Despite his hyperbolic style and deliberate provocation I don't disagree
with his central thesis, which is that wine reviews are basically useless
as a guide to finding wines you will like.
His attention grabbing headline "Wine Tasting is Bullshit," however, is
bullshit.
The wine tasting I have consistently advocated is personal double-blind
vertical or horizontal tastings with a ringer. Let me explain :)
1) Personal - you do the tasting yourself, and take your own notes. I
recommend doing the tasting in a group (more later) but strongly recommend
forbidding any discussion of the wines themselves until after everyone has
finished tasting.
2) Vertical - a tasting of different years of the same wine from the same
wine maker to help get an understanding of how the vintages vary in a
region and to get a better idea of which years in which areas produce wines
more or less to your taste, and to understand how a particular wine from a
particular winemaker will age, to give you an idea of when to drink wines
already in your collection (assuming you have some.)
3) Horizontal - a tasting of the same varietal and vintage from different
vintners in a region. This helps you understand how the style of different
vintners differs, and which vintners (and styles) you might prefer. A
horizontal tasting across regions can help you identify regions you like,
and across countries which countries you like - though I'd recommend
multiple horizontal tastings for regions or countries for that purpose.
4) Ringer - a wine that is used to check your ability to identify the
qualities being tasted for. ("Spot the Ringer") Typically a ringer will be
a duplicate of one of the wines, a wine from the same vintage but a
different region, year (or variety!). So in a horizontal tasting of
California Cabernets you might throw in a high end Chilean for example. It
is amusing how often, even in a group of experienced tasters, that the
ringer will rank quite high. This is why I'm not at all surprised by the
results in that article.
Typically in a wine tasting I'll look at the color, aroma, and flavour of
the wine, how it changes over time, and my preferences. You make notes
about the wines, and rank them. In some tastings the organiser collates the
individual rankings to come up with a group consensus, and then the wines
are revealed (usually dramatically from last to first) so that everyone
learns what they've been tasting.
Why is this useful?
Because you can learn, in a no bullshit way, just exactly what YOU like and
don't like in a wine. Because it's double blind you don't get influenced by
the price or the name, and you can often find bargains - wines you like
that aren't very expensive. Personal anecdote - I love fancy french
Champagnes. I'm personally a big fan of the "big" yeasty toasty style of
wines typified by Bollinger (in the mid-range) Krug and Salon (in the top
end.) By doing sparkling wine tastings and tasting a few ringers I also
discovered that I *love* relatively inexpensive vintage Spanish cavas.
[to be continued - I have to run]
-- Charles
