The world of wine critique is fraught with logical contradictions.

Case in point: take this excerpt from a recent interview with critic James Suckling on Liv-Ex.com on the topic of evaluating wines while they are still in the barrel, as is often done during En Primeur in Bordeaux (emphasis mine):

“The key thing to remember is that the nose isn’t important at all. I learnt that from Daniel Lawton, one of the great negociants of Bordeaux. The important thing is the texture – the quality of the tannins and how they relate to the acidity and alcohol – and then the finish. Wines with long seamless finishes are really the great wines. It’s not all about power. It takes a long time before you can taste En Primeur properly. There’s a hierarchy in Bordeaux that helps as you can kind of figure out what should taste good. But to really understand how wines evolve you need a good 10 years of tasting.”

The logic issue here is that we know scientifically that the vast majority of our sensory experience in tasting wine comes aromatically and retro-nasally. So one (but not the only!) interpretation of the above quote is that En Primeur ratings are meaningless, or at least limited in value to consumers, because the aromas – and therefore the majority of the wine’s sensory experience – cannot be fully evaluated. The contradiction being that the wine world largely treats those ratings as not having any such limited usage.

Issues like that one crop up all over the place in the wine world, if you’re willing to look hard enough. And so it should be of little surprise to many of you when I tell you that the act of rating wines falls squarely into what is commonly called “bad science” in the scientific world…

To explain this, we first need to explore what’s meant by “bad science.” David Deutsch lays out a compelling definition in his excellent book The Beginning of Infinity: bad science offers explanations that are easy to vary, and therefore are not actually explanations of how things truly work.

For example, saying that someone lost a vintage of grapes to hail because of bad luck is bad science. It’s bad science even if that grapegrower has had many random unfavorable circumstances befall him before, a string of seemingly convincing “data” to bolster this claim. The data in this case are irrelvant because a) those random events cannot directly predict or explain the subsequent unpleasant events and b) we can substitute any manner of explanations in place of “bad luck” (“the will of the gods”for example) all of which are equally incorrect. In other words, the explanation is too easy to vary – accepting it is no better than acting on blind faith. That’s an over-simplification, but you get the drift.

Now, if we were able to trace back the meteorological events leading to that hail storm, and were able to gather enough data and causal links from the formation of the clouds to the weather events that triggered the hail above the poor guy’s vineyard, we would end up with an explanation and evidence (the formation of hail) that’s pretty difficult to vary. This is “good science” – it explains what happened, and the results could be used to accurately predict future similar events.

What does this have to do with criticism?

Wine ratings are most often presented via scales that imply scientific precision, however they are measuring something for which we have no scientificly reliable calibration: how people sense (mostly) qualitative aspects of wine. Yes, there may be objective qualities about a wine that can indeed be somewhat calibrated (the presence of faults, for example) but even with these we have varying thresholds of detection between critics. That’s important because it means that the objective (i.e., measurable) quantities of those elements are not perceived the same way by two different reviewers, and so their perception of the levels of those elements cannot reliable be calibrated.

But it’s the subjective stuff that really throws the money wrench into the works here. How we perceive those – and measure our enjoyment of them – will likely not be fully explainable in our lifetimes by science. That is because they are what is known as qualia: like happiness, depression, pain, and pleasure, those sensations can be described but cannot effectively be measured across individuals in any meaningful way scientifically.

Yes, we can come to pretty good agreement on a wine’s color, and on the fact that it smells like, say, strawberries. After that, the qualia perception gets pretty tricky, however: my perception on how vibrantly I perceive that strawberry aroma might be quite different from yours. Once that factors into how you and I would “rate” that wine’s aroma, we start to diverge, and potentially quite dramatically at that.

It’s a bit like you and I cutting our fingers accidentally when trying to open a wine bottle: ask us how we’d rate the pain on a scale of one to ten, and we might both say “2″ but there is NO calibration possible to ensure that our twos are meaningfully comparable – it only appears that way because we chose arbitrarily to use a numeric scale in reporting our perceptions of the pain. Substitute our perception of a wine’s balance for finger pain in that example and you can see we have a problem.

