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.

I started my tasting diary on Feb. 16, 1983. I’d been seriously getting into wine the previous four years, and, infatuated with Michael Broadbent’s Great Vintage Wine Book, decided that, like him, I’d keep track of every wine I had. I even removed the labels and pasted them in the diary.

The first wine in Book One of my diary was a 1981 Morgon Beaujolais from Georges Duboeuf. It cost $6. I called it “delightful.” The second wine was from the following night. It was a Macon-Villages, also 1981, and it set me back all of $4. It was all right; I said it was a “good Chinese food wine.” The third wine was Kenwood’s 1980 Vintage Red Cabernet Sauvignon ($3.50). Kenwood’s basic Red and White wines were staples of the Heimoff household for a good part of the 1980s.

The fourth wine brings us to Germany: an off-dry 1980 Bernkastler Badstube, from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer ($3.99). I drank it with a cheese omelot. The fifth wine (and the fifth in as many days–I was basically a bottle-a-day man back then) also was German: 1981 Erben Kabinett, from the fine producer, Langguth, in the Rheinhessen. It cost $4. Number six brought me back to France, a 1979 Domaine d’Ormesson. For $3, it was another house favorite of mine. Here are numbers 7 through 10:

1979 Kirchheimer Romerstrasse Riesling Kabinett, trocken (price not recorded)

1979 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay ($12, pricy)

1976 Chateau Beauregard, Saint-Julien ($5)

1976 Wine and the People Zinfandel, Sonoma ($10)

I engage in this stroll down memory lane because I find it remarkable how catholic (with a small “c”) my drinking was back then. You will find in that tasting diary wines from all over the world, in every price bracket: Yquem and Leoville-Las-Cases at the higher end, cheap little regional wines at the low.

I tasted even more broadly throughout the later 1980s and into the early 1990s, after I began writing about wine and getting invited to events at which the great wines of the world were opened for me, including First Growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy. But when Wine Enthusiast asked me to be their California reviewer, I found that I no longer had the time to indulge in worldwide tasting, swamped as I was with Cali wines. That remains the situation today. I try to get out to international tastings, and occasionally I’ll pull an older bottle of something Italian or French from my [small] wine cellar. But I’ll be the first to admit that my tasting is 98% California these days.

We all taste with the palate we have, which is not necessarily the palate we might want (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld from a different context), so I suppose it’s no use lamenting that I might have developed a California palate over the years. If I have, so be it. Such a palate might be described as favoring full-bodied, higher-alcohol wines with overtly sweet, ripe fruit and, often, a generous cloak of new oak. One can say such wines trade finesse for power, elegance for audacity, subtlety for sheer razzle dazzle. Still, within this context one still can find enough distinctions of finesse, elegance and subtlety to make comparative judgments. Let us consider two Cabernet Sauvignons: Araujo 2007 Eisele Vineyard and Mockingbird 2007 Red Label. Both are expensive; both are from Napa Valley. Both have vast concentrations of sweet black fruits, but the former has impeccable structure and dryness, while the latter lacks it. I could see a Bordeauxphile trying both wines and objecting that both are candied and unbalanced. However, I am not a Bordeauxphile, and to my palate there is a big difference between these two wines, similar as they are to each other.

Does my California palate mean I can’t appreciate a good, dry Bordeaux? I don’t think so. But I will admit that when I taste Bordeaux (for example, at the annual Union des Grands Crus event in San Francisco), I often find it too austere and earthy for me; and when a Bordeaux does appeal to me, it’s because it’s Californian in style. This isn’t to say I think that California Cabernet Sauvignon is objectively better than Bordeaux. It’s just my taste. But it puzzles and annoys me when somebody says Bordeaux is objectively better than California Cabernet Sauvignon. Why do they have to make it a contest? Two different wines, two different kinds of people. Something for everyone.

When all’s said and done, I do worry that I’ve developed a California palate, but like I said earlier, there’s nothing to be done about it. Besides, it would be bizarre indeed if I–a California wine critic–didn’t care for California wine. I like it a lot, but, as a final note, I will concede (sadly) that too much California wine, red and white, is too sweet. I like sweet fruit, but I loathe a table wine that should finish dry but doesn’t. (I loathe an unripe wine, too.) That’s the risk of making wine in sunny California. The brix gets carried away. Too many winemakers either allow it to happen and don’t know or care, or else they think they’re catering to a consumer who likes soda-poppy wines. I don’t.

Of all the things I’ve done over the last 30 years to understand wine–reading countless books, tasting 100,000 wines, interviewing hundreds of winemakers and growers–nothing has so “filled me with the spirit” of wine as when I wrote my first book, A Wine Journey along the Russian River, which was published in 2005 (but reissued, with a new introduction, last year by University of California Press).

That effort took the better part of two years. I saturated myself in wine, not literally, of course (I just had an image of me taking a bath in Pinot Noir), but in the sense that, for almost every day in 2003-2004, I awoke on a day that began precisely where the previous one had left off: immersed in this book. I thought about it constantly, edited myself all the time, dreamed about it at night, worked out the conceptual structure as I drove my car, came up with new ideas in the shower, and spent every minute I could traveling along the Russian River, by every conceivable mode of transportation, having adventures and meeting people, exploring vineyards, eating and drinking on the river, and even, on one unhappy but memorable occasion, almost drowning in water so cold in winter snowmelt, it gave me a case of hypothermia that permanently discombobulated my internal thermostat. I was trapped in whitewater rapids, hanging on for dear life to a “strainer,” a fallen tree whose gnarled limbs looked ominously like wizened fingers, clutched in a death grip to which I clung lest the angry current sweep me away.

