Professional tasting, and more on the Wine Train (just a little)
The central paradox of wine tasting is this: While professionals indisputably have educated palates, nonetheless they disagree with each other concerning individual wines to a considerable degree.
How can this be?
The simple answer is that, wine tasters being merely human, and wine tasting not an exact science, you would expect variations in tasters’ conclusions, the same way that film reviewers will often come down on different sides about a movie.
Still, every wine company on the production side of the business has, or wishes to have, a core of tasters, whose competence cannot be doubted, in order to weigh in on such things as new SKUs, or how to improve existing ones.
So what is the difference between a “competent professional” taster and just anybody? Well, Mr. “Just Anybody” is as entitled to his judgments about wine as anyone else. It’s a free country, and there is much to be said concerning the value of the opinion of the non-professional. Since the majority of wine consumers are non-professionals, their voices deserve to be heard. Or so it would seem.
The most esteemed professional taster, at any given winery, is usually deemed to be the winemaker. We assume that winemakers have excellent palates, because they spend their time tasting wine, analyzing it both intellectually and in the laboratory, comparing the wines of different producers and in general being experts.
However, winemakers have their own deficiencies concerning their tasting abilities. For one, they may not be naturally gifted (in the sense of being super-tasters). For another, the winemaker is in constant danger of developing a “house palate.” Then too, you can’t assume that every winemaker is widely familiar with competitive benchmarks. They may not have the budget to taste deeply. (What does a bottle of Montrachet cost these days? $800? And that’s if you can even find it.)
Still, it’s essential for the decision makers at wineries to assemble a tasting team. Which barrels will make the cut for the reserve? How shall the Meritage be assembled? Can we raise the price on the Sauvignon Blanc this year? Which blocks do we use in the estate Pinot? These are tough questions; ultimately, they are questions concerning quality. And quality is the realm of the tasting professional.
You do not have to be blessed with a natural palate to develop a professional one. If fact, as I’ve said many times before, there are huge risks in having a super-palate. (If you’re more sensitive to, say, TCA or brett than 99.9% of the people in the world, you’re not really the most representative person to recommend wine.) What it takes to develop a professional palate is nothing more or less than repeated tasting, and note-taking.
But back to the paradox I spoke of at the top. How can it be that professionals disagree, and what are we to make of those disagreements? Fundamentally, this throws a monkey wrench into the works. How can we believe anything that the professionals say when we know that they can differ, sometimes radically, in their evaluations of a wine?
There’s really no resolution to this problem, except to pick the critic you trust and disregard the others. This, though, brings us to the notion of crowd-sourced wine tasting. The concept is that, if you have enough participants, you can eliminate the outlying extremes and find a consensus, right there in the juicy middle of the bell curve.
I suppose this makes sense, in a scientific way. And morally, “the majority rules” in a democracy. But does this middle way bring us closer to the truth in wine tasting?
JUST IN
Hmm. Talk about timing…
If a winery is in business to sell wine, then it foes follow that those who buy wine, i.e. the consumers, ought to be tapped to evaluate a specific release.
Glad to finally see a post from you on this topic and giving some virtual ink to bell curve wine selection. As I have written in the past, we use a mini crowd sourced/tasting panel methodology. Not so much a consensus like that followed by county fair judging, as arriving at a median rating among 12-18 wine drinkers with comments, much like CellarTracker, Vivino or Delectable. Yes, this brings us closer to the ” truth in wine tasting” if by truth you mean the appeal of a wine in the marketplace.
TOM
http://wine.coop
“However, winemakers have their own deficiencies concerning their tasting abilities. For one, they may not be naturally gifted (in the sense of being super-tasters). For another, the winemaker is in constant danger of developing a ‘house palate.’ Then too, you can’t assume that every winemaker is widely familiar with competitive benchmarks. They may not have the budget to taste deeply. (What does a bottle of Montrachet cost these days? $800? And that’s if you can even find it.)”
I served as a judge at the Mid-State County Fair (Paso Robles) competition judging Chards and Syrahs.
Each table comprised four judges: two winemakers from the Central Coast region, and two non-winemakers (drawn from the ranks of California wine merchants, restaurateurs, wine educators, wine writers, et. al.)
A UCLA English classics professor friend and I represented the voice of non-winemakers at our table.
Joined by two Central Coast winemakers [sorry, no names] who turned out buttery/oaky Chards and squeaky clean Syrahs.
When I asked what wines they drank in their private lives, they responded “our own wines, and those of our immediate neighbors.”
They had no experience drinking distinguished white Burgundies or California Chards. Likewise no experience drinking distinguished Rhone Valley reds or California Rhone varietals.
“House (a.k.a. cellar) palates,” indeed.
