Browse Month

October 2008

Idea log

[questioning brain]It will surprise no one that I’ve had a political discussion or two over the last few weeks. And it’s probably also no surprise that one of them got me thinking about wine. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the role played ideology.

There are a number of ideological stances one can take in response to wine. This is true whether you’re a producer, in the trade, or a consumer…and in fact, those ideologies often run in parallel lines through those three groups. For example, consumers with a given philosophy often patronize the wines of retailers, importers, and producers who share that philosophy.

What do I mean when I refer to wine ideologies? Here are a few common examples, though by no means is this an exhaustive list:

  • “natural” wine is superior
  • “natural” winemaking is anything but
  • biodynamic viticulture is better
  • biodynamic viticulture is mystical hooey
  • organic viticulture is preferable
  • organic viticulture is marketing
  • all that matters is what’s in the glass
  • wine is wine, no matter how or where you drink it
  • wine is meant as a companion to food
  • quality is not inherent, but is a product of context
  • there are objective standards to wine on which experts can agree
  • taste is subjective
  • quality is determined by price
  • quality is determined by terroir
  • sulfur is bad
  • the abandonment of sulfur is lunacy
  • screwcaps are the answer
  • only real cork belongs in a wine bottle

…and so forth. One immediately notices that a good number of these ideologies are fundamentally incompatible. And yet, they are passionately-held, each of them, by very serious wine folk. How can this be?

It is likely true that some ideologies are, in fact, nonsense. And that others are justified primarily by their marketability. And that still others are only held because their holder fails to understand (or denies) evidence to the contrary.

I’m not interested, here, in discussing which ones are valid or not. Instead, having been brought to this musing by considering the positive and negative effects of ideology in a political context, I’m interested in whether or not the very concept of ideology is worthwhile, especially from the standpoint of the consumer.

Long-time acquaintances are undoubtedly sputtering in their biodynamic Muscadet right now, objecting thusly: “oh, sure, you’re a fine one to talk about the negatives of ideologies, Mr. Everyone-has-a-bias, and Serious-is-not-a-philosophy, and Alcohol-is-a-conceptual-problem, and No-really-everyone-has-a-bias.” (OK, maybe no one actually talks like that. At least, I hope not.) And it’s true: I have ideologies, and while I feel I’m open about them in a way unfortunately few critics and writers are, I would never presume to deny them.

Despite this, might ideologies be a profoundly mixed blessing?

Let’s start with the positives. I’m a firm believer that wine – that is, wine worth thinking or writing about, wine worth more than a tossed-back glass after a hard day at the office – can be about more than a gut-level, caveman-like response to the pure pleasure it brings as it fills your mouth and gets you just a little bit more drunk than you were a moment ago. That, in itself, is an ideology, and one certainly not shared by everyone. But it’s a basic, foundational ideology, without which I couldn’t – and wouldn’t – write about wine for a living or for fun.

Based on that foundation, then, one can immediately see the appeal of sub-categorical ideologies. Especially those reinforced by experience. If, on balance, wines self-identified as biodynamic, or “natural,” are appealing to me more often than is the norm across all wines, I as a consumer have a ready-made shopping list, even if the brands on it are unknown. Or if I find the modern obsession with ripeness to be fundamentally deforming, I now have a ready-made list of wines, and perhaps even places, to avoid. The mere existence of these ideologies, coupled with the knowledge of how to apply them, makes my life as a consumer a more efficient one. And it reduces the number of times I’ll waste my money on something I was destined to dislike.

Other philosophies can be similarly-examined for their benefits, which accrue not just to the consumer, but to other entities as well. An organic producer has a ready-made audience, while a low-sulfur producer a smaller but proportionally more fanatic one. An importer with a portfolio of luscious liquid “hedonism” from warm, fertile regions – big explosions of velvety fruit layered with toasty new wood – has a reliable market, as well.

Of course, the temptation is – as with any ideology, in any field – to mistake preference for objectivity, projecting hierarchies outward from the person onto the thing itself. This isn’t to say that there cannot be objective value in certain ideologies; organic viticulture may indeed be better for the environment, low-sulfur wines could be easier on the body’s biochemistry, screwcaps might maintain a wine’s intended form better than other closures. But most ideologies aren’t like this. They’re philosophies that emanate from subjective preference, codified and thus eminently arguable, but no less subjective for the force and structure of them. And that’s where we run into trouble.

