People like me who do a lot of tasting as part of our jobs develop some peculiar habits and rituals. But they’re particular to their times and places. For instance, when I do large (40 or 50-plus) tastings on the road, I like to start early in the morning, when I’m freshest. Big tastings are physically strenuous. I once did one in Santa Barbara County near the end of a long day, after I’d already visited and tasted at a couple of wineries, and it was exhausting. Never again. Big road tastings will now start at 10 a.m. or so.

I also, when I’m on the road at these large tastings, ask the people who arrange them for me to start with white wines, then transition through the lighter reds into the heavier ones, like Cabernet Sauvignon. That is the traditional way taught in so many books.

But it’s weird, because when I taste at home, I never start with whites. I like to start with reds. And I don’t begin in the morning, I wait until mid-afternoon. Why do I prefer to start with whites on the road and reds at home? Why do I taste at different times? I don’t know. It’s irrational, as so many of our rituals are. It’s extremely important for a professional wine taster to be comfortable with his or her protocol, and this is what makes me feel comfortable.

I like to mix up my wines in flights. I might include a very expensive wine with a super-cheap one, be it Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon or whatever. The more expensive wines usually score higher, but not always, and I take pleasure in advocating a $20 or $15 wine that’s as good as a $50 or $80 one. That’s more common these days than it used to be: the recession is forcing some famous wineries to dump their grapes or wine on the market, making these great days for negociants and for wine lovers.

Another tasting ritual I have is to wash every used bottle twice before recycling. (I usually pour the remainder down the drain after taking my tasting portion.) Double-washing the bottles is the only way to avoid fruit flies. Any environment that contains a lot of wine inevitably attracts fruit flies in the summertime, and it’s unpleasant to have them flying around. Hence the bottle washing. Then there’s the breaking down of the cardboard boxes and recycling them, one of the less glamorous aspects of being a wine critic. I think I know every single variation on cardboard wine boxes that exists. There’s the single pack, the double, the triple, the four-pack, the six-pack and the case pack. Each comes in different designs and styles. I hate styrofoam, and I hate boxes that are sealed with metal clasps, which can cut the fingers. Yes, I’ve shed blood for this gig.

I do most of my reviewing at my desk, which is next to my patio deck, which looks out onto my street which contains many trees of different kinds: redwood, flowering magnolia, Doug fir, pine, plum. After arriving at  a score and a general type of review in my mind, I’ll often sit in my desk chair, stick the tip of my right thumbnail between my front teeth, and stare out the window, looking at but not really seeing the trees, framing my review words with more accuracy. The human brain is an amazing thing. I think of mine as a kind of vast Rolodex, with every word, image, picture, experience and sensation I’ve ever had stored there. When I’m trying to find the right way to express the wine’s style and quality, it’s like flipping through that Rolodex. Sometimes–not often–I’ll use the dictionary, if I can’t come up with just the right term. But I don’t want to get too esoteric in my choice of review words. If anything, over the years I’ve adopted Thoreau’s maxim, from Walden: Simplify, simplify.

The final ritual following my tasting is to wash the glasses. I never wash them in a machine because I’m afraid they’ll break. I wash them by hand, carefully, lovingly. A good glass is a taster’s friend. I don’t like those little sommelier tasting glasses, although I own some. I prefer a big, roomy bowl. I use the same glasses for everything, red and white, although I use flutes for sparkling wine. I know some tasters who prefer a red glass and a white glass, but I want everything to be the same, all the time. That’s another ritual, and probably attests to a little OCD on my part.

Tomorrow I’ll be tasting at Screaming Eagle and Harlan/BOND. They’re quite close to each other, both in Oakville, although SE’s on the Silverado Trail and Harlan’s up in the Mayacamas foothills. I won’t be reviewing the wines formally for Wine Enthusiast because the tasting won’t be blind, but it will be an enjoyable and educational experience nonetheless. It’s just my luck that, after the mildest, driest winter we’ve had in years, heavy rain is moving in that will be at its height tomorrow, which means I’ll have to drive up and down some of the most crowded highways in California during a big, windy storm. I have no rituals to deal with that, except to drive extra carefully and hope some idiot doesn’t spoil my day.

I’m always surprised by how negative the reaction of some people is to the field of wine writing/journalism/reviewing. If you read through the “Comments” section from yesterday’s blog, you’ll see what I mean. Why do these people get so upset to the point of almost losing their minds?

