February 19 2010
You could write a Zen koan about the wonky, occasionally nonsensical wine topic that is wine criticism and blind tasting versus context-based (i.e. non-blind) tasting.
The path to enlightenment, in my opinion, is neither.
First, some background.
I’ve read both editions of The Wine Trials by Robin Goldstein and I’ve read several articles and blog posts about the book, as well. The book is fine for what it is; what it’s not, however, is a genuine truth-seeking manifesto that should be taken as an article of faith.
The main premise of the book is to instill a sense of confidence in wine consumers to trust their palate, while puncturing the notion that a wine has to be expensive to be good. In doing so, the book slaughters just about every sacred cow there is in the world of wine and comes to the conclusion, via blind tasting, that (perhaps symbolically more than empirically), inexpensive wines under $15 best expensive wines that cost from $50 to $150. The book goes on to present 150 wines (with at least 20,000 cases of production) that won The Wine Trials blind tasting bake-off.
A couple of issues: First, the most fundamental flaw is that the premise of the book isn’t a fully fledged dissertation and assault on wine convention using junk science. It’s partly that, but the book exists to tell consumers the wines under $15 that won in blind tastings.
Make no mistake—the core premise of this book is to conduct these wine trials every year and sell you a book … every year. So, consumers need to look at this with a level of dubiousness when the author does a drive-by shooting of wine critics and the 100 point system, only to further an agenda that lines his own pockets.
The second significant issue is the book doesn’t list the “expensive” wines that these under $15 wines bested. How is a consumer supposed to trust the blind tasting results when they don’t know what wines were in the opposing category, or really how they were chosen?
The methodology of this book is significantly flawed and designed to appeal to people that know enough about wine, but not too much. You get the sense that the first 58 pages of the book are designed to lull consumers into a comfort womb; “Yes, the authors are crusaders for the truth,” and hopefully nobody asks any questions.
This brings me to the other ongoing topic that I believe is largely noisiness intended to perpetuate the empirical correctness of wine critics – blind tasting.
In the comments at Steve Heimoff’s site earlier this week, there was a lengthy going back and forth amongst four professional wine critics.
The dialogue centered on blind tasting with the prevailing thought being that blind tasting a wine provides the reviewer with the most objective analysis of a wine, absent bias.
There’s not much to argue with that point because it’s mostly true. However, one has to wonder if this ongoing “blind tasting” conversation that seems to repeat itself ad nauseum isn’t a subtle policy play and a reach around back pat.
A bigger question to me is does anybody care?
Going back to our Zen koan, “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?”
The reality is that consumer-generated wine reviews are growing SIGNIFICANTLY. The other reality is that virtually no consumer-generated reviews are done blind.
If professional wine critics continue to stump on the pulpit about blind tasting (and they do it long and loud enough) they continue to create a line of demarcation for their work relative to the unwashed masses.
That’s fine, if that’s the case. But, here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter. Not only do few people truly care, but information is moving to a level of transparency where context in totality matters … a lot.
A couple of thoughts:
I have long felt that individual wine reviews missed the boat a little bit. If you look at wine truly through the filter of the average wine consumer, they predominately don’t buy individual wines based on a review. Now, many do, but that’s at the very upper-end of the price spectrum. For the vast majority of wine reviews, with general wine quality across the industry being top-notch, a good review is just a good review for an inexpensive wine. If it’s used as a shelf talker maybe it moves the needle, otherwise it goes into the abyss of information.
Instead, I believe, what consumers do is scan reviews and build brand familiarity. “I may not be sure if it’s the Riesling or Cabernet from Chateau St. Michelle that was supposed to be good, but I’ll pick up the wine I have in my hand regardless,” goes the thinking.
I will do an entirely separate post on this topic related to the social science of consumer choice and risk mitigation, but suffice to say there’s a lot of data that supports this.
Again, to me, what the majority of reviewing activity is good for is creating a level of mental stickiness about THE WINERY in the consumer’s memory bank, not an individual wine.
Given this thought, you might wonder why more people don’t review wineries en total – as in, “Beringer, across their line-up, produces the most consistent quality wines under $15 based on the following individual reviews.” This is a much more useful way to do things instead of on a one-off basis. Consumers have demonstrated a limited capacity to remember individual things, but they remember brands.
In addition to this, we are seeing twin movements that also play into this “winery as a total entity” notion.
Yelp, a retail-oriented, consumer generated review site, is growing at a very fast pace. It’s growing so significantly that VinoVisit and Cork’d have created a strategic alliance for consumer-generated content that will now include visitor reviews—a subtle pick-up from the Yelp business model (the Yelp site already includes a significant number of California winery reviews).
Simply, customer service and the tasting room is the new “review” frontier and no longer is a good (or bad) experience relegated to word of mouth. Now it’s a broadcast message.
