I ran into an old friend yesterday, a professional who works in the Rock Ridge area of North Oakland. He’s a wine guy with a particular penchant for Brunello. He never had much liking for California wine, including Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Too rich, too soft, too sweet–you know the routine. I always told him that, while he was waiting for those pesky Brunellos to mature, he could be drinking Cabernet. But no, he just didn’t care for it.

“But I recently had a Napa Cabernet for dinner with some friends,” he told me yesterday, “and, man, was it good! So I’m thinking maybe my palate is changing, away from Brunello toward Cabernet.”

This matter of “changing palates” has always fascinated me. There’s no reason, when you think about it, why somebody’s palate shouldn’t change over a period of years. Our preferences and tastes evolve; our bodies themselves undergo certain effects of aging; and a host of other, intangible factors can contribute to the phenomenon of a changing palate. Any and all of these could have resulted in my friend’s new appreciation of Cabernet.

However, it could also be simply that Napa Valley Cabernet has gotten so good, you’d practically have to be a misanthrope not to like it. I think, in the case of my friend, his aversion to Cabernet went something like this: He decided many years ago that he didn’t care for it. Maybe that was because he hadn’t had very good Cabernet. Maybe his infatuation with Brunello–a wine that’s notoriously tannic in youth, requiring many years of age–made him sensitive to Cab’s softness, which in turn made him insensitive to its charms.

I think some people go through phases in their wine appreciation. I’ve always been mildly surprised at how people tell me they like “x” or “y”, but they hate “z,” even when all three wines are well made and typical of their type. Myself, I can appreciate any wine, as long as it’s well made. I’m very catholic [with a small “c”] in that regard. People are always asking me, “What’s your favorite wine?”, and although I really have none, I gave up trying to explain that years ago, and nowadays I simply say “sparkling wine or Champagne” and leave it at that. But the reason I can’t have a favorite wine is because when so many different wines are so excellent, it’s a form of bias to reject some of them. So I don’t.

Back to my friend. My assumption is that, after years of persuading himself he didn’t like Napa Cabernet, he inadvertently stumbled across one recently and was stunned to discover that, yes, this is utterly, completely delicious. Sure, it may not have the stinging tannins of Brunello, but then again, that’s not what [most] Napa Cabernets are about. It’s nothing against Brunello to admit how luscious a great Napa Cabernet can be. It’s simply a matter of broadening your palate, or perspective, to include other forms of goodness.

I wish my friend had remembered the particular Cabernet that changed his mind. Alas, he didn’t. I hate when that happens–when people tell me about a certain wine they had (and that I may have reviewed), but can’t recall its name. It could have been any one of dozens: there are really so many great wineries in Napa Valley focusing on Cabernet/Meritage wines that it’s impossible to keep track of them. Some of the greatest Cabernets I’ve reviewed in the last few months have come from Venge, Araujo, JCB (yes, our friend, Jean-Charles Boisset, whose No. 1 Cabernet is quite an achievement, although it isn’t cheap: $150), Stag’s Leap Cask 23, Caymus Special Selection [particularly awesome considering the high production level], Shafer Hillside Select [what else is new?], Macauley 2007 [a new name to me. I looked it up and wasn't surprised. The winemaker is Kirk Venge. The grapes come from To Kalon and from the Star Vineyard, planted by David Abreu.]. Other Cabernets that knocked me out lately were Moone-Tsai’s “Cor Leonis,” Vineyard 7&8’s Estate (so seriously overlooked, this winery is), and a Sequoia Grove ‘07 “Rutherford Bench Reserve” that proves this veteran winery is still in front of the pack.

Any wine lover with an open mind cannot fail to appreciate the sheer world-class-ness of wines like these. If someone does, they’re just being ideological about it, like I think my friend was, for all those years. Fortunately, some people are wise, or blessed, enough to eventually see through their own ideologies and discard them, after which the scales fall from their eyes, enabling them to appreciate a whole new dimension of wines. My friend now is a certified Napa-centric. Welcome to the club!

