The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture Read online

  WHAT’S A GOOD PALATE, AND HOW DO

  YOU KNOW IF YOU HAVE ONE?

  Spend an evening with a group of wine obsessives and there’s an excellent chance that at some point you will hear them assessing the strengths and weaknesses of other people’s palates. It could be a major critic, a friend, a colleague, a family member. Palate is wine-geek shorthand for tasting chops—for the quality of one’s judgments about wine. The ultimate tribute that can be paid an oenophile is to have it be said that he or she possesses a “great palate.” It is like telling an art enthusiast that he has an unerring eye or a music buff that she has a flawless ear.

  But wait—isn’t wine appreciation a completely subjective exercise, and if so, who’s to say that someone has a superior or inferior palate? That’s a good question, and the short, glib answer is that a good palate is one that you happen to agree with. The reality is that wine appreciation is to a large extent subjective. I’m stating the acutely obvious here, but taste is personal, determined both by one’s biological attributes and by things such as experience, expectation, and culture, intangibles that obviously vary from individual to individual. You might love a robust, heady Australian Shiraz, while the same wine might strike me as a hot, syrupy mess. If I tasted the wine on your recommendation, I’d probably think less of your palate, and if I told you what I really thought of the wine, you’d probably think less of mine. Neither of us would necessarily be right or wrong; the difference of opinion would be at least partly rooted in personal taste, in factors beyond our control.

  But wine appreciation is not wholly subjective. The British philosopher Barry C. Smith points out that wines have objective qualities that exist independent of our ability to discern them, and he boldly contends that “good tasters are those who get matters right . . . There are standards by which we can judge a wine, or musical score, or painting to be better than another, and these reflect discernible properties of those objects, though it may take practice and experience to recognize them.” Interestingly, researchers have found that in experienced tasters, such as sommeliers, more areas of the brain are activated when tasting than is the case in novices, which suggests that experience promotes greater discernment. The fact that major critics seem to agree about individual wines far more often than they disagree likewise suggests that qualitative differences between wines are at least partially rooted in objective properties—that quality isn’t just a matter of personal taste.

  Of those objective properties, the most important ones to be able to recognize are flaws. At the very least, you need to be able to tell when a wine is damaged (one thing that never fails to amaze me is how often I have seen wine journalists, some quite prominent, flunk this basic test). Easily the most common problem is cork taint, which affects anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of wines bottled under natural cork. If a wine smells like damp cardboard and tastes as if its flavors have been leached out, it is a corked bottle and should be returned to the store (assuming it was bought fairly recently; if it is a thirty-year-old wine, you are probably out of luck). If a wine smells like a particularly pungent barnyard or like vinegar, it is also an off bottle. There are also visual cues you should look for. If the cork on a relatively young bottle is soaked through with wine, or if the cork has clearly moved, the bottle has suffered heat damage and should be returned. If a young white wine shows a surprisingly deep, mature color and smells like Sherry, it has suffered oxidation and should be returned to the store or tossed. If a fairly young red wine looks oddly mature in color, it has probably suffered the same fate. It won’t hurt you to drink wines with any of these defects; you just won’t be drinking particularly pleasurable wines.

  And who are these people referred to as supertasters, and are they really superior tasters? The term supertaster was coined in 1991 by Linda Bartoshuk, a professor of otolaryngology and psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. Some sixty years earlier, Arthur L. Fox, a scientist for DuPont, had discovered that the chemical compound phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, tasted oppressively bitter to some people but elicited no response in others; the former were dubbed tasters, the latter nontasters, and the differences were put down to genetic variation. In the 1970s, concerns about the toxicity of PTC led Bartoshuk and other scientists to begin using propylthiouracil, or PROP, instead to test for sensitivity to bitterness. During the course of her research, Bartoshuk noticed that not all tasters reacted the same way to PROP; all of them found it bitter, but a minority found it excruciatingly so. Intrigued, she began studying the tongue anatomy of these individuals and found that they tended to have much denser concentrations of fungiform papillae, the structures at the end of the tongue that house our taste buds. Nor were they sensitive only to bitterness; they seemed to experience much more heightened taste sensations in general. Bartoshuk and her Yale colleagues dubbed these individuals supertasters, a name that clearly implied that they possessed not just sensitive palates but superior ones.

  But that just ain’t so. The term supertaster is really a misnomer —there is no evidence that these individuals are better tasters. In fact, when it comes to wine, being a supertaster is probably more of a liability than anything else. To begin with, supertasters do not particularly enjoy the flavor of alcohol and often complain that it leaves a burning sensation in their mouths. They are also sensitive to astringency and acidity, which can be equally problematic as wine goes. In his book The Science of Wine, the British wine writer Jamie Goode highlighted the work of Gary Pickering, a professor of oenology at Canada’s Brock University. Pickering had been investigating the relationship between PROP sensitivity and wine appreciation and believed that being a supertaster was no blessing. “I would speculate that supertasters probably enjoy wine less than the rest of us,” Pickering told Goode. “They experience astringency, acidity, bitterness, and heat (from alcohol) more intensely, and this combination may make wine—or some wine styles—relatively unappealing.”