Finally, Wal-Mart has been working on their “Sustainability Index.” Similar to my mention of wine reviews, brands and mental stickiness, I could create an entire post on this Wal-Mart index, as well.
Suffice to say that they are creating a visual and/or numeric index that will be displayed with each product (including wine) that grades companies on their commitment and support of green practices. It’s expected that other retailers will adopt this methodology, as well.
So, a winery is graded for their wine(s), their on-premise customer service, and, very shortly, their support of green and sustainable business practices.
My point here is that blind tasting is really a great topic, as is skewering the conventions of wine criticism – it makes for endless fun. But, this is a topic that wouldn’t have been widely discussed six or seven years ago, and it’s not a topic that will be discussed six or seven years in the future. The ship has sailed and those that are interested in true wine enlightenment will soon see a winery at 360 degrees – quality across their wine line-up from consumer reviews in aggregate (as well as professional critics), their customer service in the form of a star rating, and how they conduct their business in the form of sustainability – likely delivered as a score.
So, while I can indulge today’s give and take about wine critics and blind tasting, it seems to me that the smart people are figuring out a meta-analysis that takes all of this content into a usable form that measures a winery across all of the categories that are emerging.
For those that get fired up about critics and scores, the bottom line isn’t far away, but this time it’ll be the so-called triple bottom line that measures a winery far more holistically, comprehensively and transparently then what we have today, and it won’t be blind, nor will it have to be.
Posted in, Good Grape Daily: Pomace & Lees. Permalink | Comments (4) |
Thomas,
That’s some heady analysis.
Like you, the experience issue has been one that I’ve wrestled with. Tenure doesn’t always equal wisdom.
The funny thing is, the more I know about wine, the more I realize I don’t know anything. The infinite pool of knowledge is really what keeps me interested in wine because it is, truly, an unconquerable subject. That, in and of itself, makes expertise a somewhat dubious claim.
Thanks, as always, for commenting!
Jeff
Jeff,
Heady analysis! Maybe there IS something to the notion that wisdom comes with age…
Your comment “the more I know about wine, the more I realize I don’t know anything,” immediately removes you as a candidate for wine critic of the year.
In actuality, your comment can be made about any subject that has the weight of civilization behind it, as does wine. Too bad most wine critics can’t get beyond the “I” of it all.
At the Wine Writers Symposium last week, a debate erupted over the responsibility of wine critics (in whatever form you care to describe them from blogosphere to WSJ and Bon Appetit) to talk about wines they dislike as well as wines they like.
The relevance of that debate here is simply this: ultimately, a grey-haired, bearded gentleman in the back pointed out that there is not a monolithic wine audience that can or should be treated in any one single way.
Wine critics who sell their reviews to subscribers exist because folks want to get an expert view. Those writers offer views on individual wines, and their readers expect those views and that kind of guidance. And judging by the kinds of criticisms that popped up in the blogosphere in the last year of critics who do not follow the expected rules and have seeming conflicts of interest, there are more than one or two consumers out there who do want blind tastings and rigorous review methodologies.
Popular wine-writing, of the type that is read more widely, may be helped by winery-width analysis. But it is also hurt by it. Sure it helps to know that a critic, or your best friend or collection of friends, likes the wines of Sebastiani or Castle Rock or Chateau St. Jean. But, if that is all the information offered, then very large parts of the wine buying public will not get the information they want. Many folks do want to know whether you are talking about the Chardonnay or the Merlot—because the quality may vary widely across the winery line—and, in fact, usually does.
The obvious takeaway for me is that there is no one size fits all in the information stream. The debate is not about blind tasting or winery-width commentaries. It is about how to meet the expectations of the various audiences.
Respectfully submitted,
Charles Olken
Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine
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Nice post, Jeff, but I think you miss a major point about wine criticism—or any aesthetic criticism.
Aesthetic criticism is simply a form of personal satisfaction; the critic feels secure in the knowledge that he or she has told the great unwashed what’s good, bad, or indifferent—because he or she just knows; didn’t even have to undergo training to know; just knows.
When you look at it that way, you can fully see and maybe even understand why critics get worked up over blind vs. context, et al. Each concept is either a defense or an offense to the critic’s self-image.
As for Wine Trials: the method does indeed have flaws, which I’ve pointed out in my blog and directly to Robin.
Other than the flaws, to me, the overriding issue between a consumer preference model and a critic proclamation model is this: when neither is trained to know what it is they are identifying; neither has any merit beyond personal preference. If my premise is true, then consumer preference takes precedence over a critic, since each know equally about the product.
Incidentally, I don’t believe that duration makes for a good critic, which is an argument that some put forward. I’ve known many people over my career who have been drinking wine for decades and still can’t tell “brett” from “interesting.”