Any article with the headline Time to sex up wine is going to get my attention!

That’s how Lewis Perdue’s Wine Industry Insight Daily News Fetch put it last week, in reporting on an article in Harpers’ on a Spanish M.W., Pancho Campo, who told a Hong Kong [where else?] audience that “wine’s image should be ‘simple and sexy’.”

Here are some of the money quotes from Señor Campo’s speech: “The biggest problem of the next generation is that we are losing millennial consumers [aged between 18 and 25]…Too often young people prefer to drink beer or spirits because they think that wine is too expensive and snobby.” These hot-blooded young things “want their first experience of wine [to be] exciting and sexy.”

Well, who doesn’t? I suppose an 18-year old’s first experience with a bottle of sweet Moscato, in the back seat of a car with an ardent love partner, would be exciting and sexy. No wine glasses required, just tippling straight from the noggin so to speak, maybe spilling a little here and there, but hey! you can always lick it up and off…

But I digress!

Seriously, Pablo is just advancing the latest installation of the “wine for dummies” argument, according to which we [writers, critics, snobby sommeliers, bass-ackwards merchants and winemakers themselves] have made wine hopelessly complicated and snooty for the average young person. In fact, here’s the Harpers’ article’s lead paragraph, by their writer, Helen Arnold, who, I imagine, felt she was paraphrasing what Pablo meant to say:

“Besuited fat old men with black teeth droning on about malolactic fermentation is the last thing the wine industry needs if it wants to educate and attract younger consumers.”

Wow. Is she referencing me? I do talk about malolactic fermentation, I’m afraid (although I don’t believe I drone on), and I suppose I am considered “old” in relation to the Millennials. But I emphatically reject the notion that I am “besuited”!!! Ms. Arnold, I do not even own a suit! Hell, there’s only four or five days a year when I deign to put on a sport jacket. And “black teeth”? Mine aren’t, thank you, although I have often seen purple-stained teeth, especially after a Petite Sirah tasting.

And I am not fat. But I concede Ms. Arnold’s point that many years in the wine and food writing biz can pack on the pounds! Which is why I hit the gym everyday, about the only advice I would give to novice wine writers.

I sometimes sigh when I see this anti-intellectual streak that runs through wine writing like a vein of sludge in Alberta shale. Even Joe Roberts, at 1WineDude, taps into it, in his header: Serious Wine Talk for the not so serious drinker. Joe, at least, tries to have it both ways: he wants to play at the level of the professional critic, yet at the same time reassure his readers that he will dumb his knowledge down, lest he wade into swamps of malolactic miasma and drag them along with him. (Don’t get me wrong, I know what Joe’s trying to do, and I respect it. I just am predicting his shtick will change and get more “knowledge-y,” the older he gets.)

I know a lot of 18-25 year olds, and while I’m sure they think about sex a lot, it’s an insult to suggest that’s all they care about. They have pre-frontal lobes, too, and are concerned with knowledge, wisdom, spirituality and all sorts of other good things. They want to learn more about wine (assuming they like it to begin with), and they don’t want to be pandered to, the way beer and spirits (especially cognac) manufacturers do, by throwing the possibility of sex in their faces if only they’d buy the right booze. Far from finding a “simple and sexy” message for young people, wine should show them that a better, more meaningful life awaits when they graduate from chug-a-lug to the true intelligent appreciation of the world’s oldest and finest beverage.

Reading Men’s magazine’s list of the “Top 10 up-and-coming wine regions” and not seeing California on the list made me think, “Holy cow! California is no longer a new wine region but an old one!”

It startled me. I’m so used to thinking of everything in California as new: new cities, new citizens, new suburbs, new malls, new parks, new restaurants, new roads, new martini recipes, new ethnic cuisines, new ways of organizing society–the state itself is a State of Mind of Newness in all its exciting configurations, and has been for 150 years.

But California, evidently, is no longer considered a new wine region. Old, old, old! It’s the expletive word of American demographics. Nobody wants to be old in a youth-oriented culture, least of all a wine region whose appeal always has been that it is the refreshing alternative to stale Old Europe.

Can it be true? Is California really (what’s the opposite of up-and-coming?) a down-and-going wine region?

