular view of Napa Valley at elevations that range from 1200 to 2100 feet. The combination of intense sunlight, shallow soils, and good drainage often produce smaller berry size and tougher skins in mountain fruit. Notoriously, the tannins in mountain wines can be hard to manage but produce powerfully structured wines when given time to develop. Cain Five, their signature blend from estate grapes, is no exception. It is a firm, fiercely tannic wine that manages to be elegant and supple as well. That sounds like a paradox but paradox is the essence of great wine.

These wines are as original as the person who makes them.

Cain’s wines illustrate something that I’ve been calling “resonance” and is a feature of all great wines. They build in intensity, starting with an undercurrent of tension in the midpalate that keeps broadening in the mouth even after peaking and beginning to fade. There is duality in the wine. The satiny mouth feel and fresh, round fruit gives way to rising intensity emerging from the background as the acidity and tannin begin to dominate, the fruit reappearing again as a pale image on the finish. Especially as the wines age, both the acidity and tannins seem fragile, but they somehow take over and drive the momentum. My point is that this is a play of forms in transition like the tonal effects operating in the background of a symphony. Great wines are not static; they form themselves in the mouth. Resonance is the key to greatness in wine. Lesser wines are pleasing but lack resonance. There is no better place to discover resonance that at Cain Vineyards and Winery.

Here is the lineup of wines that we tasted starting with the young uns:

NV 13  Cain Cuvée  Napa Valley

A blend of two vintages, 2012 and 2013, with fruit from both Spring Mountain and the valley floor, and a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot.   Just a hint of barnyard, against a background of baked earth, this is a hearty wine with some rusticity on the finish. Quite savory with notes of blackberry bramble, toast, and French roast coffee on the palate, and a hint of bitterness on the finish, the tannins are fine grained and quite accessible. Juicy up front it acquires a relentless inner drive, defiant and a bit feral.  Score: 90  pts.  Alc: 14.3%  Price: $35

Cain Five 2013 Spring Mountain District

Their signature wine is outstanding, stunningly complex. Rich, deep blackberry fruit but with savory herb highlights, thyme,  hints of caramel, a slightly smoky, saddle leather aroma, a bit of licorice and floral notes emerging midpalate round out the aroma notes on this very complex wine.  Deeply concentrated, it gives an initial impression of being sumptuous and elegant yet it’s powerful, exuding a kind of spiritual calm but with latent energy pulsating below the surface. Concentrated fruit, incisive acidity and broad, dry yet refined almost talc-like tannins create a sense of massiveness in the background that bely its welcoming surface. This wine is about contrast held in suspension. Made from 100% mountain fruit from estate vineyards, it’s a Cabernet dominated Bordeaux-style blend. Score: 94 Alc: 14.3% Ave. Price: $123   Peter Gabriel’s Rhythm of the Heat captures the spirit of this wine.

Cain Concept The Benchland Napa Valley 2013

A Cabernet dominated Bordeux-style blend from Rutherford bench grapes grown on the valley floor. This wine shows a bit more red fruit in the mix–voluptuous black cherry, cocoa, sage and dusty earth–but lacks some of the funky flavor of the other cuvees.  This wine has a lovely, round mouthfeel, which is not surprising since the fruit is from the Rutherford bench and has the character of more typical Napa Cabernet. It is lush and generous right from the introduction with bright fruit notes persisting through the long, languorous finish. Happily, the oak is already very well integrated. This is more intimate, romantic, and stylish than the Cain Five, yet it still has a firm backbone. Score: 93  Alc: 14.6%   Ave Price:$93   Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love nails the attitude.