I reviewed about 4,800 wines in 2011, which works out to 13.1 per day, although I didn’t taste every single day. The top varietals tasted, by quantity, are listed below. (My top-scoring wines from each category follow in brackets):

1,003 Pinot Noirs [Williams Selyem 2009 Precious Mountain]
885 Cabernet Sauvignons [Venge 2008 Family Reserve]
767 Chardonnays [Foxen 2010 Block UU Bien Nacido Vineyard]
354 Zinfandels [Seghesio 2009 Cortina]
295 Sauvignon Blancs [Trione 2010 River Road Ranch]
295 Syrahs [Qupe 2006 Bien Nacido Vineyard 25th Anniversary X-Block The Good Nacido]
236 Merlots [Rutherford Hill 2007 Reserve]
177 Meritage-style [Von Strasser Reserve]
118 sparkling wines [Schramsberg 2004 J. Schram Rosé]
118 Petite Sirahs [Envy 2008 Nord Vineyard]
59 Cabernet Francs [Merryvale 2008]
59 Rhône red blends [Sanguis 2008 Endangered Species]

plus, of course, a bunch of everything else: Chenin Blanc, Nebbiolo, white Rhône blends, Tempranillo, oddball red blends, oddball white blends, dessert wines, Viogniers, Rieslings and so on.

I was surprised to see that Pinot Noir outnumbered Cabernet Sauvignon for the first time! Pretty impressive. Why? I can’t say, for sure, but here are some educated guesses: Pinot Noir is the hottest wine in California. More and more people are making it, so more and more are sending in for review. I, in particular, am getting a lot sent because producers know I like it, and so they hope they’ll get a good score. Also, I pay particular attention to Santa Barbara County–not all reviewers do, you know–and there’s a lot of Pinot down there.

Other than that, not too many surprises. Napa Valley dominates the above list, followed by Sonoma County and Santa Barbara County. I think we can safely say that, in terms of sheer numbers, those three areas are where the action is, although a great wine can show up anywhere. I was a little surprised, in a pleasant way, that my top Chardonnay was from Foxen. If you’d asked me, before I looked it up, I wouldn’t have guessed Foxen. Maybe something from Stonestreet, Williams Selyem, Hanzell, Lynmar, but not Foxen. However, in retrospect I shouldn’t have been surprised, because when I looked up all my Foxen Chardonnay reviews over the years, the scores run quite high. Still, something magical happened with that 2010 UU Block Chardonnay, and I’m guessing it was the vintage. I’ve tasted about 235 2010 Chardonnays so far, and excluding the cheapies, the scores are impressive, with about 12% scoring 90 or higher . But there are many more 2010 Chardonnays to come in, and they’ll be the better ones, too, because the cheapies were mostly rushed out the door in 2011.

Petite Sirah came onto my radar more than ever in 2011. It’s been there for some years, but more as a blip toward the outer edge than as something large and targeting  the middle. But there it is. Vintners have refined their style to make Petite Sirah less brawny and more elegant, although it will never be sleek or refined–but then, you wouldn’t want Petite Sirah to be, any more than you’d want Jack Black to have a sixpack.

I’m always glad when a dark horse does well. I guess you could say the Foxen was a dark horse. So was the Venge, in Cabernet, the Trione in Sauvignon Blanc, the Envy Petite Sirah and the Sanguis red Rhône. Williams Selyem, Schramsberg and Qupe certainly aren’t dark hoses, and neither is Rutherford Hill for Merlot; hell, they practically invented upscale Merlot back in the 1970s.

It was a good year for tasting, 2011 was. Lots of extraordinary wines at the top end. I expect 2012 to be a good year for tasting, and 2013, too, because 2010 is beginning to look better and better. And 2011? After so much bad press [including some here and on my Facebook page], it may turn out better than anyone thought. These last two years have certainly been the coolest in a long time, which should give us wines of lower alcohol and greater elegance and finesse. I haven’t used the word “finesse” very often over the years. I hope to be able to use it a lot more in the future, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

By the way, unless a critic tastes at least as many wines a year as I do, they can’t credibly pronounce on a vintage. If they do, they’re full of it. All they’re doing is repeating stuff they’ve read and been spoon fed, instead of giving a knowledgeable impression. That’s not journalism, it’s gossip. Worse: water carrying.

