Judging Wine 101

Those stuck in the past still speak of ‘wine appreciation’ as if knowing wine were simply a matter of accumulating a set of skills, like impeccable speech and proper table manners.

Eric Asimov, How to Taste Wine

There is a good chance that as long as human beings have been creating things other human beings have found it permissible to judge the quality of those things. Whether it is an evening meal, a cave painting, a song, or a glass of wine, if someone made it, someone else is going to judge it. When it comes to works of art, we have created an industry out of our desire to know what experts think about various facets of high culture. The New Yorker magazine is full of well-educated people from a range of academic disciplines telling you what books you should read, what operas, symphonies, and plays you should see, and what movies you should watch if you want to be considered a member of the cultural elite. Whether wine experts or critics offer anything of value to the average wine consumer is the question for this chapter.

One of the biggest challenges one encounters when reading about wine is the imposing amount of information available. Wine blogs, podcasts, magazines, advertising materials, tasting sheets, online wine stores, and critical reviews of wine are everywhere. Everyone has an opinion about wine. Sunny Brown calls wine bloggers, Bloggy McBloggersons, and suggested they should learn to practice more restraint when evaluating wine by keeping information and opinion separate and identifying each as such. Brown suggested spending more time talking about the history, terrior, and winemaking practices of a wine, rather than simply telling us whether someone liked a wine or not. 

In an article decrying the amount of bullshit in wine reviewing, Joe Powers, author of the popular Another Wine Blog, suggested there is no hard science involved in reviewing wine, no real way to quantify results, no test cases, and certainly no verifiable set of standards to which everyone adheres. Everyone makes up their own processes for reviewing. In his approach to tasting and reviewing wine he simply asks, “Do I, at a particular moment in time, think that a wine is tasty enough that I would recommend it to a friend without hesitation at the price it sells for?” His basis for evaluating whether his reviews have merit, is simply by asking whether it helped the average wine drinker reading his blog to find a wine they liked at a reasonable price. A very simple, yet pragmatic criterion. However, one has to wonder if Powers’ perspective may just be another ploy to get people to read his blog and sell advertising space.

The Wine and Spirits Buying Guide (circa 2017) states on its editorial page that everyone’s tastes are different and there is no right and wrong when it comes to judging wine. However, there is a tremendous contradiction that exists between this statement and the wine reviews one can find throughout the rest of the magazine. The reviews in the magazine assert some wines must be better than other wines, and some evaluations of wine must be better than other evaluations, otherwise there would be no reason for publishing the magazine. It seems many of these publications are walking a fine line between letting people say whatever they want about a particular wine and trampling on their subjective experiences by telling them their palate is about as refined as a brick shithouse.

Stanley Tucci remarked in an opening episode on the now defunct television show Vine Talk, there are no wrong words for describing wines. He encouraged his guests to say anything they wanted about the wines they were tasting. His approach was very invitational, empathetic, and welcoming. I have to wonder if you offer a comment like “this wine tastes a bit like corn-on-the-cob” in the next wine tasting room you visit, wait and see if the “there are no wrong words” concept holds up. Me thinks there might be some raised eyebrows.

Regardless of the venue, procedures, publications, or the people involved, judging the quality of a wine is grounded in two basic premises. First, the more you know and understand wine, the more enhanced your experience drinking wine will be. This is the primary basis of all wine criticism; the more you know, the better your experience. Second, is the belief that some people are better positioned to appreciate and evaluate wines more than other people, whether it is due to more experience, a better sensory system or palette, or more knowledge of wine regions and wine making. It may be hard to admit at times, but some wine drinkers are better suited to make a living based on their abilities to smell, taste, identify, and evaluate wines than others. Or maybe, they are just better at writing and talking about wine?

There are two separate processes involved in evaluating a wine; gaining an understanding of the wine in a glass and being able to represent and communicate that evaluation to others. What is lacking in one area might be made up in another area.

Wine Criticism

Wine criticism is a form of criticism and is associated with other forms of criticism that have much longer histories and recognized bodies of knowledge, including art criticism or literary criticism. Traditional forms of criticism are espoused by notable professors housed in prominent colleges and universities offering their judgments about literature, art, and other aspects of one’s culture. These professors have Ph.Ds, conduct research, and write articles that are unintelligible to the average human (I know I am one of those professors during the week). There is also a wide range of reviews of books, movies, music, plays, and other forms of entertainment available in newspapers and popular magazines written for the average human to read. 

People who evaluate and write about wine are often referred to as wine “critics.” This suggests a different role from the journalist writing about current trends in the wine industry or a historian writing about the traditions of a particular wine region. The wine critic is expected to be a connoisseur, a talented writer, and an expert with a great deal of experience tasting wines and traveling to the major wine regions around the world. It is a job that requires blending sensory acuity with a wealth of wine content knowledge, writing abilities, and tasting experiences.