I am grossly oversimplifying this, by the way, in order to prevent this piece from ending up as ten thousand words (the qualia rabbit hole is very, very deep). The point is that the qualia can directly impact the rating, and so are not irrelevant.

Mistaking qualia perception as either accurately measurable or removing it as scientifically irrelevant has lead to a lot of “bad” science in the wine world, in some cases coming from what would otherwise qualify as “good” scientific data.

Interestingly, fine wine is acutely susceptible to this problem of differing qualia perceptions specifically because of how wonderful it is – it contains more complexity in offering more qualia (styles, flavors, primary and secondary aromas, textures, tannins, acidic structure, etc., and the senses of balance between them) and therefore a lot more room for error (of the scientific kind, I mean) between individuals.

A relatively recent example of this can be found in the Journal of Wine Economics’ publication of article by Robert T. Hodgson titled An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions. In that article, Hodgson gathered data on wines submitted to medal competitions and concluded that “the probability of winning a Gold medal at one competition is stochastically independent of the probability of receiving a Gold at another competition, indicating that winning a Gold medal is greatly influenced by chance alone.” The trouble was that Hodgson a) removed all of the factors that lead into how the judges came to their ratings, on the grounds that they are statistically irrelevant, which lead to him b) treating the qualia perception differences between judges and competitions as fungible when in reality they are not – they simply cannot yet be measured accurately (and may not be done so in out lifetimes, given the scientific complexity of that task). So in effect Hodgson made a critical error in assuming that the ratings in each competition are reached in way that can be measured scientifically and interchangeably. But they aren’t – the qualia rule the day when it comes to wine reviewing. Good approach, but the conclusion is bad science.

What does this mean for wine ratings?

Wine ratings (mine included!) are all at least partially “bad” science, and are not meaningfully comparable between reviewers, at least not scientifically, because all of them will at least partially perceive the qualia presented in those wines differently in ways that cannot be measured. This is true despite the fact that the scales are often comparable, and despite the fact that the wine world occasionally sports a serious hard-on for comparing ratings from different critics.  It is true despite the fact that the wine business does not want it to be true. It is true because if wine ratings cannot be reliable compared in a scientifically meaningful way, then they should NOT be treated as fungible (even if everyone happens to be treating them that way now). They are NOT accurate science.

“So what?” you might ask, “aren’t they all close enough for government work? Don’t lots of wine critics appear to agree at least somewhat on wine ratings for many wines?”

The answer to that while many critics appear to agree, it is NOT close enough for any meaningful comparison, and we cannot safely assume that any two critics reach equivalent scores in exactly the same way (or even objectively). Why? Because we have no way to accurately measure their qualia perceptions, and so we have no way of estimating how close to objective accuracy those ratings are individually, let alone across individual critics. This assumes that there is some objective accuracy to those qualia perceptions (interestingly, The Beginning of Infinity does suggest that there might be objective qualia like beauty – but we are likely many generations away from getting a handle on that scientifically).

What does this mean for everyday imbibers? It means that you shouldn’t assume that different reviewers are rating wines in the same way or even on the same scale, even if those scales appear to be identical superficially.

Accepting any wine review, or even a collection of such reviews on the same wines, as an ultimate determinant of that wine’s present and future enjoyment across individuals is “bad” science, and no better than accepting them on blind faith.

There is a light at the end of this tunnel, though.

If you have found that a reviewer’s ratings and descriptors and – importantly! – their relative perception of the levels of those elements in a given wine at least seem to closely mirror your own, then you may have found someone who likely perceives fine wine qualia similarly to you. Seek out those reviewers and listen to them. Just don’t take their 95, A, 5 puffs, or any other scale to be replaceable by anyone else’s.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Why Rating Wine Is Bad Science from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Twenty years on after her departure, her status has not change a single jot: Fisher’s still the greatest food writer who has ever lived.