Let’s consider the facts. California’s wine industry dates from roughly the middle of the nineteenth century. (I know purists will argue it’s older than that, but the point is moot.) From that perspective, it’s one of the newer wine regions, compared certainly to Europe. But really, California as an important and emerging wine region dates only to the 1960s and 1970s, when the boutique winery movement began. So California’s wine region really is as new as a freshly minted coin–certainly far younger than Austria, South and South West France, Portugal, Galicia, Jerez and Italy, all of which appear on the Men’s magazine list.

Even Israel, Argentina, South Africa and Chile are certainly no newer than California, in terms of a wine industry. So we have to ask the question from a different perspective: When Men’s refers to “up-and-coming” wine regions, they must be doing so reputationally, not historically. In other words, Men’s is suggesting that California has become a little boring, while these other regions are exciting.

Why would Men’s come to this conclusion? Let’s dig. The editor of the piece, Paul Casciato, is an editor for Reuters, the British news agency. He is a Brit. The English long have had “airs” against the California wine industry. Paul’s specific title is Lifestyle Editor. He covered, for instance, last Spring’s Royal Wedding of Wills and Kate, and has written about the decreasing weight of ladies’ handbags and how middle-aged people “are the most likely to look for love online,” so we can conclude that he is not a serious wine journalist.

This is not to imply that the ten regions on Paul’s list do not produce excellent wine. But readers should understand a possible back story here, which is that publishers and editors love asking their writers to come up with Top Ten lists. They do it all the time. (Just look at a women’s magazine, like Oprah.) Readers love Top Ten lists (or, at least, the publishers and editors think they do). Crafting a Top Ten list isn’t hard. You can make a game out of it, like the old Mad Libs word game:

First, write a sentence that begins: “Here are the Ten…

Then choose an adjective: sexiest, ugliest, most expensive, weirdest, worst, best, likeliest, stupidest, oldest, rarest, most fun, most unusual, cheapest, funniest, most shocking…etc.

followed by a noun [singular or collective]: wines, travel destinations, places to live, fashion accessories, colleges, sports, cities, politicians, breakfast foods, tropical resorts, talk show hosts, wine writers…etc.

Then make an arbitrary headline: HERE ARE THE TEN UGLIEST TALK SHOW HOSTS or HERE ARE THE TEN STUPIDEST WINE WRITERS, and bingo! You’ve got a cover story in Men’s magazine!

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.

This question’s been in my mind for a long time. I think that when people are confused about what they should or shouldn’t do or like, in this information-overloaded, sensorily-saturated culture, they look to the authority of others to tell them. You want to go to the movies on Friday night, but there are 18 flicks playing at the theatres in your city. How to decide? Go to Rotten Tomatoes. If Roger Ebert, whom you trust, tells you J. Edgar’s pretty damned good, that may decide the case for you–and I would argue you’re more likely to like it because you know Roger does.

This is a subdivision of the old “argument from authority” hypothesis. Briefly, it states that, if people think that ___ [an authority on something] is usually correct, then if he pronounces on a specific topic in his area of expertise, he’s correct. We see this all the time in matters ranging from politics to religion to esthetics. It’s a fundament of human nature to turn to shamans or soothsayers to make sense of the chaos of existence.

Imagine if you will a wine tasting. One hundred people have gathered in a hotel ballroom, after paying good money for the privilege of being taken through a guided tasting by a famous wine critic (or F.W.C. for short). Eight glasses, each containing a different wine, are arranged on the table in front of them. The moderator, who will later introduce the F.W.C., first tells the audience to quietly experience the wines, making notes if they wish. Perhaps the audience doesn’t know what the wines are, or, if they do, they do not know what the F.W.C. thinks of them. So they eye the wines, swirling and sniffing, taking little tastes and, hopefully, spitting in dump buckets. You look around and see them concentrating. That guy over there, he’s got his eyes closed as he sloshes the wine. That lady is licking her lips as she writes, probably figuring out what adjectives to use. You, yourself, go back to each wine a second time, maybe a third, depending on how much time you have. You make detailed, thoughtful notes. Wine number three is stupendous, rich and velvety and fruity. Wine number five is tannic and shut down. Wine number one seems rather tart. And so on.

