Must-Have Wines Judging the Judges | Judging the Judges |
| Written by Curtis Marsh | |
| Monday, 02 February 2009 | |
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Can it be that the educated palate isn’t educated at all? Is this an oenological dirty little secret? A four-year study in the United States, made public last week, showed that only 10 percent of wine judges were consistently able to give the same wine the same rating twice, to wines sampled multiple times in blind tastings. To use the adage, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, it is one thing to be well-versed in wine and another to have a trained palate with level of skill and experience to consistently and accurately analyze wine. The conundrum exposed by the study brings to light the flaws of wine shows and the credulous trust that consumers place in ‘experts’, whereas they would perhaps be better off having more confidence in their own palates. Every wine writer or industry professional must grapple with scoring at some point, discomfortingly critical as it is to one’s reputation and possibly the only way to establish credibility. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with scoring. As tempting as it is to gloat in the power of assigning numbers, I continue to be ambivalent. In Asia a growing caste of wine drinkers are obsessed with scores, along with wine merchants and marketers who seek to sell wine through the blatant exploitation of ratings. Even more worrying is that the average Asian wine drinker is oblivious to the issues, new to western-style wine and reared on the 100-point scoring system. This epidemic stems from the United States where such individuals are otherwise known as ‘score whores’ -- wine snobs – according to a Master of Wine friend who recently visited the US and was amazed at the American devotion to wine scores, largely because of publications like the Wine Spectator, and the omnipotent Robert Parker, who after all invented the 100-point scoring system. I have utmost respect and admiration for Parker. Clearly, he has an extraordinary palate matched by an exhaustive knowledge of wine. Actually, I get more out of his tasting notes than the scores. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with him at all times. I am most certainly not impressed by formulaic wines that are blatantly fashioned to please the Parker palate and there is evidence that consumers in the US are also tiring of his preferences, particularly syrupy, overblown Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale shiraz. I remain skeptical of his methodology of determining that a wine should only be given 89 points, just a mere one point short of that magical 90 points. But a few years ago when I was emceeing an options tasting -- the entertaining if not masochistic sport of identifying masked wines guided by multi-choice questions, one of the participants announced, in an irritating manner, that she and her husband only drank wines rated 95 points and above. Blind tastings are merciless to wine snobs and our self-proclaimed connoisseur humiliated herself with an unequivocal preference for a non-rated, humble Portuguese red (HK$240 per bottle) over a celebrated 1998 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz, rated 97 points by Parker and valued at more than HK$3,000 at the time. Another recent wine experience highlighting human behavioral inadequacy and its relation to wine was when I attended a luncheon hosted by the celebrated Château Haut-Brion to taste several wines. The woman sitting next to me kept badgering me on which wine I liked the most, and didn’t understand my answer: “All of them!” She missed the point that the 2004 Château Laville Haut-Brion Blanc was as enjoyable as the 2005 Château Haut-Brion Blanc, although completely different in style or vintage expression. Ditto for the 1998 Château La Mission Haut-Brion or the 1995 Château Haut-Brion. I’d be damned if I was going to be intimidated by this captious group. What is it with humans that we always have to be contentiously comparative when there is more than one wine served or become super critical when there are extraordinarily expensive bottles involved? It would be naive to suggest that we could do without personal opinions or ratings altogether. But wine drinkers need to move away from the herd mentality and simply become more reliant on their own tastes. Scores aside, the predictable question wine writers are always asked is, “What is your favorite wine?” To which I reply, “The wine I haven’t tried yet.” I gain the most pleasure in discovering new taste sensations. My palate for food and wine is greatly influenced by my mood and by different cuisines, although inevitably, there are certain flavors, varieties and regions I enjoy more than others.
The very notion of
drinking one type or style of wine continuously escapes me
completely. And yet, seemingly the exact opposite is happening to
wine consumers’ palates; they are being dictated by scores or
powerful critics and corralled by herd mentality and slaves of
fashion, naively ensnared in vinous mediocrity. The situation is not
helped by the plethora of pedestrian emails in circulation from wine
merchants, the contents almost entirely reproductions of scores and
tasting notes -- little wonder that consumers are becoming lazier and
coerced by scores.
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(2)
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The perils of rating
wines are many and, well, perilous
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As you point out (haha) in the 94 point Rose v 97 point Grange example, on the face of it this is silly, but your question implies that Rose should NEVER be rated above a certain number because it is simply not a complex wine!
Perhaps another option would be that ratings are only comparable in certain categories - eg Cabernet driven blends, Shiraz driven blends etc, which at the very least is a more useful metric. I don't go into a wine shop thinking I want a 90+ point wine, I go there thinking either I want (eg) a Pinot, or a light red, or a fruity white etc.