Whatever happened to legs? They
never lose popularity in the flesh, continually evolving in women's fashion
magazines, but they haven’t been seen in wine criticism for a generation, even
in the pages of what are the vinous equivalents of W.
Once upon a time you could look
around a restaurant and see someone holding a wine glass up to the light,
appraising the little rivulets running down the inside after the wine had been
swirled. Good legs were sturdy droplets that made their way slowly. But this
became a sign of cluelessness, replaced by instant apprehension of fruit on
nose and palate, a sign of what I think of as compote explosion syndrome:
Bordeauxs moved from cherries and cigar boxes to more exotic descriptors, chardonnay
filled up on the page with figurative peaches and pears, pinot noir with
strawberries and even kiwi.
The fruitiness of the enterprise of
wine evaluation lent itself beautifully to the numbers game and the famous and
now increasingly dubious 100-point system. If a rating between 90 and 100 meant
"outstanding, a wine of superior character," and a 80 to 89 meant "very
good, a wine with special qualities," and a 70 to 79 "good, a fine
example of its type, may have minor flaws," and a 60 to 69 "average,
drinkable wine of acceptable quality," anything below that – presumably
two-thirds of the world’s wines – not worth swirling or drinking.
But how can a wine be truly
assigned an absolute numerical equivalent? It can’t, and in trying to finesse
that basic fact other subjective and often syntactically silly descriptors are
added, like masculine and feminine, big-shouldered, febrile, and plush (an overly
soft throw-pillow?). And how can anyone justify relegating that terrain south
of 60 a wasteland? Many such table wines are not "flawed" but merely
simple, pleasant, and merriment- but not necessarily hangover-inducing.
The fact is that a wine ranking is highly
subjective, sometimes specious, and often used for little more than promotion.
It’s one thing to rate a wine according to a regimen - assigning points for
color, clarity, bouquet, body and finish - and another entirely to swirl,
sniff, taste, and then to toss off a digital bouquet without telling us what
the numbers are based on.
Wines are often much closer in
quality than the ratings make them appear. But numbers sell wine - and
occasionally wine publications. A woman told me she gave a party and served
only wines that ranked 95 or higher in either The Wine Advocate or The Wine
Spectator. “It was a wonderful party," she added, but couldn’t
remember the names of the wines or what they tasted like.
Clearly numbers drinking contributes
to snobbery and ignorance, and it creates a false sense of contention. Wine
producers may be in competition, but wine is not, gets along very well with
itself and with people who trust their perceptions and don't insist upon a rating
by Moody's (another discredited entity in our on-going disillusionment with
most things financial) for everything that crosses their palates.
Legs, fruit compote, and numbers were
all trends of wine analysis, as was the now-hoary tradition of wine writing
with attitude. That once meant flowery prose, mostly from Brits. Nowadays it
often means spirited – as in lively and opinionated – writing from wine
bloggers, an independent and inherently anti-establishment troupe that has
re-invigorated wine criticism and wine musing and is the latest development in
the universe of wine appreciation.
There are hundreds if not thousands
of these men and women, a welcome phenomenon in the ever-changing relationship
between human beings and what they drink. And wine bloggers are gathering for their annual convention
in August, this year in Portland,
Oregon. I’m looking forward to
joining them.