It is perfectly reasonable to prefer one wine to another for stylistic reasons. If those stylistic reasons are directly attributable to philosophies, and that preference reliably extends to other examples, then it is similarly reasonable to connect the preference with the philosophy, and thus to prefer one philosophy to another. In fact, I know of no one who does not do this, to a greater or lesser extent, even within the narrow field of wine appreciation.

The problem arises when the ideology becomes more important than the object of the ideology. There exist more than a few winemakers, tradespersons, writers, and consumers who cannot free their response to a given wine from the boundaries of their ideologies. Sometimes, they won’t even try a wine because of how it’s made, where it’s from, or what it represents. More often, they’ll take a taste, but final judgment has been rendered before the first sniff.

It needs to be made clear that this does not make said victim of their ideology a bad person, nor does it make them useless as an observer or commentator on wine. In fact, many of the most successful critics and writers in the wine field are absolutely laden with ideologies. But note that word: victim. The trap of ideology is that is closes the mind and the palate, while calcifying in such a way that the subjective eventually becomes canon. Wines that fall outside the strict borders of the ideology are tarred as heretical, rather responded to with reasoned dislike.

Don’t believe me? Ever heard someone dismiss a Burgundy just because it was a Burgundy, and thus already known to be a lousy value, thin, and rife with biological flaws? I hear it all the time, and with unfortunate frequency from a number of California winemakers and their fans. (Worry not: some Burgundians can and do return the favor.) Ever read a writer or importer decry a wine for using non-indigenous yeast before they’ve even tasted it? Or their control-freak opposites mocking the very concept of indigenous yeast and the oenological negligence it represents? Ever heard someone respond positively (or negatively) to a wine tasted blind, and then completely change their tune when they find they’ve been had by their ideology-tweaking friends? Of course you have. And so have I.

I think this is a shame, and something to be resisted. There are good wines out there made in a way I’d probably prefer wines weren’t made, and if I can’t leave myself open to the possibility that I might enjoy them, I’ve not only lost something important, I’ve prevented myself from ever finding that important something. There are surprising experiences left for the experiencing, but they’ll never be experienced if I refuse to experiment. There are beautiful places and people in the world of wine who I will never meet should I be unwilling to accept what they do on their, rather than my, terms.

More generally, the inability to adapt to one’s circumstances is a dangerous trait, both intellectually and socially. Should friends not be able to enjoy a wine they like without receiving a philosophical lecture in return? It sounds unfathomably rude, but I’ve heard wine ideologues who couldn’t help themselves. Should one stubbornly cart one’s preferred wines around the world, refusing to drink local wines because they’re ideologically insufficient, becoming the oenophilic version of one of those people who brings their own condiments or desserts to a restaurant?

This doesn’t mean that one has to change, or even lower, their standards. Not at all. As I noted before, I believe wine is about much more than whether or not it tastes good. It’s right up there in the header: “wine is liquid, wine is life, wine is emotion, wine is thought.” (I might add that it’s art and science, as well. And it gets you tipsy. And it tastes good.) Matters of philosophy, practice, and execution are, to someone who feels as I do, important. And if wine as anything other than a commodity is to survive and prosper, it needs ideologues at every stage of its existence.

But it’s crucial to remember that we do not drink the ideology. We drink the wine. And if we don’t, we’re drinking the Kool-Aid.

(image used thanks to a Wikimedia Commons license)

The singing ship, sanguine

[reflection]For a chain hotel not exactly known for its luxury, [this] is more than serviceable, though it’s crawling with businesspeople and has to turn several desperate latecomers away at the front desk. There’s a bar in the lobby, and a really impressive breakfast buffet in the restaurant across the hall. I mean really impressive: six kinds of charcuterie, five kinds of cheese (including the ubiquitous gjetost), various herrings, anchovies, caviar (though only the squeeze-tube kind) pickled vegetables and salad greens, creamy “salads” that only a Scandinavian or Minnesotan could love, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, cut fruit, yogurt, cereals and muesli, fair coffee, fine tea, juices, several kinds of milk, three preparations of (real) eggs, terrific bacon, sausages, meatballs, mini-waffles, jams and spreads, a huge block of excellent salted butter, and an assortment of five or six fresh-that-morning breads (most some variation on whole grain, and many with seeds) that is rather breathtaking in its quality. As a result of this early-morning bounty, at hotel after hotel, I’m able to avoid eating lunch anywhere in Norway…which, given that in some places a bowl of fish soup and a beer can cost nearly $100, is a very, very good thing.

…continued here.