Cain Five 2006  Spring Mountain District

This has warm, generous fruit and earth, ripe black cherry, saddle leather, thyme, and subtle roasted meat on the nose. Full and concentrated on the palate, the midpalate shows some softness that is disrupted by hi-toned acidity and burgeoning tannins and so the wine shows off a bit of brawn is it progresses. The tannins are beginning to show some mellowness because they’ve become powdery but you sense they were massive when young. Despite the ripe, round fruit, the structure keeps drawing your attention to an angular point that draws energy just before the finish as if the tannins and acidity want to tame its exuberance. 46% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Merlot, 13% Petit Verdot, 9% Cabernet Franc,and  6% Malbec. Score: 93 Alc: 14.1%

Cain Five 2004 Spring Mountain District

Gorgeous, simply gorgeous. Ah, so nicely pungent, you first encounter a heady mix of saddle leather, mushroom, and tobacco, resting on top of mocha, the fruit, what fruit? Actually there is some dried black cherry and dried plum filling in the background but this is very savory. There is also a leafy character and a mineral core after some aeration, just an endless parade of bewitching flavors. After years in the bottle, the midpalate is pure silk, but a rising current of powdered tannins threaded with delicate but prominent acidity produce a broad, wave-like finish showing dried fruit and a hint of charcoal.  At this point in its development it still has a very generous nose and a lively palate. The mood is intense, feral, and sort of angst-ridden, not rustic but urban tough. I was surprised that the Stones Paint It Black really resonated with this wine. Score: 96

Reviews based on industry samples

The Limitations of Blind Tasting

08 Monday Jan 2018

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blind tastingIn the wine world, blind tasting is the principle methodology for judging wines. Ideally, wines should be tasted without knowing the producer and often without knowing the region or varietal. The purpose of blind tasting is to eliminate sources of bias that might shape our judgments. Students being trained by the main certification agencies must devote endless hours tasting wines blind and learning to identify via the flavors and textures the origin of the wine.

But while blind tasting has its value, and is certainly useful in sharpening one’s senses, it seems to me to harm aesthetic evaluation. In fact it makes aesthetic evaluation impossible.

In the aesthetic evaluation of any artifact, the success of a work depends on how the materials that make up the work are used.  Aesthetic judgment is a matter of recognizing the degree to which a work realizes the potential of its materials. Great works of art have a sense of completeness about them; poor works leave us with a sense of something missing and incomplete, a use of those materials that lacks expressiveness.

Wine evaluation is no different. A wine is good to the extent it realizes the potential of the grapes, available oak treatments and other processes that go into making the wine. Great winemaking unlocks the hidden potential of the grapes and vineyard and makes that potential available to us.

The problem with blind tasting is that if you don’t know the geographical origin and varietal of the grapes used to make the wine, you have no way of assessing the degree to which the wine realizes that potential. You have no way of identifying what that potential is. In fact, I would argue you need to know the aesthetic aim of the winemaker before assessing whether the wine accomplishes that aim or not.

Evaluations of wine based  wholly on blind tasting by necessity never reach the level of aesthetic evaluation because there is no way to assess the degree of compliance to an ideal without knowing what that ideal is.

Of course, in many contexts we can taste wines blind, and then once the origins of the wine are revealed go on and complete a genuine aesthetic evaluation. But in too many contexts, such as competitions, reviews by magazines, etc. the brunt of the evaluation is based on tasting the wines blind. And sommelier certification agencies devote most of their attention to an evaluative practice that leaves aesthetics out of the picture.

Aren’t we therefore creating a wine culture incapable of aesthetic judgment?

A Sin Against Beauty

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in General Aesthetics, Philosophy of Food and Wine, Wine Culture

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no rulesBlake Gray committed a sin against beauty on his blog yesterday.

A winery sent him a press notice about the release of a wine made from a nearly extinct varietal, a form of communication which he usually ignores. However, because it was a rare wine that he might otherwise be interested in tasting he responded as follows:

Interesting but I’m not sure why they would pick it so ripe (16% alcohol!) that you won’t be able to taste the difference between this and Merlot.

Sorry, you probably didn’t want that feedback.

Gray then goes on to explain:

The next step normally would be to taste the wine and talk about it but to be honest, I’m not interested in tasting this wine. I don’t have a hard cutoff for alcohol percentage in a table wine, but 16% is well above what I want to drink and what I want to recommend. If I taste it, and it’s delicious — super smooth, interesting, complex, my Saint-Macaire dream come true — I still would never order a bottle of it, because I couldn’t finish a glass. So should I recommend a wine like that, that I would not drink myself?

