Make Wine, Not Math

Picture this scene. You have just arrived for a date or rendezvous, or your wife/husband has just dressed for an evening out. It’s your birthday, so a special evening is in the works. As your partner turns to you hoping for a compliment, you say, “You look great. You’re an 87 this evening.” Now picture this scene. You’re in a wine store, trying to choose between wines for dinner. You have your handy vintage guide at the ready, and let’s say that you have decided that 1995 Bordeaux looks promising. So it’s a matter of choosing one wine from a retailer’s selection of one year. You read what the wine writers have to say, and note that many of them are assigning scores to the wine. You narrow it down to two wines. “A blockbuster, gobs of fruit, 94” reads one, for $22. “Good effort from this property, 87” reads another, for $15. Which do you choose? If price is important, you might buy the $15 wine. If, on the other hand, you are a firm believer in mathematical scoring, you might cough up the additional money and buy the $22 wine. In neither event have you judged the wine on its merits. At best, you have taken someone else’s subjective evaluation to which a misleading mathematical attribute has been assigned. I say that is the wrong way to purchase wine. It is certainly the wrong way to evaluate it, just as giving your significant other a point score for how she or he looks is foolish. I say that in full awareness that many wine writers now routinely use point scores, and that Atlantic Monthly recently wrote a gushing feature article about wine writer Robert Parker, said by them to be the most influential critic writing today, bar none. In addition, wine scores are also routinely reprinted in wine magazines, and retail shops use those ratings extensively, often with a suspicious correlation between wine prices and scores. Wine, let it be said, is an agricultural product, subject to the vagaries of soil and climate. Such matters as rainfall (when during the growing season, and in what concentration) are vitally important. So are the types of grape varieties planted, depending on the underlying soil and subsoils and in symbiosis with them. That is why the same grape variety will do very well in one area, and less well in another. Cabernet sauvignon predominates in the Medoc region of Bordeaux, while merlot is preferred in Pomerol. It is therefore crucially important that a vintner understand the possibilities and the limitations of what he has to work with, what the French call the terroir. Only then can the proper grape varieties be planted and aged and culled to show that property’s winegrowing potential to best advantage. Having done so, and bearing in mind the differences as plants that different grape species have (some must be harvested earlier than others, for example, and therefore weather patterns can crucially affect not just yield, but composition and quality of the wine), after harvest the juices must be evaluated for the blend, or assemblage of the wine. This is a crucial stage, one of many, where judgment and experience are needed. Over the years, the winemaker — having learned through many vintages what his property can best produce — will blend in optimum proportion that wine that suits his raw materials of grapes and terroir. I once participated in the assemblage at Chateau Haut Brion, thanks to master winemaker Jean Delmas. We first tasted the different varietals used, from both established and newer vines. Then we tasted the final wine, as blended by Delmas. It was a revelation. The whole was far superior to the excellent individual varietal wines. At this point, before the wine has started to close up and begin the aging process, the evolution of fruit and tannins, flavor and structure, there is a short period, usually in a ghastly tourist season such as March, when a taster can form an idea of how the wine may evolve. Why this is so, I cannot say. This is the period when wine writers troop through the winegrowing regions each year and form their assessments. I strongly urge those who enjoy wine to visit a winegrowing region at least once, and sample wines at several different wineries. It is also the case that different wines age very differently. Some may be drunk with pleasure very soon after they are bottled. For others, it would take many years before they are ready. The bottle size also makes a difference, with larger bottles such as the magnum aging more slowly (and, according to Bordeaux vintners, more evenly). Wines have a period when they are showing at their best. Some very old wines may also have charm, even after the structure has gone. I remember sampling a 1928 Chateau Beychevelle that was wonderful, although it retained just a trace of its former fruit. Five minutes later I sipped the glass again, and the flavor was gone. I also was served an 1845 Chateau Ausone at luncheon by Mme. Dubois-Chalon, then the owner of the property. The wine was excellent. It was also unmistakably an Ausone, as distinctive as the blend we had sampled before luncheon of the previous year’s vintage. It follows that a good wine served at its peak is to be preferred to a potentially excellent wine served before it is ready. I once served in 1985 bottles of 1980 Chateau Pavie at a formal dinner in France. The invited guests were surprised that the wine was so fine, since 1980 was not considered a very good year. But I knew the proprietors of Chateau Pavie, and had been assured by them that their 1980 vintage wine was then at its peak. It certainly was. My point is that appreciating wine, and its corollary, not being taken by wine writers, requires some effort. It is not achieved overnight, and that is a good thing, since the effort to learn about wine is so pleasant. “Fine,” you say. “But I’ll never visit all those wine estates, so why not use point scores? Do they do any harm?” Yes, they do. For one thing, if the wine writer has a pronounced taste of his own, he will reward his own taste repeatedly, whether or not that taste represents the optimum blend from a given wine property. A popular wine writer, whose scores influence sales, and who therefore rewards the faithful reproduction of what he is looking for, could therefore manage to influence winegrowers anxious for the bottom line to change their blends, not because the weather and terroir so dictate, but because that change might result in a better review and therefore, more wine sales. That would be pernicious. For another thing, a wine score cannot tell you when a wine will be at its peak. Only a detailed knowledge of the vintage and the individual property can do that. Otherwise you are in the position I was in back in 1960. The 1959 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, which now sells for many hundreds of dollars at auction, was hailed by one and all as a splendid wine. I bought a bottle and we tried it, probably at least a dozen years too soon. It was a nice wine, with structure edging out the fruit, and I didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Clearly, I was drinking it at the wrong time. That is why you may wonder why that wine scored 94 that you bought for dinner has proved disappointing. You may have made my mistake, and are drinking it too soon. Wine scores also provide false comparisons. A vintage Burgundy that costs $80 and scores 90 is not at all the same thing as a Beaujolais costing $10 that has the same score. They are not comparable wines in the least. I say that without prejudice to Beaujolais, my favorite summer wine, which dollar for dollar provides some of the best values in your wine store. So I would say, be most suspicious of wine scores. At best they will give you some shorthand indications, often helpful I would admit, of how a winegrower did in a given vintage. At worst, they stand in the way of your wine enjoyment, substituting someone else’s tastes for your own, which may or may not be helpful. It follows that expensive new boutique wines that are made by a formula to suit a reviewer’s taste, the so-called garagiste wines that have neither terroir nor aging history, should be avoided like the plague. What would I substitute for scores? I say, develop your own taste, without shortcuts. The best individual advice I ever received was from Alexis Lichine, who wrote that it was helpful to buy three bottles of wine, same vintage, same producer. Have one with dinner, and make notes on how the wine seemed to your taste. Taste the second bottle in six months and take notes without reading the first notes. Taste the third six months later. Then read the three sets of notes, and see how the wine — and your tasting of it — have evolved. Read whatever you like about wine, concentrating on given regions that you like. And then, collect to strength. If you find that St. Emilion wines are to your liking, start putting some down in your cellar, three now, six later. Have an assortment of vintages, bottle sizes, and classifications. It will take some doing, but over the years, and not very many at that, you will have a fine assortment of excellent wines. And you will wonder why on earth anyone would ever assign point scores to wine. Check out Bill Shepard’s biography! You may post a comment here for the author and discuss French wines on BP’s discussion board. And to order Bill Shepard’s book—Consular Tales—visit Amazon.com! Copyright © 2001 Paris New Media, L.L.C.