Cry me a River

[bottle]Kumeu River 2005 Chardonnay (Kumeu) – The elephant in the room: there’s some obvious reduction at first opening (this wine is screwcapped by one of New Zealand’s most ardent advocates of widespread screwing…wait, that came out wrong). It completely disappears after about 15 minutes, though it’s replaced by a sulfurous, matchstick edginess. And then, there’s brilliant, sunrise-through-a-window acidity, brittle grapefruit, and a lot of primal, grapey rawness. This is structured and strikingly long, and though it lacks complexity now, I suspect time will bring some. Kumeu River remains one of New Zealand’s best producers of this often-insipid grape. (10/08)

Vareij is the spice of life

[logo]Hilberg-Pasquero 2005 “Vareij” (Piedmont) – Smooth blue fruit, candied and dull as hell. Everything interesting has been buffed and polished and ground from this wine, leaving a core of emptiness. The tedium is immeasurable. This is brachetto?!? (with some barbera, but still…) (10/08)

Ale be seeing you

[bottle]Fuller’s 2007 “Vintage” Ale (England) – Strident and uncompromising; the upshot is that I’m not at all sure I like it, but it sure is very much what it wants to be: bitter, raw-grain zing in drinkable form. I’m tempted to say this is brilliant, except that it’s hard for me to be so positive about a beer I really, really struggle to take in more than single-sip quantities. Still, I have to believe that this is a personal issue, and those who like this sort of thing will find it an ale for the ages. (10/08)

25

Unibroue “Quartre-Centième” (Québec) – Are these beers getting more boring by the year, or am I suffering from malty overstimulation? Should I blame corporate brewing? Is this an actual tasting note? No, probably not. (10/08)

…and The Edge

Bonneau 1988 Châteauneuf-du-Pape “Réserve des Célestins” (Rhône) – Like drowning in a zero-gravity sea of satin, this wine seduces and entices but never grounds itself, preferring to float and writhe. There’s hickory, fermented roots, a bit of that 70s-style coconut tanning oil mixed with a supermodel’s extremely sexy perspiration (visualize it, don’t analyze it), and a lot of soft, incredibly delicious fruit from the reddish-pink realm. And there’s tannin in the graphitic style, like that of a top Bordeaux in the early days of its maturity, that rumbles along the palate, resetting and refreshing, before another sleepy-time wave of silk. The caveat, perhaps, is that it’s perhaps all a bit easy; the appeal of the wine is purely reactive and animalistic, without much of an intellectual component. Still, what a beautiful wine…still years from full maturity, but absolutely compelling now. (10/08)

Cluster bomb

[grapes]Navarro 1997 Gewürztraminer “Late Harvest Cluster Select” (Anderson Valley) – 375 ml., 9.6%. Fully mature, and very impressive, with dark bronzed lychee met in equal measure by freshly-dug black truffle, old peach liqueur (minus the heat), and exotic nut oils. Very sweet, but nicely balanced, long, and laden with spice. (9/08)

Gould & Apple

Glen Fiona 1997 Syrah (Walla Walla Valley) – Massively primary, and yet I don’t know that it will escape that character. The fruit tends towards blueberry, blackberry, and plum, and there’s the aroma (but not the tactile sensation) of freshly-tanned leather, but the tanning liquids are absent, and while the wine is very, very delicious, the structure required for longer aging seems prematurely absent. I don’t think this is going to fall apart anytime over the next decade, so an optimistic hold is warranted (unless you love the boisterous fruit, in which case: drink now), but I suspect this will make old pillows rather than old bones. (10/08)

Off the

[vineyard]Navarro 1998 Pinot Noir “Deep-End Blend” (Anderson Valley) – 13.9%. Very advanced on the nose, and browning, at first opening. Don’t be fooled, as this is a massive deception. With air, the wine takes on flesh, fat, and power, bringing dark – and, truth be told, somewhat obvious – fruit of the fat, Central Valley berry type to the palate, with hints of freshly-ground coffee bean, bitter chocolate, raw morel, and molten glass. It’s very, very intense, and really shouldn’t be opened anytime soon. In fact, air only serves to anger and intensify the fruit, while the structure – still fully intact – shows no signs of dissipating. All that said, I don’t know if there’s complexity or “pinosity” here; the wine seems to take abrupt, noisily-accomplished steps towards all the things that make pinot noir compelling, without any of the accompanying intellectualization or complexity that one expects from the grape and the region. I suspect a little too much effort in the cellar, and I wonder if this might not be the fate of many highly-touted New World pinots of similar ilk. Still, one could do profoundly worse, and while the wine bears the imprint of work, it is in no way trafficked or steroidal. It’s just big and more than a little buffoonish, yet full of skill. It’s Boo Weekley in a bottle. (10/08)