  However, even engaging in this kind of speculation gives the supertaster idea more weight than it deserves. When it comes to understanding sensory perception, we are literally at the tip of the tongue. We know that fungiform papillae are a reliable indicator of sensitivity to the five basic taste sensations; people with very dense concentrations of these structures are more sensitive to bitter, sour, sweet, salty, and savory (umami) flavors than people with average or subaverage concentrations. But while fungiform papillae have been studied exhaustively, much less is known about the papillae on the side of the tongue (foliate papillae) and those toward the back of it (circumvallate papillae), except that we know they also affect how tastes and textures are perceived.

  As for the genetic dimension, TAS2R38, the gene associated with being a supertaster, is one of thirty-five bitter receptor genes that have been identified thus far; there may be others. There appears to be little, if any, correlation between PROP/PTC sensitivity and sensitivity to other bitter compounds. Whether the TAS2R38 genotype is indicative of overall taste sensitivity has generated considerable debate; it might be, and it might not be. Most people who show extreme sensitivity to PROP have the two dominant alleles for TAS2R38, but that is not true in all cases. Meanwhile, scientists have identified receptors for sweetness and umami but have no idea which chemical stimuli, like PROP and PTC with bitterness, can reliably test these receptors. Sourness and saltiness are largely uncharted territory. For all these reasons, and also because the concept has been so often misunderstood and misrepresented in the media, many geneticists are reluctant even to use the term supertaster.

  Beyond all this, we know that the nose wields much more influence over our flavor perceptions than the tongue. And beyond all that, we know that our gustatory preferences are determined by a wide variety of factors, most of which have nothing to do with our physiological attributes. The key distinction here is between perceptions and preferences. We may be hardwired to receive flavor stimuli in a certain way, but that information is immediately relayed to the brain, where it is processed through a
variety of filters unrelated to our biological dispositions. Our preferences are formed mostly by experience, expectations, culture, and other intangibles.

  3

  How to Buy Wine

  THERE ARE few things that get oenophiles more jazzed than finding a seriously good wine shop, with an extensive, interesting selection and a passionate staff. An attractively designed, well-curated brick-and-mortar wine shop is bliss—a place to taste, to buy, and otherwise to indulge one’s wine fanaticism. Although wine shops are nothing if not ubiquitous, really good ones are rare. The vast majority of stores have uninspired selections and personnel to match. And even shops with commendable offerings often lack spirited salesmanship. One of the biggest, and I think more unfortunate, stories of the past twenty-five years has been the effect that “professional” wine ratings have had on the retail sector. Many stores stopped selling wine and essentially just started selling scores given by Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator. Many people contend that these ratings are more reliable than anything merchants might have to say—that merchants can’t be trusted to give good advice because they are chiefly interested in making the sale. I’ve never quite understood this argument. To begin with, a good retailer will not fill his store with wines that he doesn’t like; if he tells you a wine is terrific, it’s usually because he really feels that way. Also, most retailers depend on repeat business; foisting bad wines on customers is therefore not a particularly shrewd strategy. In any case, ratings and shelf talkers have become a crutch for the retail sector, and too many stores have taken the easy way out and relied on Parker and Spectator points to make the sales for them.

  But that is changing now, and I think a golden age of wine retailing may be on the horizon. For one thing, fewer and fewer wine enthusiasts are paying attention to the critics. They know what they like, or they are getting recommendations from other sources, or they no longer regard Parker and the Spectator as particularly reliable. Whatever the reason or combination of reasons, ratings seem to matter a lot less than they did a decade ago. Also, competition is forcing smaller retailers to up their game. Big-box stores, supermarkets, and even drugstores are peddling wine these days, and while they sell a lot of plonk, they also sell some good wines. To survive, small retailers increasingly need to differentiate themselves, and creating a store with a well-defined point of view and an enthusiastic, knowledgeable staff is not only a smart survival strategy; in some markets, it may be the only survival strategy. A lot of really interesting wine stores are popping up in cities across America, and I expect that trend to continue.

  Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can buy from them. To regulate liquor sales more effectively after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, most states put in place laws requiring an intermediary, the wholesaler, between the producer of an alcoholic beverage and the retailer. These regulations were enacted at a time when the U.S. wine industry was moribund and few Americans had an interest in wine. It is a very different story now: the country has several thousand wineries and millions of wine enthusiasts, and with the advent of online shopping and the ease and affordability of long-distance shipping, the three-tier distribution system has become an absurdly outdated barrier to free trade and consumer choice. Most states now permit some form of direct-to-consumer shipping from wineries, but the wholesalers are a well-financed interest group and have used their political muscle to limit the scope of many direct-shipping bills and to keep the existing regulatory framework intact. And direct-to-consumer shipping from wineries is just one part of this battle. At present, only around a dozen states allow people to have wine shipped to them from out-of-state retailers. The direct shipping issue is a sad commentary on the state of American politics—for one thing, it underscores how irredeemably corrupt our campaign finance system is—and a source of endless frustration to wine enthusiasts.

