Drinking and Tasting
Thursday, August 9, 2007 at 7:32AM Having just completed the triathalon of pinot noir tastings, Oregon Pinot Camp, the Steamboat winemaker’s conference and the International Pinot Noir Celebration, the contrast between the tastings and the lunches and dinners could not be more clear. During tastings people look for faults and drama, while during meals people look for pleasure.
We have ended up with a system, the 100 point scale, that only measures how wines taste with other wines, while ignoring their primary reason for existence - pleasure at the table. Buying wines selected in this way is a bit like buying a car after sitting in it with0ut ever driving it. When you sit in it you can see all the bells and whistles, but without driving it you can’t really get the feel of it. That’s what our critics offer us, wines ranked without ever really getting a feel for them. Can there be a less pleasant picture of enjoying wine than someone speed tasting dozens of bottles in an attempt to rank them in numerical order?
Anyone that pays even the slightest attention to the wines they drink knows that over the course of a meal fine wines evolve tantalizingly and this evolution is exactly what makes the best wines most exciting. Power, speed tastings to give wines a ranking based on points ignores this most beautiful aspect of enjoying wine. Hiding under a guise of helping the consumer, today’s critics point consumers to wines that are too expensive and not very good with food. What’s that protecting the consumer from?
Automobile writers drive a car for hours or days before reviewing it, while major wine writers may spend mere seconds with a wine. Would you want to buy a car based on the review of a writer that only sat in the car for a few seconds? This is exactly how wine criticism works today.
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Reader Comments (1)
I agree with you that the 100 point system has its definite minuses. It tends to reward distinctiveness (generally more concentrated, powerful wines that tend to have higher alcohol) more than the subtlety and complexity that's usually better for food. And and I won't talk about the sculpting of wines to the critics tastes ("taste to the test"?). I love Zin, but many of those coming from my favorite producers now - and rated pretty highly - are well over 15.5 % alchohol and there aren't a lot of foods that will work well with that.
But..I also think ratings are a very useful tool to most regular wine buyers. Most people just buy wine because they like it, and they can't or won't spend the time to research purchases. Walking down the isle at the local supermarket and trying to figure out which of the 50 Chardonnays to buy can be a daunting task. But if you can scan ratings from RP, WS or WE, it can make it a lot easier to pick out something you're going to be confident buying and happy with. The bottom line is that ratings are here to stay because consumers like them.
What about coming up with an "FFR" (Food-Friendly Rating) or (shudder) "FCR" (Food Compatibility Rating) to contrast with the comparison rating? It would definitely take some thought on what qualities you would use to come up with such a rating, but if you could figure out a reasonable system you would at least give the consumer a better chance at picking out a great wine to have with dinner.
"Wow, that '04 Napa Cab is rated 91 points...but its FFR is only 85. Better pass and get the one next to it that's rated 89 on both."