I wrote “wine writing/journalism/reviewing” on purpose, because a “wine writer” does all three. There’s a difference, you know, although the critics of wine reviewing tend to conveniently overlook it, preferring instead to focus on the 100-point system and what they perceive as the critic’s “elitism.” So let me explain to these people, most of whom are not legitimate wine writers as far as I can tell, just what the job entails.

Wine writing: I define this is the artistic or esthetic side. It’s what I tried to do in my first book, A Wine Journey along the Russian River, and, to some extent, what I try to do here on the blog. It’s literature, nicely defined in my Webster’s as “writings considered as having permanent value [and] excellence.” When you do “literature”  you really exercise the art of writing. It borrows from literature you’ve loved in the past (my writing is heavily indebted to Churchill but also will dip its toe into whatever book I fancy at the moment. I went through a Hemingway phase of short, snappy sentences). But you also develop your own style.

Wine journalism: This is good, old-fashioned reporting. You interview somebody, or do research on something, then you write it up, answering all those “w” questions: who, what, when, why, where (and, in wine, “how” and “how much?”). Journalism is not literature: it’s too truncated, too formulaic, which is why so many journalists like to stretch their wings and try actual literature.

Wine reviewing: Well, we all know what that is. It’s one of the things I do and in fact pays most of my bills.

I’ve never met an actual, employed wine reviewer who was upset by wine reviewers, or who thought that the act of wine reviewing somehow is elitist or evil or arrogant or condescending or any of the other epithetical terms anti-reviewers toss around. Oh, before you object that there are people in the blogosphere and in the social media who review wine but who criticize wine reviewers (there are), I’ll add that, as wine reviewers, they’re not particularly influential. I mean, anyone can scratch out some wine reviews and put them up on a blog, but it’s the proverbial tree falling in a forest with no one around: Does anyone know or care? There is some jealousy out there, on the part of the have-nots for the haves.

Ambitious wine writers who haven’t yet made it in their chosen career would do well to put aside reviewing and take up wine writing and wine journalism, in the sense I described above. I ask them: When’s the last time you wrote something that glowed, that you were proud of? When’s the last time you really had to dig for a story, chase down the facts, get people to say things they didn’t want to, go through archives, search through the indexes of old books, spend an hour on Google to find a specific quote, make a scientist explain something in plain English, walk through the woods to hear what walking through the woods sounds like, lie on your stomach on the forest floor and bury your face in the dead leaves and dirt to smell what it smells like, transcribe a long tape, look through an almanac, use a calculator to figure out the rate of increase or decline of a particular grape variety in a particular region…I could go on all day. I do all of those things, too, not just rate wines, and all of those things make me a better wine reviewer, in the mysterious alchemy of that task. Antonio Galloni expressed it well when I talked with him the other week: We live surrounded by wine, by the lore of wine, by its traditions, by the business of wine, in the culture of wine. It fills our brains as it fills our bellies. When we’re not tasting it–not reviewing–we’re thinking about it, about the people who make and sell and write about it, about the next story we’re working on, the deadline, about the question we forgot to ask during that interview, about what time to leave for tomorrow’s appointment to avoid rush hour, and what time to try to get home so we can do a flight. And inbetween everything else, we’re going back and re-reading that draft, refining it, throwing out a clunky phrasing for a more pleasing one, replacing a misleading adjective with the correct one, and maybe even buying a Meyer lemon to see how it smells and tastes different from an ordinary lemon. Yes, all of those things. And reviewing, too.

I wasn’t going to write about this study when I first read about it 2 weeks ago. My first impression was that it was really stupid, and didn’t seem worth writing about. But it’s gained a lot of traction, not just in wine blogs but the national media and overseas as well. So it’s time to add my two cents.

To summarize the study: “Wine experts’ recommendations are of no use to most drinkers because their [i.e. 'most drinkers'] palates are not sophisticated enough to appreciate the subtle flavours,” as the subhead of The Telegraph [London] put it. “The fundamental taste ability of an expert is different,” explained one of the study’s authors, John Hayes, which surely is incontrovertible. But then he extrapolated from that a statement that is wildly misleading, and fails to grasp the essential truth of why people listen to experts in the first place: “And, if an expert’s ability to taste is different from the rest of us, should we be listening to their recommendations?”