The problem is not with his preference for lower alcohol wines, a preference I share. The problem is you can’t know what a wine tastes like without tasting it, just as you can’t know what a painting or piece of music is like with the experience. Aesthetics is a domain without rules because each work is a unique individual, a law unto itself. Each element in an aesthetic object is so sensitive to context that even very similar works affect us in vastly different ways. There are no aesthetic principles that allow one to deduce that a work is of high quality; even a thick description of a work will not tell you if you will enjoy it or not.  You have to have the experience.

I’ve had wines with 16% alcohol that were crisp and refreshing and wines at 13% alcohol that were flabby and dull. The alcohol percentage is just a number and an often inaccurate, unreliable number as well. (The law allows a 1% variance in wines over 14%.)

Just as there is no recipe for producing quality wine, there is no rule book for what one will like or whether varietal character will be evident. At best, we can make educated guesses about such matters, and it’s that element of surprise that makes wine (and paintings and music) thrilling.

Of course ,if Blake doesn’t like a wine he ought not to recommend it. But he can’t know if he likes it until he tastes it, not because he doesn’t know his own preferences but because its in the very nature of aesthetic experience that cases cannot be generalized.

Smoke influence and the 2017 Vintage

07 Thursday Dec 2017

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smoke in vineyardsAlthough most of the grapes for the 2017 vintage in Napa/Sonoma were harvested before the devastating fires began, there was still a significant amount on vine and will be affected by smoke taint. The elimination of smoke taint was the main topic at the Postmodern Winemaking Symposium that I’ve attending this week. We tasted through several smoke-damaged wines (along with some Islay Scotch and Mezcal to gain a sensory understnding of smoke influence). And then heard presentations about what is known about the elimination of smoke taint. My quick summary of what is known is that there are some methods  of removal such as flash détente  that seem to work in some situations but they all carry risks and none have been proven broadly effective.

But from an aesthetic point of view, smoke taint poses an interesting question.

The engine of wine aesthetics is difference, differentiation. That is why we have AVAs, vineyard expression, varietals, origin stories and all the rest—its about distinguishing your products from your competitor’s products. This is not surprising because the aim of aesthetic winemaking, is to create something of beauty, and almost all philosophical conceptions of beauty include the idea that what distinguishes beautiful objects from merely pretty or attractive objects is that there is something deviant about them, something uncanny and unfamiliar. Beautiful objects have an individuality about them that the artist or winemaker succeeds in harmonizing, making all the parts of the object work together.

Isn’t 2017 vintage an opportunity to create something quite distinctive with wines influence by smoke? As a consumer I’m always looking for what’s distinctive about a wine, what sets it apart from others. How winemakers go about handling smoke will be one of the fascinating things to look for in this 2017 vintage, especially because the influence of smoke will not be tied to the presence of oak.

Thus, if the smoke influence is handled in such a way that it doesn’t overwhelm the other virtues of the wine, and can be made to harmonize with them, it’s not obvious why we should call it a taint. It may be a mark of distinction.

This issue of smoke taint is related to the whole idea of a flaw. When you go down the list of wine flaws that are taught by the various certification organizations almost all of them have aesthetic value in some contexts. Where would traditional French Syrah be without brett, or Barolo without VA, or Sherry without oxidation?

Perhaps the 2017 vintage will encourage us to be more careful about the language we use—smoke influence is not taint if it produces something of beauty.

No, Taste is Not Just about Money or Class

30 Thursday Nov 2017

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richy wine snobOliver Styles at Wine Searcher asks “Can Money Buy Taste?” by which I think he means, “is your taste in wine best explained by the socio-economic class you occupy?”  Styles declines to answer the question claiming it’s “too vast a topic to cover in the space” but he invokes all the usual suspects when this topic comes up—namely Marx and the French social theorist Bourdieu whom he summarizes as follows: “the reason Lafite is a pinnacle of red wine is because the upper classes love(d) Lafite”.

Styles can use his space any way he wishes but in my space I can answer his question, in a word—no. Yet, Styles supplies several reasons to doubt that taste is nothing but a class interest.

Let’s take a moment to imagine that this might be true. If our notions of what is a “good wine” or a “serious wine” are defined by the preferences of several decades of the ruling classes, then all our wine education – from books to wine shows to WSET to MS and MW – is simply there to ensure that future gatekeepers toe the line. You have to know what is a classy wine and what is one for the hoi polloi.