Then the moderator says time’s up for tasting; the F.W.C. is about to say what she thinks. You’re in awe of this celebrity. She’s as famous, in the little world of wine writing, as Bono is in rock and roll. Everybody else in the room feels the same way; otherwise they wouldn’t have paid to be there. A hush falls. The F.W.C. makes a little throat clearing sound, audible through the sound system. Then she thanks everyone for being there, maybe making a self-deprecating remark to let you know she doesn’t take herself too seriously even if you do. Then it’s game on.

F.W.C. starts with wine number one, the one you thought was rather tart. She loves it! She says it’s a grand cru quality wine. She waxes on about the pedigree of the vineyard, the talent of the winemaker who happens to use biodynamic methods, how verticals of the wine prove that it is stupendous after 15 or even 20 years in a good vintage–and this vintage happens to be the greatest in the region in decades! You slouch a little in your seat, dejected. You hadn’t thought much of the wine. But the F.W.C. did. She must be correct, because she’s the F.W.C. and you’re just, well, the guy who would have liked to have the F.W.C. verify each of your opinions, but of course, it never happens that way. So there’s this place in your brain that flares up whenever this happens–a place of self-doubt. You realize how meaningless your own opinions are in such matters, and that casts a pall of dubiousness over all your other impressions of the remaining wines. If the F.W.C. actually happens to agree in large measure with you on, say, wine number three, you’re ecstatic. But in this world where your expectations are so often thwarted, she says that wine number three is a simple villages-style wine, nowhere near as great as any of the others.

This is how the argument from authority works. The F.W.C. cannot be wrong. You can. Therefore, you must be wrong, and she’s right.

I’ve seen this phenomenon many times in my own guided tastings. I’m not saying I’m a F.W.C. but if I’m the one up there at the front of the room, facing an audience that’s looking at and listening to me, then I’m the one who’s invested with authority. And so often, when I say I selected a certain wine to include in the tasting because I think it’s fabulous and a value and one that might ordinarily get overlooked, I see heads nodding in agreement with me, and then the hands go up and people start saying how much they like the wine, and how much does it cost, and where can they get it, and what’s the alcohol, and what kind of barrels was it aged in, and I know that the wine has been a hit. And I go away wondering, once again, if the people liked the wine because they thought they should based on my assessment, or if they liked it because it really is as good as I thought.

I don’t suppose there’s any way to answer that question.

I agree in general with many of the criticisms Gregory Dal Piaz expressed yesterday in his online article, at Snooth, entitled 6 Current Issues in the Wine Industry And how to work around them.

I said “many of the criticisms.” Not all. He’s got it pretty much right in his remarks about the 100-point system (which he, himself, uses as a critic). Yes, it is subjective, in the sense that it’s not as accurate as the pH reading on a wine. As long as we’re clear on that, the 100-point system is useful–a fact Gregory acknowledges.

I also agree with Gregory about lazy retailers. But I don’t think he’s talking about fine wine shops; I suspect he’s talking about supermarkets. Most wine is sold in supermarkets, which are never going to have robust wine sections or knowledgeable floor staff. So if you’re looking for a proactive supermarket wine aisle, fageddaboudit!

Bossy distributors? Sure. I’m onboard with that.

Where we part company is when Gregory writes about “Arrogant Wine Writers.”

Go ahead, read the link. It’s only 3 paragraphs in length. What I don’t understand is the snarkiness with which Gregory expresses his opinion. “The people who know it all,” he describes wine writers, who critique a wine “based on spending merely five minutes” with it.

I guess that includes me.

Look, I have never claimed to “know it all,” which is a very negative thing to say of somebody. “A know it all” is a pompous, gaseous windbag who goes around pronouncing on matters of which he knows very little. We all know people like that in the wine world, but you know what? They don’t tend to be writers. The writers I know do know a lot about wine, because we’ve studied it for many years and, hey, when you study something you’re passionate about for a long time (butterflies, the Bon religion of Tibet, Major League Baseball statistics), you end up knowing a lot about it.

But wine writers in general are a pretty modest lot. They’ll tell you about wine if you ask, but if you don’t, they won’t. I would ask Gregory to name one “know it all” wine writer. There is an element of “know-it-all-ness” among Masters of Wine and certain others who have abbreviations after their names, and I don’t care for it, either. But don’t bash wine writers for arrogance!