Let’s say you’re fairly educated about wine. (If you read my blog, you undoubtedly are.) I invite you over to my place for dinner and open a bottle of Lafite Rothschild. You’re suitably impressed. I decant it, then pour you a glass, telling you as the purple liquid drizzles into the glass that this is a very great Lafite, that if I scored it I would probably give it 100 points. After that buildup, you taste the wine. It’s a virtual guarantee you’re going to like it.

Now let’s say that a little while later, I offer you another glass of wine. Only this time, I tell you that it’s not very good–that I wanted you to see how my job consists, in large part, of tasting mediocre wine. Handing you the glass, I frown; you can tell by my facial expression that I’m sorry to make you drink something so bad. After that buildup, or maybe we should call it a build-down, it’s almost certain you won’t like the wine.

Now, what if I told you that both wines I gave you were the same wine? Would you be surprised? You shouldn’t be, especially if you’d come across this report about a new study out of Oxford University. Subjects inside a brain scanner were shown works of art, some of which were genuine Rembrandts and some of which were fakes. The subjects’ reactions to both pieces were identical, until they were told which pieces were fakes and which were real. In the former case (the “real” art), the revelation “raised activity in the part of the brain that deals with rewarding events, such as tasting pleasant food or winning a gamble.” In other words, the subject felt a form of pleasure. In the case of the latter (the “fake” art), “Being told a work is not by the master triggered a complex set of responses in areas of the brain involved in planning new strategies. Participants reported that when viewing a supposed fake, they tried to work out why the experts regarded it not to be genuine.” In other words, the subjects were troubled; confronted with a situation they could not fully understand, they were forced to improvise, to rationalize the discrepency.

The take home lesson of this little experiment at Oxford is a familiar one. People’s esthetic reactions to external stimuli are powerfully dependent on their expectations. They will look at a supposed Rembrandt portrait and, “knowing” that it was painted by the master, be suitably impressed. Indeed, this is why “people travel to galleries around the world to see an original painting.” Something in the knowledge that the painting is original arouses intense pleasure. It’s not so much the art work itself as that awareness that people enjoy. On the other hand, if people “know” that a painting is fake, they will experience far different, more complex and less pleasurable thoughts and emotions–even if the painting is, in fact, real.

Pretty weird, huh? Back to my opening example of offering you the Lafite. It almost doesn’t matter whether or not the Lafite is real, or just some little Sonoma County Cabernet that costs $14. It’s irrelevant. What matters, according to the Oxford study, is what you think you know about it. That, in turn, depends on what I told you–and that, in turn, has a lot to do with how much you trust me, since I’m the “expert” in wine, and you’re not.

It follows from this that blind tasting is the only objective way to come to a conclusion about wine, but something else follows, also, that isn’t generally discussed in these types of conversations: wines of a similar variety and style are more alike than not, even when their scores vary. If I show you an apple and tell you it’s a grape, you won’t believe me, even if I had a Ph.D in fruit sciences and owned an orchard and a chain of produce stores. That’s because apples and grapes are so different that anyone can tell them apart. You cannot fool anyone that an apple is a grape, or vice versa.

But if you can fool a fairly reasonable person into believing that wine “a” is Lafite and wine “b” is mediocre, when they may be the same wine (or if the case may be the opposite, that the “mediocre” wine is Lafite and the “Lafite” is the $14 Cabernet), then those wines must be more alike than not. They cannot possibly be apples and grapes: it’s more a case of apples and apples.

But wait, you say. What if the subject of any of these experiments were a trained professional? A great taster, formidable in the intricacies of wine, renowned for identifying vintages and chateaux in blind tastings, revered for his knowledge? Could that person be fooled? Probably the chances are less, but they never approach zero. As long as a person is human, that person can be fooled, sometimes spectacularly so, as we have repeatedly seen in blind tastings. I know that nothing I’ve written here will add significantly to the conversation about how to taste wine. But every little conversation advances the cause down the playing field, and besides, it’s fun to talk about this stuff. It never gets boring.

After last week’s brouhaha over Jay Miller I decided to double check what Robert Parker says about blind tasting. From “The Wine Advocate Rating System” page on his site:

“When possible all of my tastings are done in peer-group, single-blind conditions.”

