Wine Snobbery

Did you know that 2 to 3 glasses of wine per day can reduce your risk of giving a shit? It doesn’t matter if the glass is half empty or half full. Clearly there is room for more wine.

        Good morning, children! Today's Daily Sun wine review of a $25, 2014 Loire Valley (That’s in France!!) Sauvignon Blanc starts off blandly enough, citing " Flavors of green apple, lemon zest, grapefruit," - all flavors most of us could identify, but then slides steadily downhill with "herbs, seashells, and small pebbles." Small pebbles? Really? For starters, wouldn't that depend upon the pebble? Do sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic pebbles taste the same? Are abalone and clam shells similar in flavor too? Or, as is more likely, is the reviewer paid by the word and the pretentious nature of their writing?  This snob finishes by noting that this wine would pair well with (you can't make this shit up) "Yogurt marinated authentic tandoori shrimp."  Yum. I assume that to amplify the "seashell flavor" in the wine, the shrimp are consumed with shells intact?

This renewed my belief that until the individual tastes it, there is little qualitative information to be gained by professional reviews that cannot be as easily determined by reading the customer reviews on a site like Total Wine’s. (an east coast merchant whose web site features reviews by actual customers.)

       What follows is an actual review, by an “expert.” The parenthetical comments are mine. “Deep purple color. Aromas of rich dark currants, nectarine skins, gushing blackberry, but lots of fragrant tobacco, rich soil (yuck), white flowers (lilies or mums?), smashed minerals (WTF?) and metal (lead, tin or antimony?). Medium-bodied and saucy (does it talk back?) but racy (naked grapes?) acidity stabilizes the wine nicely with the robust tannins. Deep red currants and ripe cherries, laden with mocha, loamy soil(!!), charred herbs, pencil shavings(!!), roasted hazelnut. Dense like characters that make it perfect for cellaring, however it is drinkable straight away once you expose it to the earth’s atmosphere (as opposed to what other planet's atmosphere?). This is a delicious Sonoma Cabernet!

       And now, here’s a customer review (same wine) “2014 Wonderful Value - Had the 2014 and candidly I'm a fan of XXXXXXX wines, having tried many of them. This Sonoma Cab is a wonderful value wine for under $15. I'd pick this over many $30-40 cabs from other wineries. This winemaker continues to impress me! Fruity, not too heavy, and very well balanced. Wonderful table red!”

       Note the absence of blather. Here’s another, same wine – “Black Cherry Explosion The title says it all... almost. I thought it was wonderfully balanced; with just a taste of oak with soft tannins. I paid $xx for this same wine at the XXXXXXX Winery in Sonoma, so this is a great deal.”

       OK, now to reality for a welcome change. Such hyperbole driven wine reviews are little more than a consensual hallucination and essentially unrelated to the life of 99.9 % of wine consumers. Unless you have precisely the same genetic make-up in terms of total taste bud count, the identical olfactory genes as the reviewer, the review is of relatively little value. A broadly qualitative review (“swill” or “nectar of the gods”) is useful in general, especially when one can read multiple reviews and glean a consensus.  Add to the dilemma, the impact of 10,000 hours of focused practice by reviewers to rewire their olfactory neurons to more easily discern wine aromas and you get even farther from the norm.

       Many humans are unable to discern the aroma of violets, some find cilantro smells like soap, some like a spice and others discern no aroma at all. Genetically based aroma specific anosmia (no discernable aroma) is common for a number of esters and scents. Wine descriptors are of northern European origin. It is difficult to explain “gooseberry” to most of us ordinary winos or, say, a person from China. Does it look like a goose, as big as a goose smell like a goose? Pompous? Not really. Reviewers are just talking to each other and a very small slice of consumers.

One imagines a scenario such as follows, perhaps:

       The hallowed and, apparently, divinely prescribed, rite of estimation begins as the sommelier pours the precious liquid into a glass. The wine snob holds it up to the light and swirls it around declaring it to have “good legs.” It must be swirled the connoisseur declares so the wine can breathe. Why “legs?” Beats me. The term for why the liquid holds to sides of the glass to a greater or lesser degree is actually “viscosity,” which is eschewed, I’m guessing, because it’s the same term used to classify motor oil. I have never taken a sip of a wine with “good legs” and, after swallowing, opined “Boy, that’s nice and thick!” In fact, as a general guideline, if you take a swallow and “thick” (or chunky) comes to mind get to the bathroom and make yourself throw up, because something is seriously amiss.

      Next the “bouquet” (that’s “smell” to the rest of us) must be sampled. There are ancient sacraments to be honored here, as well. The glass is not to be grabbed by the bowl as we among the great unwashed might do. The (properly shaped, mind you) goblet must be picked up by the base and held between the thumb and two forefingers. More theatrical aficionados of properly rotted (fermented) grape juice will waft the delicate scents towards the nostrils and announce something like “Ah, new-mown hay with a hint of almond. There may be something of a Bach fugue in the background.” For California wines that might be the Beach Boys; for Washington Cabs, Nirvana, one supposes.

       Then comes the really serious part. A sip is taken and the eyes close. The mouth and cheeks move in a chewing motion as the wine is sucked through the teeth. The assembled company hangs on the pronouncement (assuming that they, unlike me, haven’t already started serious drinking). This process incredibly, in some settings, seems to be based on the assumption that only one person in the room can evaluate the wine and no one else may either like or dislike it until permission is granted.  