When a few high acid/no ML/stainless steel or neutral oak barrel fermented Monterey region Chards were presented in judging flights, they downgraded them for lacking those buttery/oaky notes and flavors they favored.
(The professor and I defended them — citing benchmarks such as Stony Hill as revered examples of the “restrained” style of winemaking.)
When a few Syrahs evinced hints of brett, the two winemakers staged a protest asking that the wines be disqualified as “flawed” — following the guidelines taught to them in their UC Davis and/or Fresno State enology programs.
(The professor and I defended them — citing benchmarks such as Beaucastel and Jaboulet and Chapoutier and Chave. As did judges at other tables. The wines stayed in the competititon — and ultimately won Gold Medals.)
The professor and I became “personas non grata” at our judging table. Modern-day carpetbaggers from Los Angeles.
As Louis Martini observed: “We like best that to which we become accustomed.”
W. Blake Gray penned an insightful article for the Los Angeles Times on the perception of brett in Rhone grape variety wines. And drew attention to Mourvèdre as perhaps the suspect source of those “French funk/gamy” notes and flavors.
“Mourvèdre Grape a Paso Robles Specialty”
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2011/feb/10/food/la-fo-paso-mourvedre-20110310
On the subject of “super-tasters,” check out Mike Steinberger’s 2007 posted three-part investigative series for Slate:
Part One: “Do You Taste What I Taste?; The physiology of the wine critic.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2007/06/do_you_taste_what_i_taste.html)
(Links to second and third installments proffered below as separate comments to bypass “moderation.”)
And let’s bring Tim Hanni, M.W. into the discussion, whose on-going research on this subject offers a counterpoint to the article.
Tim, “ring in” as the Brits would say?
Part Two: “Am I a Supertaster?; The physiology of the wine critic.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2007/06/am_i_a_supertaster.html
Part Three: “Do You Want To Be a Supertaster?; The physiology of the wine critic.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2007/06/do_you_want_to_be_a_supertaster.html
It is said that Wine Spectator’s James Laube is particularly sensitive to TCA. And in 2004 he was credited with bringing that problem to the attention of Chateau Montelena, whose wines he believed were afflicted with that taint.
Montelena accepted that judgment, and spent the time and money to purge that scourge from its winery.
“Chateau Montelena and TCA”
http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/Chateau-Montelena-and-TCA_2258
“This, though, brings us to the notion of crowd-sourced wine tasting. The concept is that, if you have enough participants, you can eliminate the outlying extremes and find a consensus, right there in the juicy middle of the bell curve.”
(From a statistics perspective, call that “juicy” range plus two standard deviations from the mean, with the mean being 100. Using an inartful analogy, that would represent an IQ range of 100 to 120.)
DRC and Leroy and Jayer are exemplars of red Burgundy precisely because they don’t aspire to be “mainstream” consensus Pinot Noirs. They swing from the heels and aspire for “genius.” (Wines whose “IQ” is 140-plus.)
Wines that represent “the outlying extremes.” Wines to be championed, not eliminated.
The most compelling wines are those that continue to resonate in one’s memory years later.
Not the “middle of the bell curve” vox populi crowd-sourced mainstream wines.
(Aside: embracing crowd-sourced wine tasting results in abandoning the concept of “terroir.” Every consensus wine would be a “dumbed-down” regional blend.
Had this approach been adopted back in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, “Martha’s Vineyard” Cabernet would have be used as a “”spice box” enrichment component to blending a Heitz Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet. How boring! How tragic!)
I have heard it said that winemaking is a little bit like lovemaking. Everyone imagines that he/she is doing it as well as can possibly be done. More to the point, we are generally not so keen to take instruction on how we can do a better job in either arena. It is the very rare winemaker who does not get stuck in a rut (as it were) of his/her own style, and who sincerely attempts to transcend his/her own limitations, at least as far as their ability to make discerning taste judgments. In the same way that it is so hard for us to see our own character flaws, it is equally hard to see ourselves as anything other than brilliant tasters.
Randall: I never thought of myself as a “brilliant taster.” I am not naturally gifted. Being a professional taster is like riding a two-wheeled bicycle: it’s hard at first, but the more you do it, the better you get. When one tastes as much as I have, over as long a period of time–and especially when it’s more or less focused on a single growing region, California–one does get a sense of good and bad, and is able to transmit that sense, through reviews, to readers.
I do think that wine critics/tasters generally have a much greater chance of improving their palates as compared to winemakers. Maybe too much pride/ego invested in the product as a winemaker, thus possibly making one slightly blind to the wine’s shortcomings. Or, if one is as neurotic as I am, a slight inability to see all the wine’s virtues.