You can see that the loophole here is “when possible,” but how big a loophole is it? So small you can barely squeeze a pinky? Or big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through? Well, here’s Parker on his own “exceptions to this policy”, followed by my comments:

(1) all barrel tastings

That’s cool. I’m down with that.

(2) all specific appellation tastings where at least 25 of the best estates will not submit samples for group tastings

I had to read this a couple times to understand it. I would guess this means, for example, Napa Valley Cabernet. I, personally, am never sent the wines of more than 25 Napa Cabs (Colgin, Araujo, Staglin, Screaming Eagle, etc.), and I would guess Parker isn’t, either. Perhaps he buys them, but my educated guess is that Parker actually travels to the wineries, or to local third party venues, to taste (of course, from now on it will be Galloni), and that these tastings are open. If you roll in other “specific appellations” (Bordeaux, the Northern Rhône, Burgundy), and if you assume that lots of the wineries there “will not submit samples” (do the First Growths or DRC?), then you have to also assume that Parker’s Rule #2 gives him ample leeway to taste openly, pretty much whenever he wants to.

Sodden thought: Who determines what are “the best estates”? And if you know you’re tasting one of “the best estates” wouldn’t that bias your perception of that wine?

(3) for all wines under $25

This is a pretty weird “exception to this policy.” Why should wines under $25 be held to a different standard than wines over $25? Parker doesn’t make this clear. It’s especially difficult to understand, given this statement, from his “Wine Advocate Writer Standards” page:

“In a tasting, a $10 bottle of petite chateau Pauillac should have as much of a chance as a $200 bottle of Lafite Rothschild or Latour.”

Truer words never were spoken! But how can that $10 petite chateau wine have “as much of a chance” if it’s tasted openly? Why not sneak it into a blind tasting against Second, Third and Fourth Growths? That would be giving it “as much of a chance” to earn a high score. If Parker (or anybody else) is staring at the label (and, even worse, at the tech sheet)–and particularly, if he’s sitting down to an open tasting of petite chateau wines–isn’t it possible, and even likely, that his mind is being influenced by knowledge of what he’s tasting? I should think so. “These are just petite chateaux, so they can’t possibly be very good. Everybody knows that,” is how the mentation would go.

Okay, back to blind tasting. Here’s Parker’s guideline (on the Writer Standards page) for “The Other Wine Advocate / eRobertParker.com Wine Critics”:

“All tastings…are done under both blind and non-blind conditions…”.

It’s curious that on this very long page, which is practically an essay, this is the only mention of blind tasting. You would think Parker would focus much more deeply and candidly on this topic, since it’s really at the heart of everything he (and we) do. But no–just this slapdash little reference. And even it is unsatisfactory. “Both blind and non-blind”….How? When? Why? Under what circumstances? So this looks to me like another loophole, as big as the “when possible” loophole mentioned above.

Loopholes are funny things. Everybody uses them. Most of the time, it doesn’t really matter. We give ourselves just enough wriggle room so that, if we have to break a promise, we can say, “Well, I didn’t swear on a stack of Bibles, did I?” But sometimes it does matter. I should think in the case of a wine writer it would be obligatory to have a little note beside every review indicating how the wine was reviewed, and where. In a blind, big regional tasting? Individually and openly, at the winery, with the proprietor? These things matter. People have the right to know. We’ll never do away with loopholes, but we can make them so tiny that only a pinky can fit through.

Twitter as washing dishes

This little snippet from Reuters will probably pass unnoticed, but it’s really terribly interesting and relevant.

“Old media executives too busy, private for Twitter,” the headline says. Go ahead, take 2 minutes and read it.

Any one of the Twitter-phobic quotes could apply to me. My critique of Twitter runs along these lines:

- I’m busy enough with everything else, so I don’t have the actual or mental time to follow a constantly changing Twitter feed.
- Twitter is a very limited form of communication. I’m a writer. I like crafting phrases, sentences, paragraphs. Twitter doesn’t let me do that. This blog does. So does Facebook, to a lesser degree. Not Twitter.
- Most of what I see on Twitter is so superficial as to be ridiculous. I don’t wish to join the chattering classes who apparently have too much time on their hands.

