Follow Your Heart

Those of you who know me best know that I had open-heart surgery when I was younger. I went for a standard checkup at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh today, where I had my surgery in December, 1976. As expected (or at least as I hoped), I am in perfect health. I gave some thought to my next blog while I was in the waiting room, and, in one of those many "You might be a Wine Geek if…" moments, couldn't get Chateau Calon-Segur out of my head (see label). Not as bad as when I was at a relative's house who had a magnet on their refrigerator of the 1982 Farmer's Almanac for some unknown reason and I thought it was '82 Petrus, but still fairly geeky. Despite the image of Calon-Segur's label in my head, I started instead to think about what was going on in the wine industry in 1976. That's an easy answer: the 1976 Judgement of Paris, a tasting I have mentioned elsewehere.

In my opinion, the Judgement of Paris is possibly the most overdramatized, preposterous piece of marketing nonsense in the wine business, although those who I offend with that comment would probably point to terroir as the same. Before everyone beats me down, let me give you my reasons.

First though, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Judgement of Paris let me briefly quote from Wikipedia as I often do to save my restating and retyping that which anyone can find with a simple Google search.

• Until 1976, France was generally regarded as having an unchallenged reputation as the foremost producer of the world's best wines. In that year a wine merchant in Paris, Steven Spurrier, organized a prestigious wine tasting in Paris, now known as the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 or the Judgment of Paris.
  

  The 11 judges were Steven Spurrier, Patricia Gallagher of l'Academie du Vin, Odette Kahn, editor of the Revue du Vin de France, Jean-Claude Vrinat of the Restaurant Taillevent, Raymond Oliver of the restaurant Le Grand Vefour, the sommelier Christian Vanneque of Tour D'Argent, Aubert de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Pierre Tari of Chateau Giscours, Pierre Brejoux of the Institute of Appellations of Origin, Michel Dovaz of the Wine Institute of France, and Claude Dubois-Millot. Blind tasting was performed so that none of the judges knew the identity of what was being tasted.
  

The results were that 1973 Stag's Leap Cabernet Sauvignon beat out its able competitors from both California (and more importantly) Bordeaux, including the famous Chateaux Mouton-Rothschild, Montrose and Haut-Brion. This signified (at least for Americans) that California wines could compete with the best in the world (and I certainly agree that they can).

Why do I think the Judgment of Paris is ridiculous? Mainly because I think blind tasting and/or rating wines I ridiculous.

Blind Tastings

Blind Tastings are tastings in which the participants have no idea what wine has been poured for them. In this way, they have no pre-conceived notions as to the quality of wine. I have done blind tastings a million times, and still find them meaningless. I remember the first time I visited Domaine Daniel Dampt in Chablis. I had never had a wine from the Domaine before I arrived, but I was and am intimately familiar with the vintages and vineyards of Chablis. Following a brief tasting of his current vintage, five wines from the year 2000, he poured me a wine blind. After some evaluation I correctly identified the wine as 1997 Chablis Premier Cru Cote de Lechet. I also remember once tasting a wine and saying, "I would bet my job that this is a Premier Cru Meursault from the 1997 vintage": it was 1996 Staglin Rutherford Chardonnay. Luckily I was able to keep my job. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. It's like the stock market or playing darts. Over a sustained period of time, everyone I know in the wine business gets more wrong – and oftentimes vastly wrong – than anywhere close to right. As Emile Peynaud claims in his book, in a truly "blind" tasting where participants can't even see the wine, most degustateurs have a difficult time determining which ones are white or red.

But, in the Judgement of Paris they weren't picking wines, they were rating them. Personally, I think this is more ridiculous than trying to identify wines "blind". Magazines, most notably the Wine Spectator, claim that because all wines are tasted blind, there is no slant. On the other hand, "independent" reviewers such as Robert Parker indirectly point out that because they accept no advertisements, there results are not biased. Either way, they're all in the business of sales. Despite the fact that I am a wine professional, I, like you, do buy wines for myself, and I'll put myself entirely into the hands of anyone who has a palate I respect, ads or no ads, blind tastings or not.