  These archaic laws have inhibited the growth of online wine buying, but there is still something to be said for the pleasure of browsing and buying in an actual store as opposed to a virtual one. When you’re in a brick-and-mortar store, however, there is something you need to check the moment you set foot inside, before you even peruse the selection: Is the temperature relatively cool, or is the heat blasting? If the store is noticeably warm, you should perform an immediate about-face and leave. It doesn’t matter how good the inventory is if the wines are not properly stored. I don’t care if you see a bottle of 1945 Mouton Rothschild being offered for $200—if the shop is warm, head for the door (and if they’re selling ’45 Mouton at that price, it’s probably a counterfeit bottle anyway). A cellar should be kept at around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and while a store doesn’t need to be quite that cold, it certainly needs to be on the cooler side, and the bottles should be cool to the touch. One other piece of advice: as the saying goes, it pays to shop around, at least to the extent that you can, given our onerous shipping laws. There are sometimes significant price discrepancies between one store and the next, and you can save yourself a few dollars here and there by comparing prices. The best way to do that: use Wine-Searcher.com. It is a great service and can help you find bargains or at least avoid forking over more money than you need to spend.

  SHOULD YOU USE “PROFESSIONAL” WINE RATINGS?

  I don’t agree with people who contend that all rating scales are irredeemably flawed or who believe that comparative evaluations are somehow antithetical to the culture of wine. Since the beginning of wine, people have been making comparative assessments: I like wine X more than I like wine Y. The 1855 rankings in Bordeaux and the classification system in Burgundy are rooted in such judgments. It is human nature to compare and contrast, and frankly, it is part of the pleasure of wine. I think ratings are an inevitable aspect of wine appreciation, and I certainly haven’t been able to resist the urge to keep score; I use letter grades instead of numbers, but it still amounts to scorekeeping.

  However, the 100-point scale, popularized by Parker and used by the Wine Spectator and other publications, is a farce. It gives a pseudo-objective gloss to what is an almost wholly subjective exercise. I think that unless a critic can, tasting blind, reproduce the same results over and over, he or she has no business assigning a specific score to a wine—and I’m reasonably certain no one can do that. Wines show sufficient variability from bottle to bottle, and the human palate is sufficiently fickle, that that kind of consistency is just not possible. Some years ago, David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times, in an otherwise adulatory profile of Parker, tried to test the famed critic’s consistency by having him blind-taste and score a group of wines twice over consecutive days. Parker wouldn’t do it, telling Shaw, “I’ve got everything to lose and nothing to gain.” Give him 100 points for candor. In an interview with a Florida newspaper in 2007, Parker made another surprisingly frank admission that ought to have been the death knell of the 100-point scale. “I really think probably the only difference between a 96-, 97-, 98-, 99-, and 100-point wine,” he said, “is really the emotion of the moment.”

  That comment didn’t sink the 100-point approach, but the scale may be dying now for another reason: grade inflation. Nowadays critics have powerful incentives to bump up their scores. High scores are catnip for retailers, who use them to flog wines via shelf talkers and e-mail offers. In turn, those citations are excellent free publicity for critics. In a crowded marketplace for wine information, big numbers can help a critic to stand out, and I don’t think there is any doubt that score inflation has become rampant. Just look at Parker himself: for the 2010 and 2009 vintages in the northern Rhône Valley of France, he gave out seventeen 100-point ratings. This came not long after he awarded nineteen 100-point ratings to the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux and eighteen 100-point scores during a retrospective tasting of the 2002 Napa vintage. In a ten-month span, Parker gave out fifty-three 100-point ratings. Who knew perfection was so pervasive? When every wine these days seems to get 90 points just for showing up and scores in the mid- and high 90s are given out like candy on Halloween, it is h
ard to assign much credibility to ratings—and it appears that fewer and fewer consumers and merchants are taking them seriously (a growing number of wine stores nationwide are now point-free zones).

  Does that mean you should never trust ratings? No. If you can find a critic whose taste in wine more or less aligns with yours, then by all means use his or her scores. If two or three critics agree that a particular wine is brilliant, there’s probably some wisdom in that crowd. But just recognize that grade inflation is everywhere these days, and just because Parker or the Spectator gushes about a wine, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to gush about it. Caveat emptor, as they say.

  VINTAGE: DOES IT MATTER?

  If you carry around a vintage chart in your wallet, here’s a suggestion: throw it out. For one thing, vintage summaries are easily found on smartphones and tablets, so there’s no need to keep cluttering up your wallet. More importantly, vintage charts are now meaningless. It used to be that there were good vintages and bad ones. These days, it seems, there are only good vintages and better ones. Thanks to improvements in winemaking and warmer, more consistent growing seasons, it now takes something truly cataclysmic—think biblical, think locusts and frogs—to ruin an entire harvest. Short of that, almost no vintage is without good wines. Yet as the qualitative differences between vintages have narrowed, the buzz over certain vintages has grown cacophonous. This seems to be a particularly American phenomenon. While Americans are arguably the savviest wine drinkers on the planet these days, we do have a tendency to fall prey to the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome—to swoon over extravagantly hyped vintages and to shun those that are not as highly touted.