I will gladly concede Twitter’s importance. When students are rioting in Tahrir Square, Twitter gets the news up first. It’s the most awesome media ever invented for instantaneous sharing of breaking events, complete with video. That is truly historic. But I don’t have to tweet in order to “get” Twitter. As one advertising guy said, in a delicious quote, “I understand how to wash dishes. I don’t do it regularly.”

I also understand why celebrities like Twitter. If you’re Lady Gaga, it’s a great way to reach out to your fans and keep them bonded to you (although Aston Kucher apparently grew bored with it). But I’m not a celebrity and I don’t think anyone cares about my every move.

I’ve been predicting a Twitter meltdown for years now. I just don’t think it has legs–at least, to continue its explosive growth. I don’t think it’s just “old media executives” who can’t embrace Twitter. More and more people are discovering that actually living in the real world is better than constantly tweeting to a bunch of “followers” you don’t even know. It’s called “get a life,” and if you’re living on Twitter, you don’t have one.

Robert Lawrence Balzar has died

I’m sure that a younger generation never heard of him, and that’s fine. But he went where no American had gone before, and helped launch the modern era of wine criticism, especially in California. It’s important for today’s new crop of wine writers and bloggers to understand that this stuff didn’t just happen sui generis, like Athena springing full-blown from the brow of Zeus. There are roots. Roots are important. Balzar was roots.

That Jay Miller thing

I’ve refrained from writing about the Jay Miller “payola” allegations in Spain, not through any kindness of heart on my part, but because I don’t know the facts, don’t have the time to dig, and refuse to speculate on matters of which I’m fundamentally ignorant.

But I did read this report yesterday, which contained an interesting paraphrase and quote from Parker himself:

…with Parker referencing the tediousness of tasting mediocre wines that can “burn out the best of us…”

That caught my eye, and I want to explore some thoughts of my own, which aren’t entirely clear even to me. I do taste a great deal of mediocre wine. Vast quantities, you might say, a tsunami of boring wine that comes in every day. It is tedious, and I have wondered what effect this has on my palate. Parker suggests tasting tedious wines can “burn out” the taster. This is a scary thought, because the worst thing that can happen to any professional is to be burned out.

I’ve often fantasized of tasting only the great wines of California, but, of course, that’s impossible. A popular, consumer wine magazine needs to review as widely as possible, and that necessarily involves tasting mediocre wines as well as great ones. Still, I’m of two minds here. I like the fact that I can review inexpensive wines, because that’s what most people can afford, and I feel a great sense of duty toward the average consumer, who’s just looking for a decent everyday bottle. I don’t think Parker has that same motive. He’s more geared to the high-end collector/consumer.

At the same time, I do think that tasting mediocre wines can have a dulling effect on the palate, even for “the best of us.” How do I counter-balance this nefarious effect? I have a method, but as you’ll see, it’s not perfect. I try to arrange daily flights so that (let’s say) inexpensive California reds are tasted only against each other, while another flight might feature only Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons, most of which are necessarily expensive.

Every so often, I’ll throw a ringer into a flight: a cheap wine with a bunch of $100 Cabs, or a $100 Cab with a bunch of cheapos. I acknowledge that my system has flaws, but so does every other system in the world. I also maintain excellent health, eat right, work out religiously, keep my weight under control and get plenty of sleep. Those things help to keep me sharp and prevent palate burnout. But palate burnout always must be something the professional taster guards against.

It’s been a while since I explained exactly how I taste wines formally for review. This is always an important topic, since how you experience a wine has a powerful impact on your impressions of it.

When I first started tasting wine–just for myself, years before anyone paid me to do it–I would just taste it openly, i.e., with the bottle in front of me as I made my notes in my Tasting Diary. I can’t remember if I’d heard of blind tasting (much more on that later). If I had, it didn’t impress me enough to actually put the wine in a bag, not that that would have mattered anyway, because back then, I was tasting only one wine at a time. Putting it in a bag wouldn’t have prevented me from knowing it was an Almaden 1980 Cabernet Sauvignon from Monterey County!

But I didn’t think there was any problem knowing what I was tasting. In fact, it didn’t seem to make sense not to. So I tasted openly for years, before I was hired by Wine Enthusiast and expected to adhere to the magazine’s tasting protocol: all wine is tasted blind.

