How do you judge a wine blog? This question was posed on wine blogger by Gabriella Opaz, of catavino, who was part of a panel judging 18 Catalan wine blogs, in the Catalunya Wine Blog Competition. She pointed out the ambiguities and gray areas involved in such judgings. Here are the money quotes: “…the process of judging is not as black and white as we might want it, or imagine it, to be” and “Is there an impartial measure, or is it all subjective?”

When I read that, I thought, What great, insightful questions. It also raised again the issue of wine judging (which I do for a living) and how so many bloggers have criticized me (and other wine writers) for not having truly objective standards (or not being able to explain them to their satisfaction) that would legitimize the difference between, say, 89 and 90 points.

What’s so funny about this is that there are very few bloggers, I would think, who would not be thrilled to win, or even be nominated for, Tom Wark’s American Wine Blog Awards, which he runs out of his Fermentation blog.

Now, I know something about how the AWBA works, because I was one of the 6 judges this past year (and honored to be invited by Tom, who is hands down one of the best bloggers in America). And I can assure you that the questions Ms. Opaz raises are right on and need to be discussed in the blogging community. I don’t know how you would come up with “strictly objective” criteria for the AWBA, any more than you can have strictly objective criteria for the Academy Awards. Obviously there’s a huge element of subjectivity involved in awarding anything.

When I went through the nominees for the 2008 AWBA, all I did was to ask myself: Which ones do I like/respect, and which ones seem to be doing the best job within their categories? (Best Writing, Best Single Subject, Best Graphics, etc.). Ms. Opaz posed the excellent question, “Can one judge a wine blog if you don’t understand the mechanics of a wine blog?” Well, when I was a judge, I hadn’t yet begun to blog, and so I guess I didn’t understand the mechanics of blogging. Was I any less qualified then to judge blogs than I am now? I don’t think so, and neither, apparently, did Tom.

So we have a situation in which lots of bloggers object to what they perceive as the lack of objective criteria in wine judging, but would love to win an American Wine Blog Award citation that is characterized by the same basically subjective criteria! Ironic, no?

You may remember a few weeks back when Jancis Robinson set the blogosphere agog with her remark, made at a conference in Spain, that wine critics are “parasitical.”

But overlooked was another remark made at that conference, by the editor of Decanter, Guy Woodward, to the effect that some winemakers make wines to suit the palates of certain critics. (I couldn’t find the exact quote, but the paraphrase is from an article on the conference published in last April’s Decanter.)

I wouldn’t think there’d be any debate about the truth of Mr. Woodward’s statement, but there was a flurry of incredulity that winemakers would even be conscious of critics. The article quoted one Spanish winemaker as saying, “I don’t even think it is possible to do this.”

Well, it is.

The first time I learned that winemakers craft wines to suit the palates of certain critics was years ago, when a California winemaker told me so. He wanted to make a Pinot Noir that would get at least 90 points from a certain well-known wine magazine (no, not the one I work at). So he studied every Pinot review that got 90 points, carefully analyzing the adjectives and the flavor descriptors, and Bingo! He eventually got his 90 point Pinot Noir (which he humorously admitted to me he didn’t much care for!)

Actually, that winemaker could have asked Enologix to do the analysis in a more scientific way. Enologix is a firm that describes itself as “the quality metric for the California wine industry.” Basically, you hire Enologix to tell you exactly what to do to get a high score on your wine. It’s paint-by-the-numbers winemaking (this is all from their website) to get “100-point scores.”

Now, lest you think I’m beating up on Enologix, or on the wineries that hire them, I swear I’m not. Heck, I’m sure I’ve given high scores to wines that were made using their “metric.” All I mean to say is that it’s obvious that winemakers aim to please certain critics.

Put yourself in the winemaker’s head. “Gee, I have to pay the bank. I have my mortgage, my kids’ college tuitions. Salaries, overhead, depreciation, rising fuel costs, new equipment and barrels. And we may have to replant that virused old section of the vineyard.” This is the hidden side of the “glamorous” wine industry. The winemaker can’t just make something he likes, he’s got to produce something that sells. And what better way to sell wine than to get a great score from a famous critic? (You think Spielberg wasn’t anxious about the reviews for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?)

So, really, if some winemakers are pandering to certain critics, I can’t be too hard on them. It’s easy to throw brickbats from the outside. On the other hand (being a Gemini, I always see the other hand), the best winemakers strive to obey the dictates of what Richard Olney, in his little book Romanée-Conti, calls le génie du terroir: “whatever it is lying hidden there that makes a wine from a given climat different from its neighbors.”

It’s a tremendous balancing act, this need to respect both nature and the market, and I get impatient with purists who insist that any nod to the market is somehow disrespectful of terroir. In addition to le génie du terroir, le génie du marché is to have your wine respected among connoisseurs and bring a high price. (One of the best examples of accomplishing both is Harlan.) We need a new word, neither terroir nor market-driven, that describes the true genius of making it all work.