“Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes… But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty. – Terry Pratchett 

Last November, Caltech teacher and author Leonard Mlodinow wrote in the Wall Street Journal (note: we don’t agree with his points on all counts) about studies that found:

• Gold medals seem to be given nearly at random, with any wine regularly entered in competitions having a 9-percent chance of winning in any given tasting

• A judge’s ratings – for the same wine in different tastings - typically varied 4 points, plus or minus, on a standard scale of 80 to 100. So, in a 20-point range, their rating for a given wine might vary up to 8 points, or 40 percent of the range

• Expectations can be decisive. Give experienced tasters two glasses of the same wine, but tell them one glass contains an expensive high-end wine and the other a cheap table wine. The drinkers will rate the “expensive” wine significantly higher

• Wine descriptions typically list as many as eight different flavors, even though studies show even flavor-trained professionals “cannot reliably identify more than three or four components in a mixture,” Mlodinow wrote. And those trained professionals don’t even consistently identify the samecomponents in a given wine.

None of these individually have the same mainstream impact as the Sokal Affair had on postmodern cultural studies or even the same social criticism that Penn and Teller created by peddling “Eau du Robinet” from a garden hose as $10 bottled water. But collectively, we have to start suspecting that Booze Crit Lit may indeed signify a lot less than we thought.

“May you all have champagne for breakfast.” – Freddie Mercury 

At the same time, prices this decade have skyrocketed, particularly for the most exalted French and California red wines and French champagnes. The concept of “investment” wines is growing in importance.  Yet production also has increased, flooding the market with product even as new growing areas are sprouting up around the world. Anyone with basic economic training (except, apparently, most mortgage bankers) knows what happens when both supplies and prices increase dramatically at the same time: a bubble develops. And what happens when a bubble gets big? It pops. Now, Napa’s “cult cab” cellars and top cru Bordeaux and Burgundy makers are scrambling. Some have cut prices dramatically. Others have cut production, selling off their premium grapes to other winemakers. Either way, getting great juice for far less is far easier than it has been in years. We have seen such a huge shift in the market that Wine Spectator made the rise of “value wines,” even at the high end, a recent cover story.

It’s like film studios making movies to appeal to Roger Ebert, knowing millions would not only watch those films, but pay 10 times more for a ticket. This reliance has grown despite increasing evidence that wine judges and critics, even with their deep knowledge and experience, aren’t much more consistent than Joe the Plonk Drinker in their judgments. These judgments are based on the false premise that wine assessment can be absolutely objective. But it absolutely cannot; there’s always a measure of subjectivity, even though our minds seldom reward nuance. Critics’ reliability is secondary to the need they fulfill. You can say the emperor has no clothes, but the masses still yearn for a king they can raise a toast to.

“Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes… But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty. – Terry Pratchett 

Last November, Caltech teacher and author Leonard Mlodinow wrote in the Wall Street Journal (note: we don’t agree with his points on all counts) about studies that found:

• Gold medals seem to be given nearly at random, with any wine regularly entered in competitions having a 9-percent chance of winning in any given tasting

• A judge’s ratings – for the same wine in different tastings - typically varied 4 points, plus or minus, on a standard scale of 80 to 100. So, in a 20-point range, their rating for a given wine might vary up to 8 points, or 40 percent of the range

• Expectations can be decisive. Give experienced tasters two glasses of the same wine, but tell them one glass contains an expensive high-end wine and the other a cheap table wine. The drinkers will rate the “expensive” wine significantly higher

• Wine descriptions typically list as many as eight different flavors, even though studies show even flavor-trained professionals “cannot reliably identify more than three or four components in a mixture,” Mlodinow wrote. And those trained professionals don’t even consistently identify the samecomponents in a given wine.

 

None of these individually have the same mainstream impact as the Sokal Affair had on postmodern cultural studies or even the same social criticism that Penn and Teller created by peddling “Eau du Robinet” from a garden hose as $10 bottled water. But collectively, we have to start suspecting that Booze Crit Lit may indeed signify a lot less than we thought.

“May you all have champagne for breakfast.” – Freddie Mercury 

At the same time, prices this decade have skyrocketed, particularly for the most exalted French and California red wines and French champagnes. The concept of “investment” wines is growing in importance.  Yet production also has increased, flooding the market with product even as new growing areas are sprouting up around the world. Anyone with basic economic training (except, apparently, most mortgage bankers) knows what happens when both supplies and prices increase dramatically at the same time: a bubble develops. And what happens when a bubble gets big? It pops. Now, Napa’s “cult cab” cellars and top cru Bordeaux and Burgundy makers are scrambling. Some have cut prices dramatically. Others have cut production, selling off their premium grapes to other winemakers. Either way, getting great juice for far less is far easier than it has been in years. We have seen such a huge shift in the market that Wine Spectator made the rise of “value wines,” even at the high end, a recent cover story.