Wine Rant

Have you ever bought Wine A because it had a little more cinnamon in its aroma than Wine B had?  Not me!  I just do not understand the preoccupation with diving deep into the aromas and tastes of a wine and why they have become so important.  Do you like the wine or not?  Is the reason you like it because it has cranberry aromas instead of strawberry aromas?  Or is the reason you like it because of the body, how it presents the tannin’s, and the character that it brings out of the grapes?  The latter are the things that I am evaluating when I decide how much I like a wine. 

I give a wine a grade: A, B, C, D, or F.  An A grade means I really like the wine and want to have some in my cellar so the next time I want to drink it I can just go down to the cellar and open it.  A wine gets a B grade when I like it and am happy to order off the wine list in a restaurant.  If I see it on sale at a good price, I will buy some for my cellar.  The grade of C means that it is drinkable and if I am at a party and that is what they are serving, I will have a glass.  The D grade means undrinkable and if they are serving that at a party then I will drink club soda.  The F grade is failing, and I will actively tell people to avoid that wine. 

I give that grade based on the overall impression that the wine makes on me.  I don’t have a spreadsheet where Body gets so many points and tannin can get anywhere from 0 to 20 points.  My judgement is only about how much do I want to have this wine again. 

Thanks to Robert Parker the standard now is a numerical ranking up to 100 as the highest score.  I don’t know what the lowest score is.  If is lower than 80 then the people who want you to buy that wine don’t publish it and magazines and web sites don’t want to write about those wines.    I have seen a pretty significant disparity in the numerical grades that different reviewers give a wine so I am more impressed when the scores from multiple reviewers are posted, and I can see the range for that wine.  I also like to see if that wine has gotten similar rankings in past vintages as that tells me if that winemaker has a strong track record or not.  These rankings from reviewers are a factor in my choosing a wine to try but they really do not factor into the simple letter grade that I give the wine. 

I have led a number of wine tastings, and in my notes about the wines I always include information about the aromas and tastes because audiences have been taught to look for that.  But I don’t talk about those things when discussing the wine, just about what I particularly liked or didn’t like about that wine.  What has been fun is reading different reviews about a wine and seeing when some reviewers identify totally different aromas and tastes than other reviewers.  And sometimes I will see that they just copied and pasted what the winemaker published about his or her wine in their review which leads me to wonder if they ever really tasted that wine.  I think that it might be just l a contest to come up with an aroma or taste that no one has noticed before.  If something has an aroma of moldy straw, why on earth would you ever put it in your mouth?  And how do you know what damp concrete taste like?  I have seen both.

I believe that a big reason why talking about aromas and tastes has become so important is that wine classes focus on it, particularly what is probably the biggest name in wine education – WSET, the Wine and Spirits Education Trust.  This is not a rant about or against WSET.  I took their Level 2 class and learned some good things and am glad I took that class.  And in the class exercises I could distinguish that this wine had raspberry aromas while this other wine had plum aromas.  I just did not see why that was important and it did not have any impact on my judgment about wanting to have that wine again or not.  And WSET thinks that Cabernet Sauvignon wines are significantly superior to Pinot Noir wines and pretty much thinks that all good US wine is being made in California and nothing exciting is happening in Oregon or other states.  Just a minor rant.

If someone wants to have a career in wine and spirits, getting the higher level of WSET certifications can be very important.  Getting an MBA degree can open up doors for career opportunities that someone with a BA would not have.  But an MD degree is more than letters after your name, it is an absolute requirement to practice medicine as a doctor.  WSET certifications are more like the MBA degree in my opinion, and they are a significant financial and time investment to get to the highest levels. 

Enough about WSET.  My primary rant is about why does defining all sorts of aromas and tastes get so much attention in reviews and write-ups about a wine.  I do care if the amount of time spent in new oak barrels is significantly noticeable in the taste and aroma.  If they are, chances are that I will not like that wine very much, but some people will make it a preference because they really like that oaky flavor.  One of the great things about wine is that it has an enormous range of tastes and people should get the wines that they like.  I have no argument with anyone who likes very oaky wines.  I hope they do not have an argument with me that I am enjoying making fun of all the hoopla about aromas and tastes in a wine.