“Very complex. I’m getting notes of gooseberry, Twix, lavender, caramel and Lucky Strike. The mid-palate is amused by the wine’s insouciance and there’s a slightly impertinent corrugated iron finish.”

Skeptics will excused for opining that they have just witnessed the setting of a new world long-distance record in pompous oenophilic bullshit.

Here are just a couple more examples:

       “The 2005 Brunello di Montalcino is a model of weightless finesse (tasting of) dark wild cherries, minerals, menthol, and spices.”  (is this like adding menthol to cigarettes?)

       It is like “… a girl of fifteen, with laughing blue eyes.” In which case, the hell with simply drinking it!. (Hypothetically, of course)

       Some years ago, the Broward Palm Beach New Times held a contest for over-the-top wine descriptions. And, the winner was: “Yo... did you check that Boones farm vintage Y2K? That was dope! It was big and bright with the complexity of Kool Aid! It was jammy like a PBJ without those earthy tannins! You hear what I’m saying?” Across the pond, The Economist offers some pithy commentary on the typical vocabulary of oenophiles: “… self-styled connoisseurs begin spouting attributes like ‘graphite’ (which does not smell or - if nibbling pencil ends is any guide - taste of anything), ‘zesty mineral’ (how it differs from plain mineral is anyone’s guess), ‘angular’ (huh?), or ‘dumb’ (indeed).”

       I am still waiting for a wine review which starts: “It was a dark and stormy vintage…” Perhaps the best indicator of why I get so taken by these flights of purple prose which would embarrass Micky Spillane is the fact that “professional” wine experts don’t usually submit to blind taste tests. 

Why, one asks, is that? Simple really; they are fully aware that they are trading in a rich line of malarkey and would rather keep the secret tightly held within the confines of the priesthood to which they belong. Secondarily, those at the top, some of whose reviews I do treat as close to gospel, - James Suckling, Robert Parker, for examples - are very well paid for what the rest of us do recreationally. It is also true that these two gentlemen rarely, if ever, engage in the worst of the adjective abuse that characterizes so many of their inferiors.   

        Between 2005 and 2013, California winemaker Robert Hodgson laid a snare for several of them (not Suckling or Parker) and caught a number of them out. He organized a series of tastings at the California State Fair. The Observer described the judges as a “Who’s who of the American wine industry from winemakers, sommeliers, critics and buyers to wine consultants and academics.” Well, you ask, “How did they do?” As it turns out, “He (Hodgson) has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine.” 

       Moreover, and even more significantly, price doesn’t equal quality in more than a few cases. We don’t just have to take Robert Hodgson’s word for it. A group of academics (of all disciplines) at the University of Minnesota held more than 6,000 blind tastings. They found that “the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less.” Yep! That’s what they found. Perhaps pencil shavings and clay are overrated?  Summing up these 6000 blind taste surveys, they announced: “Our results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine consumers.” (which most of us are!) This hardly constitutes a ringing endorsement of the dark arts of wine snobbery, huh? (A grad course at Hogwarts?)

  

       Elsewhere, Frédéric Brochet at the University of Bordeaux set up a test in 2001. He presented the exact same (vintage, blend) wine to 57 volunteers a week apart. In one test, the wine was labelled as basic table wine; in the second tasting, it was labeled as an expensive, superior vintage. The critics were fooled into describing the same wine positively when it came out of a high-end bottle and negatively when they thought it was a “vin ordinaire.” Even more significant and almost unbelievably, M. Brochet pranked another 54 French “experts” more dramatically. None of them were able to tell that the one red and one white they were tasting was, in fact, the same wine. The white had been colored by a flavorless and odorless dye! Think about that. Numerous other tests have turned up similar results; professionals and amateurs are equally bad at identifying and classifying wine.

So, what, if any,  is the real significance of all this? To me it means several things that I think are relevant to the average wine consumer. First, I believe there are some predictors (broadly and not specific) of the likelihood of a wine being pleasingly consumable.

      First: where is it made? If you want a good Pinot Noir, the chance you’ll find it in Oregon's Dundee Hills region is exponentially greater than if you buy it at a Virginia vineyard, even (especially) if it bears the Trump imprimatur. There are several US vinicultural regions which produce (as an average) superior varietals. The best American Barbera (usually an Italian varietal) seems to come from the Lodi Ca, region. Also, Washington State’s Yakima Valley Red Mountain region (a fairly small area) is producing spectacular Cabernet Sauvignon, but the prime conditions of terroir are relatively confined.  Likewise, Russian River valley California reds are predictably good, in general. If Bordeaux is your thing, France is your source. Malbecs – Argentina.

        

       Second: “So many labels, so little time.” The varieties and production of wines, like craft beers, have proliferated in the last 20 years to the point where experimentation may yield pleasant surprises. Don’t allow price to either persuade or dissuade a purchase – once!

        Third, as stated earlier, price maybe a general indicator of what you might expect of a wine, but I have consumed many a bottle of $12 per bottle 667 Pinot Noir (sometimes on sale even cheaper and with “fuel perks” at the local grocery), with enjoyment and have also poured a much pricier bottle of McMurray Estate Pinot down the sink after one sip. Vintage (year of production) matters and in some cases is the difference between pleasantly drinkable and really bad. Without detail, there are several labels which, even from one year to the next are very different in quality.

       Now, just for fun, if you, too wish to play the snooty (or snotty)  wine review game, there’s an app for that! Try the link below. There is a time and place for wine – in my hand and now. Remember, every box of raisins is a tragic story of grapes that could have been wine.

https://phrasegenerator.com/wine