Hayes may be a college professor, but he doesn’t understand the role of experts in a complex consumer culture. The consumer is overwhelmed with choice. Want bread? A hundred brands. A car? Scores of manufacturers and models. A DVD player? Smart phone? Even salt now comes in a range of colors and salinity. Going to the movies this Saturday night? There’s probably 50 different flicks playing within ten miles of my house. And don’t even get me started about wine. Thousands of bonded wineries in the U.S. alone, not to mention imports, and most of those wineries produce a whole bunch of different wines, sometimes even of the same variety.

This is where experts come in. Experts are modern-day America’s gurus, shamans and soothsayers. We read the entrails of the slain beast and interpret them. This isn’t in a religious or spiritual sense, obviously; but the first humans “invented” priests because they needed somebody to interpret the vast, confusing world around them and help guide them through it. Religion evolved from that.

If the world of our primitive ancestors was confusing, ours is beyond confusing. So we too have “priests” to help us get through without falling or failing or getting hurt or (in this case) spending money on junk. We read or listen to film critics we trust because we don’t want to shell out ten bucks on a piece of crap. (At least, I don’t.) We trust restaurant critics because if we’re going to eat out, we want to be as assured as we can be in advance that we’re going to like the place. And, Mr. Hayes, people listen to wine critics because they want and need all the help they can get in making that selection.

The reason we trust critics, be they film, restaurant or wine, is precisely because “their fundamental ability is different.” Duh! If an expert’s ability in his or her field isn’t different and better than everybody else’s, he wouldn’t be much of an expert, would he? And nobody would listen to him. So to say that “We shouldn’t be listening to a wine critic’s recommendations because his ability is different from ours” not only misses the entire point, it’s beyond dumb.

I like smart people and unlike some politicians these days I don’t think it’s snobby to go to college. But I do think that some of the “studies” I hear coming out of our institutions of higher education are pretty weird. There’s also a phenomenon in the news business where, if you put out a study, chances are it’s going to get a lot of articles written about it. News organizations have an insatiable appetite for content. I’m sure Professor Hayes knew his study would be spread around the English-speaking world for 15 minutes or so. Fine, but I would hate to think that anyone is going to take home the implied message that “A study proves that the evaluations of experts are meaningless and their word is no better than yours or anyone else’s.” That’s true in the strict moral sense (you’re entitled to your beliefs) but it’s not true if you think that a non-expert’s evaluation of a wine is as good as an expert’s. It’s not. We do live in a culture that increasingly questions the concept of “expert” as elitist, and to some extent I share that view. But when it comes to things like movies, cars, restaurants and electronic toys, I want and need guidance when I spend my hard-earned cash. I know I’m not an expert in those things and I respect the opinions of people who are. And the public should trust the opinions of people who write about wine. Well, some wine writers, anyway; not all.

Hey, I’m used to getting some tough reaction from wineries over my scores, but really, this is the most violent blowback I ever got. I’m not going to identify the emailer, but you can determine for yourself if it’s psycho talk. Read it, then I’ll continue with my remarks.

A Small Man in Many Ways

S-tupid, small minded
T-atooed like a fool
E-vil
V-ile
E-rectile inversion, get the pump
H-omosapien, poor excuse for one
E-xtra insincere
I-gnoramous, immature
M-ean, will someday meet his maker like all the rest of us but how will he explain the…
O-ff putting, odorous, bullshit he feeds people, his malicious intent reeks
F-oul  and…
F-ake

The sender followed this up with a long email the next day. It was laced with obscenities and sexual innuendo. Here’s a taste: “FUCK YOU, YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT.”

What happened was, I gave one of this winery’s wines a score they didn’t like (84). This evidently led to a situation with one of their distributors that was not in their favor. The writer also disliked the text part of my review. “The written portion of your reviews reveal your lack of tact, lack of poise and expose you as a bully,” she wrote.

I want to say something here about my written reviews. I taste a lot of wine that is mediocre and some that is outright bad. Long ago, I developed a philosophy I’ve hewed to for years. It goes something like this: If a wine is mediocre, give it the appropriate numerical rating, but write the review up in more positive terms, for the sake of compassion. There’s no sense kicking a man when he’s already down on the ground. There’s always a way to say something critical in a kind way, as opposed to being downright nasty.

Some other parts of the email:

Most of the wines submitted to you had received gold medals Do you expect me to be impressed that a wine got a gold medal someplace? Should that make me think twice about my impression of it?

[A friend] said:  Wow, what beef does he have with ___ Winery? I have no beef with any winery. Wine reviewing isn’t personal.

