4 years ago I was working as the understudy wine director at a large resort in Florida that boasted an incredible wine cellar. Part of my "job" as the understudy was to taste as much as possible. In addition to the double blind staff wine tastings that were held at every friday and saturday lineup my boss chose a bottle a week for me to take home and study. Talk about accelerated learning. The blind tastings helped hone my palate and also taught me to look for a sense of place in wine. Taking home bottles and spending time with them is what helped me to really understand what I was drinking. I started keeping a wine journal with all my notes and even began scoring the wines. I was still using the major publications as my reference point and supplication for wines, but over the course of my drinking and learning increasing exponentially I would begin to see flaws in the current evaluation systems.
The first thing I noticed was how useless points were. As I tasted more and more wine I began to see that there were some highly rated wines that did not speak to me at all and yet there were some wines that were never reviewed and even some that were reviewed with low scores that blew me away. I did not understand the disparity at the time, but it really started to make me think twice about wine publications. It also helped me to start trusting my own palate and not relying on some one else's opinion. Points also create a buying frenzy and lead to higher priced wines at the expense of the consumer.
After I realized how silly points were, it was not long before I felt the same way about vintage charts. I began to see that a good, thoughtful producer could make a great wine even in a year that the critics declared less than great. Farming is a reaction to the weather; a dance between the farmer and mother nature. If you are not a good dancer you would need perfect weather for good wines. If points and vintage charts tell us nothing then why was I reading these magazines? These publications are simply providing a way for people to remain dependent upon them. They are not helping people to discover their own tastes and preferences, to learn how to search for wines they love, to ask questions and really learn about what wine should be, they just want them to come back for more meaningless information. If people thought for themselves they would have no readers.
I have always had a very discerning palate and have always, even as a kid, preferred savory to sweet. I enjoy subtle, complex flavors and a wine that has a personality and intelligence. The wines I enjoy generally do not do well in a blind or double-blind competitions. The wines that stand out in a blind tasting where you only have a few moments with each wine are the ones that pack the most wallop and are able to immediately grab the tasters attention. These are most often the jammy, over-ripe, technologically altered, monsters that have no place at the table or in my glass. Tasting blind is great for education and sharpening your wine tasting skills, but not for evaluation. Understanding and true appreciation are lost without the context of place and what is really inside the bottle. This can not be achieved in a mass tasting format. You have to meet with producers and talk about the wine and its journey to really understand.
In light of these discoveries it was with great pleasure that I walked away from print wine publications over 3 years ago. I knew there had to be a better way and I set out determined to find it. I can proudly say that I have not picked up wine magazine since and I can honestly say that I have learned more on my own path of searching than I ever would have been able to if I were still shackled by the chains of points and score charts.
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