I bumped into some friends recently who asked, “Have you tried any good wines lately?” A frequent question.
I did a mind scramble (which doesn’t always work) and mentioned a rosé, new to me, that my wife and I had just enjoyed. I even said, “It’s one of the best rosés I’ve ever had.”
As those words left my mouth, I was thinking how incredibly subjective my comment was. I mean, I like anchovies and Brussels sprouts too. It’s been my experience that anchovies and Brussels sprouts aren’t at the top of a lot of people’s favorites list.
In fact, I have a great friend who’s a wine lover and whose opinion I respect and often invite, who hates all rosés and never drinks any. Except once, when we made him drink rosé at one of my wife’s big birthdays. (It ended in a zero.)
Wines are routinely compared, scored, rated, ranked, and awarded. Sounds like a sport with specific, inarguable, objective statistics. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs and you can’t deny or debate it. While wine tasting and critiquing is a game of sorts, it is clearly debatable.
When each of us assesses a wine, we’re using our own personal experience and, of course, our own abilities to see, smell and taste. My abilities are different than yours; not necessarily better, but most necessarily different. And what qualities in a wine that we each deem desirable is surely different as well. We call this part of analyzation, an opinion. Opinions differ.
Your opinion is as valid as the next person’s. After all, it’s based on what you personally like. However, there are professional wine critics, sommeliers, (and the occasional writer?) who’ve accumulated objective knowledge about what goes into growing grapes and turning them into quality wine, which should be respected. While an art, there’s also plenty of significant science behind vineyard management and winemaking.
Like so many wines, wine appreciation is a blend. A blend of subjective personal preference and experience, and objective, measurable fact. The experts actually have the additional burden of needing to review a wine fairly that may not appeal to their own personal liking. The rest of us can simply eliminate those anchovies and Brussels sprouts from our table.
Ernest Valtri of Buckingham is a sculptor, painter, graphic designer, and a former member of the PLCB’s Wine Advisory Council. Contact Erno at ObjectDesign@verizon.net.
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