Thinking about tasting
Lots of food for thought in the Fall 2014 issue of Wine & Spirits, which is devoted to “The art and science of wine tasting.” There’s so much thoughtful content, I could write a post on each sentence. Surely that’s the mark of a good wine magazine.
The fun starts with editor Josh Greene explaining why he never pursued a Master of Wine certification. Although Wine & Spirits is rather M.S.- and sommelier-oriented (IMHO), Josh says his mind isn’t geared toward “dissecting wine.” Instead, he’s interested in what he calls “pattern recognition,” a softer, more intuitive way of experiencing wine. This leads him to be struck by “how many ways there are to approach wine.” Amen brother!
This multiplicity of approaches is nicely illustrated early on, in a section in which a couple dozen wine pros describe how they “improved their game.” These include Master Somms, MWs, restaurateurs and retailers, critics and writers. Their individual approaches are all over the board, as you’d expect, but a read-through of them all suggests two over-arching themes that are inextricably at odds with each other. These are:
- a focus on, indeed practically an obsession with, identifying precise food-related aromas and flavors, versus
- a tendency to pooh-pooh this approach in favor of something broader, which we can call “structure.”
In the first grouping, we might place Josiah Baldovino (Bay Grape, Oakland, and former lead somm at Michael Mina). He looks for “the nuances of wine. Not just, ‘this wine is fruity,’ but: ‘What kind of fruit is it? Citrus, stone fruit, orchard, tropical…maybe durian?’” Also in this group is another sommelier, Geoff Kruth, M.S.: “When I taste blind,” he writes, “I don’t worry about what the wine is; I worry about understanding the underlying aromas and flavors…”.
In the second group, the structuralists, there’s Eric Asimov (The New York Times): “The precise specifics of the flavors and the aromas [are] unimportant. The notion that we must challenge our senses to concoct a list of overly specific references…does not convey much of significance.”
Well, you can’t get any more opposite that those two points of view! My own tendency conforms toward that of Eric and Josh Greene. I veer also toward the approach taken by Patricio Tapia, a Wine & Spirits critic, who “realize[d] that I should be approaching wine in terms of structure rather than aromas. I’d never been particularly good at discovering roses or wild cherries in my glass…”.
We have to ask, at this point, if the reason some people (Asimov, Greene, Tapia, me) shy away from “overly specific references” is because we’re simply not very good at finding them (as Tapia concedes) or because we’re philosophically opposed to that methodology. To doubt oneself is an implicit part of the wine critiquing business. Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, from Champagne Louis Roederer, calls describing wine “a true act of humility,” while David Lynch, at St. Vincent Tavern & Wine Merchant (San Francisco), quotes Pio Boffa, of Pio Cesare: “When it comes to wine, I know nothing except the fact of my own ignorance.”
Knowing one’s own ignorance can be scary, especially for those in the public eye who are expected to know everything. Josh Greene, for instance, in explicating his “pattern recognition” approach, concedes that another reason he never studied for the M.W. is because “at the time, I feared the M.W. study process.” Who wouldn’t? It’s incredibly rigorous, takes a lot of time, and results most of the time in failure. Why would someone deliberately undertake such a perilous journey when it’s likely to end in an embarrassing (and public) rebuff?
One must then ask the question, What is the point of wine tasting, anyway? An obvious answer is that some people are paid to do it. But wine tasting—the kind practiced by the people interviewed by Wine & Spirits—is a very odd, even unnatural practice. Nobody would do it in real life. If we were simply drinking wine for the purpose it was made—which is to drink it—we all would agree with Paul Draper, who points out that analyzing and comparing is “wasting great wines…instead of enjoying them as they were intended: one or two at a time with friends and good food.”
(“Wasting great wines…” I couldn’t help but recall all the wine I poured down the kitchen sink, after I took my one-ounce tasting pour. I hated to do it—but what was the alternative?)
I think we’ve fallen through the rabbit hole into the “overly specific references” looking-glass world, and we’re not about to climb out of it anytime soon. My personal approach will remain what it was for all those years at Wine Enthusiast: to speak of wines in more or less general terms and refrain from the precious and pompous. To me, the ideal wine review is to give people some idea of the aromas and flavors – of the relative dryness level and acidity, the structure–a little bit of the history of the grape, winemaker or region–to touch on terroir, where appropriate, in order to explain its influence on the wine–and, of course, some recommendations for food. With this latter, too, I want to avoid “overly specific” or exotic references, and keep it veered towards stuff that real people actually make at home. When I review and describe a wine, I do so with a very specific person in mind: that average American wine lover who wants a memorable wine (and food) experience, and wants to know a little more about the wine than he or she otherwise would– nothing that’s going to weigh them down, or make them believe that enjoying wine is super-complicated or only for experts. My way, then, is K.I.S.S., keeping in mind Leonardo da Vinci’s observation that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
One of the great shortcomings of the MS tests is that the wines (or any other part of the test) are never revealed, even to the candidates. It’s this lack of transparency that has led to the charges of rigging the pass rates so as to limit new members of the club.
Contrast that with the MW program which releases the entire test shortly after it is administered. I also believe that an MW sits for the exam each year as a control subject.
See: http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/the-2014-mw-exam-questions
It’s funny how often an organization, at the seeming height of its popularity and influence, is unknowingly sowing the seeds of its own future irrelevance. And boom:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/sommelier-certification-has-become-a-point-of-contention/2014/09/11/d597f5ba-379c-11e4-bdfb-de4104544a37_story.html
Regarding the habit of piling up descriptors in tasting notes, I agree that there’s a limit to the usefulness of that. If I read several expert notes on the same wine I often find that they reach for quite different terms. Moreover, a discussion of the structure of the wine is likely to be more useful anyway: Weight, acid balance, extraction, tannin content etc. Finding aroma after aroma, some reviewers can sound like they are merely showing off.
There is a third way for non experts, i.e., for consumers who keep the samples and the wine competitions coming. Rather than calling out either descriptive adjectives or commenting on the structural components, how do these aspects come together and create a pleasureful sensuous experience for the regular person. Simply put, how delicious is the wine when sipped and when compared to its price.
Someone once asked Harry Waugh, the acclaimed English wine writer, if he had ever confused a Bordeaux with a Burgundy. “Not since lunch,” was his puckish reply. . . .
Back in the 1950s/1960s/1970s the English language European wine press predominately described wines using anthropomorphic language and gender- and British class-based metaphors.
Robert Parker challenged these imprecise practices by adopting the plant-based terminology of University of California, Davis professors Maynard Amerine and Edward Roessler (complemented by University of Bordeaux professor Émile Peynaud).
Check out this wine column . . .
From Slate
(June 15, 2007):
“Cherries, Berries, Asphalt, and Jam.
Why wine writers talk that way.”
Link: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2007/06/cherries_berries_asphalt_and_jam.html
By Mike Steinberger
“Drink: Wine, beer, and other potent potables” Column
And see this obituary . ..
From Slate
(July 2004):
“The Tastemaker: Émile Peynaud
invented modern winemaking,
but don’t blame him for what’s wrong with modern wine.”
Link: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/wines_world/2004/07/the_tastemaker.html
By Mike Steinberger
“Drink: Wine, beer, and other potent potables” Column