In retrospect, it was the perfect metaphor for the way I conducted my research: when someone says they plunged themselves into their work, I can say I did it literally! One of the things I was proudest of in that book was that it contained no wine reviews. I might have filled it with formal notes, but decided not to, because I wanted to write a book that would stand the test of time and be interesting and relevant to future readers. And there’s nothing staler or duller than old wine reviews.

The culture of wine always has appealed to me at least as much as its science, or even as much as tasting. By “culture” I mean the places, the natural formations (rivers, cliffs, mountains, fields, marshes, streams, landslides, forests, wildflowers, gullies, estuaries) that are indigenous to every wine region. The animals too: snakes, deer, wildcats, winery dogs and cats. And the people! The wine industry is never devoid of characters, that’s for sure. There’s a context to every wine that’s important to comprehend, if you’re to fully experience a wine in its fullness. To drink a glass of Robert Mondavi Tokalon Fume Blanc in that vineyard, with Tim Mondavi: that’s context. To witness the Rochioli Vineyard, the source of so many great wines I’ve had over the years, at various times of the year–in the full bloom of harvest, completely underwater during a ferocious winter storm–to have climbed up its bank, as the gravelly dirt slid out from under my feet, is to have given my next experience of a Rochioli wine added depth and imagery. To have known the Rochiolis, Joe, Jr. and Tom, further compounds my appreciation of their wines. To have been present at the creation of Williams Selyem’s estate vineyard [formerly Litton Estate], as the bulldozers broke ground and pulled mountains of rocks out–to have been there the day an arborist warned Bob Cabral he’d better pull out some century-old trees before a storm blew them down on somebody’s head, only to have Bob decide that, No, he couldn’t do it, and instead to persuade his boss to save the trees, with all the expense that implied–and then, years later, to have tasted the Estate Pinot Noir and be able to give it 100 points–and, after that, to see the magnificent new winery building erected on the very spot that had been a wasteland of mud and stone, just seven years earlier–that is context. That is continuity. That is experiencing a wine in its fullness. I have griped before, and often, about how I wish certain winemakers would not insist on having me come to the winery to taste their wine (hello Dalla Valle, Alban, Staglin, Screaming Eagle and all you others!), instead of sending it to me at home, like most wineries do. But the truth is, I totally understand. They wish for me to know their wine in the very context I have described, and I can’t blame them for that. Were I a winemaker, I’d probably do the same thing.

If you don’t think that wining and dining tastemakers isn’t one of the keys (if not the key) to boosting a winery’s reputation, then you don’t live in the real world.

I’ll get to examples in a moment, but first, let me explain what I just said. Take two wines that are equal in quality. Give one of them a huge budget to dazzle tastemakers (wine and food writers especially, but also sommeliers, merchants and so on). Let that budget be spent on fantastic tastings with unbelievably good food, held in fancy settings such as hotel ballrooms and four star restaurants. Even better if you can underwrite the attendees’ travel expenses, since wine and food writers aren’t exactly paid very well. As for the other wine–the one without the budget–let it depend on sending a sample out to the same tastemakers. Do you know which wine will be the cause celebre? I do, and it’s not the wine with the puny budget. They’re lucky if they can send a free corkscrew with the sample.

The fact is, dazzling tastemakers and influencers has been the way certain wineries and wine regions got famous to begin with, and it still is. When I wrote my first book, A Wine Journey along the Russian River, Tom Jordan, who created Jordan Winery, told me how he got tastemakers to pay attention. Quote: “Early on, I realized the challenge was, How are you going to get recognized?” What Tom did was to invite restaurateurs, somms, wine merchants, distributors and food and wine writers to the winery (which is one of the showplaces of California wine country) and wow them. “We had guest suites and guest houses and a superb kitchen operation, and we brought chefs in from France to cook,” Tom said, adding, “I knew the wine was never going to taste better than it would in that nice setting…”.

Now, I don’t mean to criticize what Tom did. He had learned well from the Bordelais, who have been plying influencers with goodies for centuries. This is simply how the game is played, and the fact that it works is proved by Jordan’s being one of the top winery brands on American restaurant wine lists, a feat it has replicated for many years.

Which brings us to–where else?–Asia, the El Dorado of today’s wine trade, the Lost City of Gold, only it is no longer a lost city but one that definitely has been discovered and is in the process of being exploited by those who can afford it. Read this article about how the cellarmaster at South Africa’s Rupert & Rothschild (yes, that Rothschild, on the Baron Edmund/Lafite side, meaning there’s a lot of money) flew to Bangkok to host a dinner. I’ll quote just a little from the article so you get a general idea of what you missed: “After a refreshing round of amuse bouche, the action kicked off with the first course: poached seafood, mussel tomato gelee, kaffir lime, dill and smoked herring pearls paired with 2008 Rupert & Rothschild Baroness Nadine [Chardonnay]…Next up was seared Wagyu beef flank, mixed bean salad, rucola [sic] and red currant with raspberry, paired with 2008 Rupert & Rothschild Classique…” etc. etc.

Well, the guy who wrote this up was suitably impressed, for his descriptors were glowing (“perfect,” “classic,” “exciting”), and I bet anybody who read his account went away thinking, “Hmm, I sure would like to get my hands on those Rupert & Rothschild wines.” Which is the point, isn’t it? If you’re a little family winery, you’re not going to be able to wine and dine tastemakers in Bangkok (much less Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, and so on). So you’re probably never going to get on the Asian “A” list, even if you’re making spectacular wine. (It can happen, but it would take a minor miracle.)

So consider today’s posting another in my occasional debunkings of how famous wines get and stay famous. Sometimes it’s about the quality, but sometimes it’s about the credulity of the tastemakers who are gobbling all that smoked salmon and filet mignon and then telling people how fabulous everything was. (Say, I wonder what was in the swag bag at the Bangkok dinner?)