So that’s how I do it nowadays. However, I don’t taste double blind, but only single blind. Double is where you have no idea what the wine is, except its color. Single is where you have some knowledge of what you’re drinking–for instance, “These are all Cabernet Sauvignons.” The idea behind this is that any knowledge you have of the wine, even to the smallest degree, will influence your perception of it.

Surely there is truth to this reasoning. If I know I’m tasting First Growth Bordeaux, then I know (expect, anticipate, believe) that I am tasting great wine, and that expectation/belief will have a huge influence on my experience. Right? The same psychological bias would apply when I know that I’m tasting wines in a box. Some part of my brain would “know” that the wine could not possibly be great–that the most I could expect would be to have a satisfactory, perhaps even a pleasant wine. And so it would be.

I taste single blind out of necessity. I set up my own tastings at home. Therefore, I know what the 12-15 wines a day are. I attempt to taste like with like. One day it might be newly released Pinot Noirs. Another day might be devoted to new Napa Cabernets. It’s not always possible, for logistical reasons, for me to have pure flights of the same variety or type, however, so I’ll sometimes have a “mixed flight”: an assortment of reds such as Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and field blends. I reason to myself that this kind of flight is acceptable, because the wines are broadly similar: brawny, spicy, full-bodied, rustic. I would never, though, include a Cabernet or a Pinot Noir is such a “mixed” flight. These noble varieties deserve to be tasted alongside their peers.

The bottles are always in brown paper bags. At the time I pour, I honestly do not know which is which. There is a single exception: if one bottle is particularly distinctive from all the others, then I know what the wine is. For example, Shafer puts their Hillside Select in a bottle that weighs about 10 pounds! Not really, but it’s heavy and thick, and most of the time it will be immediately noticeable in its bag. Under that circumstance, which doesn’t happen too often, all I can do is be as objective as I can be.

But the truth is, knowing what the wine is can be a double edged sword. Think about it. If I know it’s Shafer Hillside Select (a wine I’ve given huge scores to over the years), then, yes, on some level my anticipation is piqued. But what if the wine isn’t quite as fabulous as I expect it to be? Then there can be a reverse reaction: instead of giving it a high score because I know it’s Shafer Hillside Select, I might demote it as a disappointment. So while I respect the logic behind blind tasting, I’m also aware of its limits.

After I’ve formed my impression of the wine and settled on a numerical score in my mind, I carry the glass and bottle to my desk, where I enter everything into the computer. It’s necessary to bring the bottle, because the data that goes into the computer must correspond precisely with what the label says, since that’s what the consumer sees. You’d be amazed at how much the paperwork accompanying a submission can vary from what’s on the label. Single vineyard designations on paperwork frequently do not appear anywhere on the label. A “Napa Valley” appellation on the paperwork is magically transformed into a “California” appellation on the label. And so on. So double-checking the label at the last moment is critical in order to be accurate.

Finally, there’s the text. As I said, I’ve already decided on the number. But it’s when I’m sitting at the computer, doing the text of the review, that writerly issues come into play. There are no guidelines for text, except that there should be a rational correlation between the number and the words. A text that reads “Fabulous, first growth quality, complex and ageworthy” obviously should be accompanied by a high score. Given that I’m limited to about 50 words per review, at the most, writing these things turns into the practice of haiku. You have to say a lot with just a few words. Fortunately, this isn’t hard for me, since I’ve been doing it for a long time and have gotten the hang of it.

When I’m finished tasting I generally pour the remains of the bottle down the drain before washing the bottle twice, in order to prevent fruit flies from my recycling space. When people hear that I pour expensive wines down the drain, they’re appalled, and often ask if they can take it off my hands. I’d like to accommodate, but I don’t really want these kinds of dependency relationships from developing. I do often box up what we call “recorks” for Chuck, my intern, who’s studying for the WSET. That gives him something even I don’t have: the benefit of seeing how an opened bottle evolves over a day or two.

I like tasting wine. I’ve probably tasted close to 100,000 over the years. You might think it would be boring, but it never is. There’s always a sense of venturing into the unknown. I wish I had the time to taste a greater range of the world’s wines than the [mostly] California wines I review, but I don’t. If there’s one country I wish I could study, it’s Italy. But I’ll leave that to Wine Enthusiast’s talented Rome editor, Monica Larner.