Don’t believe me? Try out the latest collection of some of her work, Musings On Wine And Other Libations (about $18; I received a review copy), which focuses almost exclusively on Fisher’s wine prose and is edited by Anne Zimmerman (who last year wrote the book on Fisher – literally).

What you will find is a writer who had an ability to ingrain context into wine tales that was so uncannily pure that I suspect it was enmeshed within her DNA, along with an editor who puts context on top of all that context. Musings On Wine And Other Libations ends up providing a surfeit of context that should get most wine geeks swooning.

And when you read Fisher’s insightful musing about vino, know this: as god as it is, it probably isn’t even her best writing…

She seems to have reserved that real magic for describing food. An example:

“As for potato chips, I do not remember them earlier than my twenty-first year, when I ate stupidly and well of them in a small, stylish restaurant in Germany, where we had to wait downstairs in the tavern while our meal was being readied to eat upstairs. Beside me on the a table was a bowl of exquisitely fresh and delicate chips, and when we finally sat down I could not face the heavily excellent dinner we had ordered. I was ashamed of my gluttony, for it is never commendable, even when based on ignorance. Perhaps that is why I am so stern today about no eating many of the devilish temptations?”

That’s from an essay she penned for The New Yorker, and in those few sentences we are transported not only to a German tavern (peripherally), but also to a spot in front of food (almost tangibly) and finally (and much more tangibly) are given access to Fisher’s private feelings, which make us alternatively hungry and then bloated in the short-lived self-disgust that’s so often the by-product of overindulgence. It’s easy in all of the context to lose sight of the fact that she was talking about eating potato chips. In other words, it’s masterful.

Musings On Wine And Other Libations occasionally flirts with romanticized descriptions, but Fisher’s work is a bit like a Mozart composition: take a phrase out of context and neither it nor the whole make much sense (in fact, it’s was a total bitch just to find a quotable excerpt for this review that could stand on its own). Fisher’s prose can does what so little food and wine writing can do now – actually make us hungry and thirsty. And that’s why it’s probably still the best, even so long after her typewriter went silent .

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at When The World’s Greatest Foodie Took On Wine from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

• 10 The Winery At Holy Cross Abbey Cabernet Franc (CO): Bigger than the CO mountain skyline & w/ that anise, damn nearly as pretty. $23 B+ >>find this wine>>
• 11 Infinite Monkey Theorem Riesling (Colorado): finite amounts of flowers, citrus & stony fruits, but all of them are pretty damn good $16 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Septembre Cellars Chardonnay (Grand Valley): Attention to detail pays off; this case in loveliness, balance & appetite-generation $25 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Ruby Trust Cellars Gun Slinger (Grand Valley): Not shy about slinging ripe red & black Syrah fruit your way, & at high velocities. $25 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Ruby Trust Cellars The Smuggler (Grand Valley): Drop-kick to the face of peppery red fruited goodness (hurts, but hurts good). $25 B >>find this wine>>
• 11 Guy Drew Vineyards Pinot Gris (Colorado): "Stunning achievement" come to mind; will be even more stunning if he can do it again. $16 A- >>find this wine>>
• 11 Grande River Vineyards Viognier (Grand Valley): Crisp as that mountain stream that Coors likes to brag about (& more minerally too) $16 B >>find this wine>>

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Monday Mini Wine Reviews Round-Up For May 14, 2012 from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Based on feedback from ever-so-vocal-and-intelligent peeps like you, I do not supply the quiz answer directly in the post – you will need to tune back in later in the comments section for the answer. I’m still on the road this week in Australia, so once again I ask only for your patience on receiving the answer (which could be delayed a few days, depending on my access to The Global Interwebs while Down Undah).

State Of (Grape) Affairs

In the 1880s, which U.S. state was producing more than 2,000,000 gallons of wine per year?

•     A. Virginia
•     B. California
•     C. Missouri
•     D. Colorado
•     E. Texas

Cheers – and good luck!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Weekly Wine Quiz: State Of (Grape) Affairs from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

As a competition, it was fun but given the levity and structure of the proceedings, it shouldn’t be taken as a be-all, end-all statement on CO wine hierarchy (we are talking about a competition with a quarter of the state’s producers, only pouring two wines each); but gems are gems no matter how or where you happen to uncover them.

