What 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.

In 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?