In many publications, the term “critic” is associated with someone that offers a thumbs up or thumbs down judgment like the movie critic does on a local news program. These critics watch a movie and then judge its quality based on some established criteria and render a judgment that people use to make choices about what movies to watch. However, the history of the term critic or criticism is more closely associated with the concept of education than of evaluation. As Eric Asimov suggested in a New York Times column (June 17, 2019), wine criticism should help consumers develop the tools to educate themselves and to develop confidence in one’s wine knowledge and abilities to taste wine.

So how does the critic differ from the expert or connoisseur? A critic is a person that engages in the act of criticism, which has a different meaning from that of connoisseur. Where a connoisseur lives, collects, and cherishes a particular phenomenon or subject, a critic examines and passes judgment on things. A critic should help others, especially less experienced persons, enjoy and understand something, in this case wine. John Bender states his position in this manner, “a good wine taster is one who perceives, differentiates, and attends to the complete set of properties that a wine exemplifies, bases his or her aesthetic descriptions on those perceptions, and grounds a final evaluation of a wine on these descriptions and interpretations.”

Experience with, and an understanding of, the things being judged is an essential component to becoming a critic. It is assumed that someone who has tasted hundreds of different types of California Cabernet Sauvignon would be better positioned to judge bottles of California Cabernet Sauvignon than someone that has not. It may also be assumed that experience breeds understanding, and the judgments of experienced wine critics are worth more than the opinions of the average wine drinker. 

One of the more challenging aspects of wine criticism is whether there exists an agreed upon criteria for judging wines and an exemplar or prototypical version of a wine that has been identified and may be used for comparative purposes. Without an agreed upon criteria and benchmark example for judging what makes a wine exemplary, critics’ opinions become just that, opinions.

However, various judgments do have real consequences for winemakers and wine enthusiasts. One of the biggest influences in the history of French wine was the famous Classification of 1855 in Bordeaux which created a hierarchy of chateaus and vineyards that has played a major role in determining the prices and inherent values of the wines of these estates for over 100 years. Another was the famed Judgment of Paris which launched the California wine industry to world-wide prominence. Other major influences included varied phenomena including Robert Parker’s 100-point scoring system, the influence of the movie Sideways on merlot and pinot noir, the development of the internet, crowd-sourced reviews, and online retailers. All these things have changed the way we assess, evaluate, and most importantly purchase and enjoy wine.

Crowd Sourcing Vs. The Wine Expert

    One of the biggest challenges to the established wine critic and the world of criticism in general, has been the crowd-sourcing of reviews and evaluations of everything from wine (Vivino) to movies (Rotten Tomatoes), accommodations (TripAdvisor), and restaurants (Yelp). The basic premise of these online resources is the more people that review some experience or commercial product, the better the information for other consumers. Troubled by the wine knowledge, experience and opinions of the average wine drinker, restaurant goer, and traveler, I usually disregard the reviews on these sites, though it is getting harder to avoid seeing them. I don’t want someone that usually eats a Red Robin telling me which restaurant to go to, or a wine drinker that thinks Yellowtail chardonnay is yummy making wine recommendations. I guess I am a bit of a snob when it comes to these reviews.

    Sheer numbers don’t make a review better, just more consensual. At one time more people though the Earth was the center of the universe. Thank God for Galileo’s review of the cosmos, though many people didn't believe in his review. Maybe he needed a website! 

I have often thought that people that post reviews on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other sites need to post their curriculum vita or some form of evidence of their qualifications for reviewing certain objects or experiences before being allowed to post comments. Can sheer numbers make up for one’s lack of experience? I doubt it. Does this mean that Vivino is more reliable than Robert Parker? Possibly. An overreliance on any single review platform may not be the best way to proceed.

So What?

The publisher of the Idiots’ Guides to Wine markets their book as a way to instill confidence in people when they order, taste, and buy wine. Just for the record, I do not consider myself an idiot, so I rarely, if ever, buy any of these idiot guides to anything. That does not mean there aren’t a large number of things I know very little about – for example, astrophysics, animal husbandry, genetics, or the history of sewing. However, give me a bit of credit in the grey matter department even if my knowledge on a particular subject is a tad thin. I need to know more about wine, I am not delinquent in cognitive abilities. I need to be educated, not talked down to. 

Like the purpose of a good book review or art museum recommendation, critics need to be able to offer some points of comparison for example, “if you have enjoyed book, museum or wine x, you might also enjoy book, museum, or wine y.” Detailed explanations and comparisons to other experiences can often be more helpful than just awarding points and offering disconnected opinions.

So, what can we take away from all the criticism about criticism? First, assessment is more valuable than evaluation. The more you know about a wine the better you are positioned to evaluate one for yourself. Education trumps opinions every day. Read a range of wine reviews and recommendations and talk with a local wine shop owner before buying wines. Get to know someone in the world of wine that has similar tastes to yours and share the wines you have liked and disliked with that person. Developing a relationship with a local shop owner that has access to the wines you like is probably the best move you can make.