Gregory also accuses us wine writers of “us[ing] a language full of code words to make sure you never catch on to us, and attack you when we think that’s not working.” I read that phrase over and over, and still don’t know what it means. “A language full of code”? I don’t think so. At least, I don’t. I use normal English words in my reviews–words that mean exactly what they seem to mean, and are not coded. I concur that a wine review means little or nothing to most people, but then, if a consumer cares enough about wine to read a review, he or she most likely can understand what the reviewer is trying to say. And “to make sure you never catch us”? Catch us at what? The implication is that we’re somehow trying to fool people. Really? Do you think credible wine writers are trying to pull a fast one? I don’t. All we’re doing is expressing an educated opinion about a wine. If you want to latch onto people who don’t want to get caught lying and cheating, I refer you to politicians, used car salesmen and real estate agents–not wine writers!

And “attack you when we think that’s not working”? What the heck does that mean? I’ve never attacked consumers. I embrace, respect and support the ordinary wine consumer. When I evaluate a wine, I have a generalized, Platonic image of that consumer in my mind. I imagine him or her sitting right next to me, and me trying to patiently and cogently offer an interpretation of the wine I hope will be helpful. I have no idea what Gregory is talking about when he says we “attack you.” That is truly weird.

Gregory ends with this faux message from a fictitious wine writer: “Now please renew your subscription lest you miss a single prognostication.” This sounds like something that someone would say who doesn’t work for a subscription-based publication! Of course I want people to subscribe to Wine Enthusiast! Why wouldn’t I? It’s a great magazine, and subscribers love it. Again, the attitude with which Greg expresses this sentiment disappoints me. Surely we can have a polite discussion about any and all of these issues without dissing hard-working wine writers or imputing nefarious motives to us.

Check out the new ish of Mutineer Magazine, which has a multipage interview with me by a guy I’m glad to call my friend, editor in chief Alan Kropf. (The article isn’t online, so you’ll have to buy the zine.) Alan put me through my paces, asking good questions and letting me go on at length. He did a good job editing, so the article is really an accurate representation of our conversation. (And the pictures are totally cool!)

Alan wanted to know my thoughts about “the controversial nature of my writing.” I told him I was surprised by this question, because I didn’t know my writing was controversial. Sure, three years ago there was that blowup about the Rodney Strong “Rockaway” Cabernet Sauvignon (and if you don’t know what that was all about, it doesn’t matter, because it’s ancient history). But it blew over quickly, and as I told Alan, the wine bloggers needed time to get to know me, and vice versa. As far as I’m concerned, all is smooth sailing now.

Alan got me reminiscing about the 1980s and how I got into wine. I love remembering those good old days when, even in San Francisco, not too many people were into wine, and those who were felt like part of an underground cult. One of the things I liked best about the scene was that you met the most interesting people, whom you otherwise never would have. I ended up joining the old Les Amis du Vin group (at one point, they asked me to head it up, but I didn’t want to). We’d meet once a week or so in a restaurant to taste wine with an invited proprietor. I still have my notes from those days. In fact, I advise budding wine lovers to take plenty of notes and keep every one of them. You never know. Look what Michael Broadbent did with all his old tasting notes.

I guess I should consider myself lucky that a younger-orientated magazine like Mutineer is interested in me. But I’m interested in them, so it’s a two way street. I’m interested in how people in their 20s and 30s drink and think about wine. I want to know how they make their buying decisions. I’m curious about whom they listen to when it comes to recommendations. The conventional wisdom is that they go on Facebook or Twitter, and their “friends” tell them what to buy, but I’ve never believed that. I have 2,400 Facebook friends. If each of them recommends a wine (and believe me, lots of them do), am I better off with personal reccos, or am I more confused than ever? The latter, I should think. I won’t buy a wine just because a Facebook friend, whom I may never even have met, tells me to. I’m much more likely to buy a wine if an expert tells me to. And in order to be an expect, you have to have earned the position, in my book.

Alan Kropf called me “a trailblazing wine blogger who is leveraging his experience as a respected wine writer to help evolve the medium through his fearlessly opinionated blog.” That hyperbole is beyond me, but I appreciate Alan for understanding that, in my blog, I try to go beyond what I write in both Wine Enthusiast and the books I’ve been privileged to publish for University of California Press, to express as pure an opinion as you’re likely to get from a wine critic these days. There are times I write stuff on this blog that I can’t believe I said. But I hit the “publish” button, and it seems to work.