This is an important point. I’ve met countless people who have acquired various wine certifications including the rare and coveted Master of Wine. A few may have been well-off but most are decidedly middle class/working class. Their interest in wine is not a product of their antecedently acquired class interest. Thus, the Marx/Bourdieu hypothesis must be that these middle class folks are acquiring wine expertise in order to qualify themselves for admission into the ruling class. This will come as a surprise to most of them because after becoming certified somms they will spend their lives scratching for a meager living to feed their grape habit. If you want to make money, getting into wine is probably not the most direct route.

Furthermore, the idea is just silly for anyone capable of distinguishing sugar from salt. The implication of the Marx/Bourdieu hypothesis is that the only difference between Lafite and bargain brand swill is the fact that Lafite is endorsed by the enforcers of good taste. I haven’t researched the eating or drinking habits of Marx or Bourdieu but I shudder to think what was on their plate. There is a difference and it’s plain to see for anyone taking an honest look.

Then Styles’ essay goes completely off the rails. He writes:

But even if we discredit Bourdieu, there’s so much cultural and “learned” understanding about what constitutes a good wine that we’d have to present a blind tasting to a tribe in the hills of Papua New Guinea in order to dismiss cultural or class bias. I wonder how many glasses would be picked up in the “respectable” fashion?

Jesus, I don’t know where to begin. Of course wine tasting is learned. That’s why people study it. It’s not orange juice. It takes both practice and knowledge to discover the properties and charms of good wine. No doubt the standards of wine quality are worked out by experienced wine lovers tasting and communicating about what they’re tasting. The good people populating the hills of Papua New Guinea would be unlikely to have enough familiarity with wine to get much from it. Judgments of wine quality are a product of human culture surely, and there often is a dominant aesthetic reinforced by taste makers who are in a position to be influencers.  But that does not entail those judgments are nothing but a bid to curry favor with the the beautiful people. The Marx/Bourdieu hypothesis simply assumes that all those Masters of Wine are sheeple following conventional taste unable to decide on their own what they like. That is not even remotely plausible.

Styles finally gets back on track with his penultimate observation:

And what of these new influencers – us? Well, a cursory Instragram search on something as bland as #wine suggests that, actually, Bourdieu might not be so right. I struggled to find a revered label – and I fully expected to. There were a fair few, but nothing like an ostentatious visual spatter of Sine Qua Nons, Screaming Eagles, Haut-Brions and Romanee-Contis. No; just a succession of unknown (to me) labels beloved, or paid to be, of the Instagrammer.

Well no kidding. Are there people who are just into showing off with the expensive wine they drink. Of course. Are some people afraid to think for themselves and just follow what they perceive is popular. Yes, although the wine education and systematic, thoughtful drinking gives people the tools to make their own judgments. Are we sometimes influenced by price and reputation? All the psychological studies suggests we can be. But there is plenty of blind tasting going on that removes the bias of price and reputation. That is what people learn to do when they acquire expertise in wine.

Finally, a cursory history of recent wine appreciation history would suggest something is amiss with the Marx/Bourdieu view. In the mid-20th Century there was an insular wine elite who were too comfortable with their tasting conventions and relied too much on reputation. Then along came Robert Parker with his iconoclastic attitude, love of ripeness, and 100 point scale to take down that elite. So who was reflecting a class interest? The old elite or Parker? Now Parker’s preferences have been challenged by people seeking lower alcohol, higher acidity and more balance. Who is the enforcer of a class interest here? These shifts in preferences and style suggest some people are capable of independent judgment. Are the people now successfully advocating natural wine gatekeepers ensuring people “toe the line”? That is ridiculous.

What drives shifts in wine styles is the search for something new and different. The old icons maintain some prominence because there is (usually) genuine quality there although complacency can be fatal. Just ask the people in Bordeaux if they’re feeling competitive pressure these days.

The wine world is a who lot more interesting than Marx or Bourdieu could imagine. In the end, Styles seems to get it although it would have been nice if he’d take a stand.

This anxiety among people who should know better that wine appreciation is bullshit is a tic that never seems to go away.

The deeper question that gets too little attention is what’s driving that anxiety.