When David Heimbourger (my apologies if I misspelled this) worked predominantly in Acker Merrall's retail store in Manhattan's Upper West-Side (last I checked he was largely running tastings and corporate events) I would regularly give him a price and a quantity and let him pick. "Dave, give me six bottles of good, cheap whites from Germany, Alsace and the Loire, around $120 total, and I'll pick them up tomorrow". I trusted him, as many of my clients trust me. In the end that's all that matters.

But I digress. Here's the thing, all wines are not created equal in a blind tasting. There's a reason why wines are served in a particular order (although modern cusine has skewed this quite a bit). Different wines have different characteristics. Let's take an extreme case. Unoaked Chablis (the real stuff, from France) would get lost in a tasting with nine Chardonnays from Australia, because it is less fruit-driven, is not as full-flavored and has lower alcohol. Its merits are lost. This is similar, by the way, to beer. Put the subtly powerful Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter among nine highly-hopped American Microbrews, and it has a good chance of finishing last although it is one of my favorite beers in the world.

So in the end, the 1976 Judgement of Paris while signaling an uptick in notoriety for California helped promote blind tastings as a useful tool, although in only rare cases, in reality they aren't. It also wrongfully promoted the notion that wines can be given a number or rating. They can't. As I always say, if you like it today, right now, then it's a 90 pointer. If you don't it's not. And that number may very well change depending on your mood, your company or what you're eating the next time around.

 

An Apple a Day...

Wine writers and professionals write tasting notes very differently. The "old way" consisted of less flavor and aroma descriptors and concentrated a bit more on charcteristics more fundamental to a wine and its development: texture, balance, length in the palate, etc. Most of the traditional British Wine Writers favored this method. Among them is the venerable Clive Coates, M.W. (Master of Wine). Here is an example of one of Coates' tasting notes, from one of my favorite Red Burgundies, 1965 Volnay Premier Cru Champans from the Marquis d'Angerville.

"Medium-full color. This is a little lean for the vintage. But perhaps it is still closed. The nose is classy and aromatic - nutty. The finish long and satisfying. The genrosity I'm sure will appear. Very good but not the class and depth for great."

It doesn't matter that I enjoyed the wine more (several years later). What is important is how his tasting note differs from the more modern approach, generall attributed to or at least having its beginnings with Robert Parker. An example from Mr. Parker. It is the same wine, vineyard and producer, but from a more recent vintage, the 1999 vintage:

"The medium to dark ruby-colored 1999 Volnay Champans, from a 4-hectare parcel where 50% of the vines are 40 years of age and the balance over 10 years, displays a sweet blackberry nose. Medium-bodied, this wine has an excellent depth of fruit, a supple, velvety texture, and a fresh personality. Loads of intense blackberry, cassis, plum, and spice flavors can be found in its juicy and expressive character. Drink it over the next 7-8 years."

It is not my intention to debate these two disparate techniques here, but rather examine the oft-asked question: can wine writers really taste such sensations? I emphatically say yes, though I admit that my notes tend to be somewhere in between the two examples given here and if anything are usually less wordy than either.

Nonetheless, as I was sitting down for a wholesome meal of pork chops, sauerkraut and baked apples Sunday, I did my own taste test, that I invite you to repeat at home. I had purchased three types of apples, Macintosh, Fuji and "green" apples to bake with some brown sugar and to accompany my main course. If wine writers and professionals are going to distinguish between Macintosh and Fuji, they'd better have distinguishing characteristics. So I sliced away and set about my tasting.

Very quickly it became clear that the three apples smell and taste very dissimilar. The green apples as expected were typified by a brief sugar-sweetness as they tocuhed my palate and then dominated by the pronounced attack of biting, lemony acidity that followed through forever in the finish. The texture of the Macintosh struck me as it had a waxiness that was not present at all in the green apples and appeared only in traces in the Fuji apples. Flavors and aromas of bananas distinguished the Fujis. In fact the dry, waxiness coupled with the aromas and flavors in the end reminded me very much of the taste of banana as well. I'd like to repeat the experiment with other families of foodstuffs, but my initial observations are that when I say I taste green apples and when I say I taste Macintosh apples, that I am correctly pointing out very distinct flavor sensations. I suspect that with a little practice, or maybe your own experiment or two, you can do the same.