I will get to my thoughts on the gems – the winners on the wine side of that taste-off – in just a minute (or three), but first I want to tell you about the clearest winner of the Taste-Off:

Colorado wine.

While I maintain my stance (firmly, I should add) that the region is a “nascent” producer in that Colorado has not fully cracked the code of what grapes to plant where to consistently produce world-class wines, and while the quality levels between (and even among the offerings within each of the) producers is still way too broad (there’s plenty of mediocre wine to be had), I can also tell you emphatically that there seems to be no ceiling for Colorado wine’s quality potential.

Colorado is already making world-class wines – it just happens to be in tiny quantities and can’t be made consistently enough (quite a bit of that being due to extreme vintage variation brought on by the intensity of its continental, high-elevation climate). And while you’re certainly likely to find some real clunkers in CO (its bad wines are epic in their terribleness), the best ones really are gems worth wading through the muck to unearth; in some cases – particularly in the case of one of the DLW Taste-Off winners – CO wine has already arrived…

You won’t be able to grab any old bottle of wine sporting a Colorado AVA and be promised of a face-meltingly amazing wine-gasm experience, and so you’ll need to do your producer homework fairly carefully. But to some extent that’s true of every wine region everywhere, it just might be “more true” in CO as its wine culture firms its footing. But hunting for the best there will provide some fantastic drinking experiences – in most cases at near-bargain prices considering the quality of those finds.

Let’s start off with the wine that, to me (and to several others in attendance, apparently) was the best in the room, by a looooong margin. It’s also, in my view, one of the most stunning bargains available in wine, and in particular in domestic U.S. wine.

DLW 2012’s Best CO White Wine: 2011 Guy Drew Vineyards Pinot Gris (Colorado)
Price: $16
Rating: A-

Yeah, you’re reading that correctly. This might be the single best Pinot Gris I’ve yet had from the U.S. Guy also told me that I look like I’m in my mid-fifties (WTF?!??) and I’m still ok with this rating. This wine had the melons and richness you’d expect from PG, but coupled with spices and a pithy, lemony raciness that sailed through to the finish like it was shot from a sniper’s rifle. That finish, by the way, lasted twice as long as those from just about any three of the other wines in the competition combined. I just hope that guy can find more of this fruit for subsequent vintages – there is a very real danger that this impressive, svelte, boldly aromatic effort will be a fleeting one-off. Fortunately, Guy’s other wines are also largely quite good and quite under-priced (just not this good and that under-priced). For what it’s worth, this wine also took home the event’s “media choice” award.

DLW 2012’s Best CO Red Wine: 2009 Ruby Trust Cellars “The Smuggler” (Grand Valley)
Price: $25
Rating: B

Not my vote for fave red at the event, but certainly not a slouch and certainly not trying to unfairly smuggle away your $25. This is a Cabernet Franc-based blend has splashes of Cab Sauv and Petit Verdot, and is mostly black-fruit brawn but with tinges of vanilla, oak, and violets. But the killer thing is the amount of white pepper spice delivered by this wine – it’s kind of like getting drop-kicked in the face by white pepper. For those who enjoy muscle and velvety fruitiness mottled with secondary aromas to keep things interesting, this would be a great introduction to how focused, extracted grape power can be used for the forces of good.

Finally, there’s one more wine that I want to include, which didn’t win anything but had my vote for Best Red:

2010 The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey Cabernet Franc (Colorado)
Price: $23
Rating: B+

A bit of a beast, but a tamed beast – dark cherry, caramel, a velvety texture to wash it all down, but the tamed parts come via a tiny bit of florals and a wonderful anise-like spiciness that carried through to a reasonably-long finish. It wasn’t lacking acidity, either, and I found myself wondering later how good this might taste given a few years to sleep off the vigor of youth.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Winners Of The DLW 2012 Colorado Wine Taste-Off (And Why CO Wine Might Already Have World-Class Potential) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!