You’re one of those fame chasers, a popularity seeker Actually, it’s just the opposite. Ask around to find out how little I enjoy “fame.”

Your writing is mediocre at best. Now, that is below the belt! Give me credit at least for being a good writer, even if you don’t like what I say!

People are your ‘friends’ because they’re afraid of you I don’t know if she means my Facebook friends, or my actual friends. Anyway, if some people are afraid of me, there’s not a thing I can do about it. I tell them not to be. I hope no one is. I don’t know why they would be. I encourage people to call, email, whatever, and I tell them not to apologize for interrupting me, etc. When I’m on the road, I don’t throw any weight around. There’s no reason to be afraid of me. I try my best to let everyone know that I’m just this guy living in Oakland who’s paid to write about wine.

[You’re] just trying to get a free meal OMG! I hope all the winemakers and public relations people who know this isn’t true will write in! In the beginning, yes, I did accept every invitation to lunch or dinner. That was 20 years ago. The novelty wore off quickly. I go to about 10 lunches a year, max, and maybe half as many dinners. I do it for work, not because I want a free meal.

It’s funny how the writer uses the word “little” so much in both her emails. Yes, I’m short. So what? Do we have to resort to ad hominem attacks? She also called me “a trust fund type.” That’s a laugh, as my CPA will tell you. I’m “a bloodsucker.” An “oddity.” I “aspire to be accepted by the elitist pigs.” Really? Tell that to my friends in Occupy Oakland.

Okay, the emailer had to get it off her chest. I feel her pain. I need to vent, too, when stuff happens to me that I think is unfair. But really, have we descended so far down the etiquette chain that it’s now considered appropriate to send crap like this?

It’s not that I’m uninterested in the replacement of Robert Parker by his protege, Anotonio Galloni, in reviewing California wines. I am interested. If Jim Laube gave up California, I’d be interested in that, too. If I gave up California, or rather my coastal part of it (I happily share the rest of the state with Virginie Boone), I assume that would be a fairly significant story for the wine press to cover. However, what I have no interest in is what some of my fellow wine bloggers are doing: treating this Galloni thing as some sort of epochal shift that’s making History, like a Presidential election. They’re interpreting every move Galloni makes, every word he writes, with the mesmerized fascination of a Kremlinologist, or a Vatican watcher trying to make sense of some newly elected Pope, or the scrutiny of a Supreme Court reporter discerning which way a new appointee leans.

People, get a grip! Galloni is not the new Pope! He’s a nice-looking dude covering California wine, the new kid in town. We should look forward to welcoming him to the Golden State, if we get the opportunity to meet him, as we never did with Parker, who traveled here as though he were Mick Jagger. But he’s just another one of us, no more or less important than anyone else.

Yet I have read, with astonishment and bemusement, the fevered speculations of certain wine bloggers in covering Antonio’s first Cali reviews. Here’s Terroirist, deconstructing them as if they contained clues to the existence of life on Mars. Here’s Blake Gray, breathlessly combing through the scores, like a mathematician in search of the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem. Here’s Alder Yarrow, admittedly a little less discombobulated, but still trying to have it both ways by arguing that–while Galloni’s coming means “nothing”–he’s going to headline it anyway.

As Macbeth might have said of all this hyperventilated reportage, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Not that I am calling the three aforementioned fine bloggers idiots! Highest respects! Blog on, brothers! But we bloggers collectively have got to get past the pall that Parker/Wine Advocate threw on the California wine scene for too long–one that the industry accepted too blithely. It was unhealthy, a dark, smothering cloud of choking soot that kept California wine from evolving normally. What we need in California, as the state and the country emerge from the Recession, is a free, fair, open conversation about California wine: what it is, what it isn’t, what it should be, what it could be, if only it were allowed to develop unimpaired, in a free market. Unimpaired is exactly what it wasn’t during the Parker era. One voice, for the most part, defined reality, thus paralyzing the free market into a talibaneque stylistic monopoly.

I was hopeful, when I heard of Parker’s impending retirement from my state, that multiple voices could be heard. But what happens when multiple voices now conspire to all talk about the same thing? Same old same old: The Wine Advocate, written by whomever, continues to dominate the chitchat.

You won’t find me deciphering Galloni. I don’t care what he says. I didn’t read Parker and I won’t read A.G. It’s not that I’m ruling out any mention of Galloni forever. I’ll write about him on an as-needed basis, the same way I’ll write about Jon Bonné or Jordan Mackay or Charlie Olken or Laube or Joe Blow, if I feel like it. But I’m not going to obsess on Galloni any more than I will on 1WineDude. (Happy new year, Joe!)

