Wine is all about emotion and connection to people, food, and place.  A place could be a dining room, tasting room, vineyard picnic, romantic restaurant, or wherever else.  As I’ve blogged before, context heavily influences taste.

Out of curiosity I attended a media tasting for small Napa Valley wineries last Tuesday.  There were a few wine bloggers there but also the wine press.

The tasting was in the Rudd Center at the Culinary Institute of American just north of St. Helena.  Stunning place!  It is an old stone building at the former Christian Brothers Winery that was remodeled for wine instruction and tastings.  It is a cross between a small lecture hall and a chemistry lab.  We each had our own sink.  It was designed to be the perfect place to focus on wine tasting – but is it?

Our winery hosts were very nice and I really enjoyed them.  The wines were all excellent.  Mostly we tasted Cabs which are my favorite anyway.  The major problem is context.

We silently tasted the wines, and spit, in complete isolation from any type of environment that a consumer would experience.  Everyone was focused on each sip and the nose in a perfect environment for sipping and smelling. During the tasting it was silent in the room.  I tried to discuss the wines with a blogger on my left and a wine magazine publisher / editor on my right but someone behind me wanted quiet.  Basically we had to reduce sensory input as much as possible to “taste” the wine.

Some of the old wine media in the room were going to rate the wines and publish them.  If a wine doesn’t get a 90+ rating then it won’t sell from retail shelves.  That means that some poor vintner who has poured his or her heart into the wine is going to suffer a serious set-back.

So I made notes and decided to do a context experiment.  After the tasting I drove a short distance up Highway 29 to Benessere Winery and bought one of the wines we tasted.  I brought it home and shared it with my wife over dinner.  It tasted very different.  I’m not going to say better or worse because that is a meaningless value judgment.  I will say their blend cost $62 which I felt was way too high.

Experiments like this prove to me that pro tastings are worthless for the consumers.  I consider the popular point rating systems to be a fraud to be ignored by those of us who want to enjoy wine without the deep technics and at the time, place, and circumstances of our choosing.

I also want vintners to be freed from the huge constraints of the wine raters.  In Wine Questers we have a rating feature that was requested by dozens of vintners.  Those ratings will only be valid when large numbers of consumers rate the wine in their various environments and circumstances.

Compared to the old wine media tasters in attendance I’m just a barbarian invader.  A hairy beast from the hill country of California that doesn’t fit into the real wine world.  OK, but I’ve had a fair amount of wine education over the past 40+ years and I think those folks shouldn’t be making baseless judgments that affect the rest of us.

I really don’t like them terriorizing winemakers and stiffling innovation and creativity with their value judgments.  I want to taste that innovation even if it burns my nose hairs.  When I taste wine I want it to be an intimate affair between me and the winemaker and the context around me.  The techno-snobs are certainly welcome to enjoy their hobby as they wish but leave the rest of us alone.

Will you consider the wine rating the next time you buy wine?

- jim