Wine Experts?

WINE TALK
21

Some experts might even suggest to cellar wine for decades [wow.gif]
Sorry Mike, could not resist [cheers.gif]

22

Is this a rhetorical question? [training.gif]

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All Good! champagne.gif

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I think that people tend to refer to people who agree with them as EXPERTS.

Of course if you want to make a statement about something that is not based on fact you should refer to people as THEY. Like they say that premox is a problem or They say we are getting things done at a record pace.

25

First, I pulled each of the quotes from posts as I read them, over several weeks. I pulled them because I had many of the same questions you all have been bringing up, but as I started thinking more about the questions a more fundamental question came to mind, can someone be an expert in the taste of wine? In something so completely personal? Things like Baseball are quantifiable, if by nothing more then wins and losses. Measurements that can be verified. How do you measure and verify taste?

26

The usage as an outside reference is contagious. Ask 100 wine professionals if they consider themselves ‘Wine Experts’ and the honest ones will always say no, and then qualify that with a specific area where they may take some satisfaction in knowing a lot of stuff. After nearly 30 years, I’m still learning something new every day, like how to dodge the dinner invitations where the hostess can’t wait to introduce me to other guests as “her personal wine expert.” See what I mean?

27

This is comes to defining what an expert means. Is it someone who has more knowledge and understanding that you. Well I might be “an expert” in wine now compared to what I was 10 years back. So in a relative context its easier to define who an expert is.

Expert in absolute context is perhaps tough, in every field. I mean in science we still don’t have a unified theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, and this still constitutes only 4% of the observable universe.

In the world of wine:

  1. How come some of the best white wine makers in the planet cant figure out whats causing premox and how to fix it?

  2. When wine ages, is it just aging or is it getting better? If its getting better (beyond tannin softening and wine not being closed) whats the aging curve profile look like? Is this curve definable right when the wine in bottled?

  3. With reference to wine aging curve, how does it differ for each grape variety? Are certain wines meant to be aged at all? If so why some and why not others?

  4. The controversial subject of Minerality: studies till now have pointed that there is no link between soil characteristics and the mineral flavors/aromas in wine. Yet we have had the sensation from a great chablis/ riesling or wines from Etna.

Just a few questions from a newbie, among many others…


I might be an expert compared to where I was 10 year back. Yet I know more about my “known unknowns” than what I did when starting out!

28

It’s a lot of fun to talk about something where there cannot possibly be an answer to the question.

FWIW, I’ve been ITB for 37 years (and counting), went through the Master of Wine program, stopping before the final exam, which means I passed the pretests for essays, for what they call ‘theoretical’ knowledge, and the blind tastings.

It’s impossible to get an exact count, but I think that there are about 1,500,000 different wines bottled for sale every year. Show me somebody who can correctly identify any of them in blind tasting and I’ll show you an expert… but of course nobody qualifies.

You can be expert one day and not another. Early in my career I made a retail sales call on the heels of another supplier. The buyer had opened a bottle for the previos guy, who was still there, to make a point, served it to me brown-bagged. After some triage, I walked down from the office and picked the specific bottle off of his shelf, the right one out of about 2000. He tried the same trick a few weeks later. I said red Rhone. It was California Pinot Noir.

I import wines from three Cooperatives and six Domaines in the relatively small area of Roussillon (I own one of the Domaines). I regularly taste a very wide variety of wines from other producers in the region. I am emphatically not an expert on Roussillon.

Dan Kravitz

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Well, I wouldn’t add too much emphasis. Very few other Americans come to mind as knowing more.

RT

30

Richard,

Thanks for the kind post.

My point is that there ARE no experts. I’m picking wild numbers here, but I am sure that there are at least 2000 different wines bottled in Roussillon every year. I bust ass and spend money to taste probably at least 100. BTW, I’m really only talking about dry wines… you can almost double the number if you add sweet stuff, of which I taste approximately zero every year.

OK, it’s quite possible that I am in the top 10 Americans for knowing about Roussillon wines (this guy named Phinney owns about 10 times my acreage and a winery, makes some very good wine, while my own wine is made at the Cooperative I belong to). That does not mean I’m an expert. [cray.gif] [thankyou.gif] [new-here.gif]

31

Expert= anyone who shows up for a paid talk from out of town with a set of powerpoint slides…

32

I think of you as an expert for many reasons. One of them is proven by your post, as I think a wine expert is someone who understands wine well enough to begin to realize how much there is that he or she does not know. Another is that, typically, at least on this board, you seem open to new evidence - as when you taste something that is not in alignment with preconceived notions, you drop the preconceived notions. And, most importantly, you are friends with Saint Christopher and his d’Yquem.

33

All my friends know that I am interested in wine for 30 years and that I have a wine cellar. Therefore I am a wine expert for most of them and sometimes I am introduced to others as a wine expert. I asked my friends to avoid that term because I hate it but they don´t stop to do so. It is ok to say that I am interested in wine but nothing more. Because no wine expert can tell someone else that a wine is good. It´s always good to the one who tastes it and likes it. You will quickly loose the status of a wine expert when you recommend a wine to somebody and he or she dislike what you love. While palates are different, nobody can be a wine expert. At least the risk is big that you seem to be a bouncer and an arrogant jerk.