Make no mistake, the old order in California is as dead as 2011. If it was bizarre for bloggers to suffer from Parker Obsessive Disease, it’s even weirder for them to come down with a self-inflicted case of Galloni Obsessive Disease. So bloggers, if you want to take the cure, just let Dr. Steve know. He’s here to help you.

Every time the holidays roll around, This Critic is flooded with requests from perplexed readers on how to choose wines for the Christmas, Hanukah, Kwaanza or Solstice table! It can be overwhelming for ordinary people, with all the choices out there, and not knowing what to believe! Which is why I’m glad to offer my expert advice.

You’d be surprised at the range of things people ask about. For example, here’s a question from Mrs. A., of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “Dear Mr. Wine Critic, we’re having my in-laws over for supper this Christmas, and I just don’t know what to do! My husband, Frank, says beer is fine (he’s a Pabst man), but I feel that, with something as fancy as meat loaf, we should have wine. Please tell me what kind.”

Don’t you feel Mrs. A.’s pain? Here’s my answer. “Dear Mrs. A., you have hit the nail l on the head! Meat loaf is indeed a very special entrée, especially if it’s made with a nice ketchup topping. I would recommend Two Buck Chuck with that. It’s actually in a bottle with a cork! That should impress your guests.”

Here’s another one, this time from Anchorage, Alaska. “Hey there, Wine Critic Guy, we’re having the usual feast with all the trimmin’s for Xmas. Up here, that includes fried blubber, a trad fave. But what kind of wine goes with it? [signed] Blubber Dude” “Dear Blubber Dude: I’d recommend you eat a bottle of Quaaludes, and then you won’t care what you drink. In fact, you won’t be drinking anything, because you’ll be in a coma for the next six months. But look at it this way: at least you won’t have to deal with your lousy winters!”

Then there’s this plaintive question from Shirley W., of Chillicothe, Ohio. “Dear Wine Critic, I’m a housewife, and my husband lost his job at the lathe factory 2 years ago and hasnt worked since.  We’re living on our tiny savings that are just about dipleted.  My question is, the holidays is a time to splurge, but we just don’t have the money!!! So, I guess I’m asking, is it O.K. to steal a nice bottle of wine, just this one time a year?”

Dear Shirley W., of course it is! Why would you even ask, when the answer is so obvious? And not just this time of year; every day is the right time to shoplift that special bottle. So go out and Occupy that Wine Store!!! While you’re at it, can you stop by your local jewelry store and pick me up a nice Rolex? I like the Men’s Daytona Automatic Chronograph, with the Meteorite Dial. Pretend you’re having a heart attack, and while the clerk is freaking out, you can slip it into your pocket, and then suddenly recover.

“Dear Mr. Wine Critic, I’m invited to a holiday meal in which the hosts are in the process of getting divorced. He likes red wine, especially Bordeaux. She likes a nice, sweet Moscato. What should I bring? [signed] Friend of Fighting Friends”

Dear FOFF, this situation arose during my recent visit to China. I solved it by mixing a little Moscato in with some Lafite and calling it “Mosceaux.”™

“Hey critic, who the f**k do you think you are, telling everybody what to do, when you dont know sh*t from shinola? Why dont you go out and get yourself a real job like the rest of us? [signed] Factory Joe.” Dear Factory Joe, I actually don’t know how to do anything else. But if I ever learn how to weld, I’ll see you down on the factory floor! Meanwhile, for the holidays, I recommend you and the Missus enjoy a nice bottle of Harlan ‘01. If you can’t find any where you live, let me know, and I’ll intervene personally with Bill. I suggest drinking it with a Kobe beef filet made from real Japanese Wagyu, not that inferior Texas crap. Give the wine a brief decant, preferably in a Riedel “Black Tie” (model #4100/23). No sauce on the steak, puh-leeze, just a little Fleur de Sel and some Surinamese black pepper, ground in a Peugeot pepper mill with a black mahogany base. And, of course, you’ll want to drink the wine in a Riedel Sommeliers Bordeaux glass. If you follow my instructions carefully, I believe you shall experience 100 perfect points of holiday bliss! Please accept my very best wishes for a safe, happy Christmas/Hanukah/Kwaanza or Solstice Ceremony, and I’ll see you out on the wine trail in 2012! [signed] The Wine Critic!