disagree, on what basis would someone admire or value another human running up and down the court dunking a basketball? even if you’re just counting baskets, is scoring 40 points per game “good?” “great?” “average?”
how about a ballerina? perhaps that’s a better example. a casual observer may witness the interesting - and perhaps physically impressive - movement of a very good high school dancing student. but only someone that has a deeper understanding and recognition (let’s not use the word appreciate since it holds a normative connotation), would be able to evaluate her dancing and compare it to someone more accomplished.
i think where this thread starts off wrongly is to use the word “lesser” with regard to wines. it’s not sufficiently accurate, but it’s good enough. the fact remains, that having an elevated understanding of wine (or anything for that matter) requires exposure to many examples. preference is, of course, something else entirely.
Yes. I think it can work in the opposite direction, too. I mean appreciating the very good wines, from small family operations, that might be a tier down, but aren’t all that far off the top wines in the class and are priced reasonably. I think you need to taste at all levels for context and understanding.
Wine is like food. Some people are more inclined to do fine dining and seek better ingredients while others see food as just fuel where they don’t need high levels of refinement and pleasure. Same with wine. Some people just drink wine because it’s wine-- they just want a nice buzz or something easy to drink and unwind with. No problem. Others see wine and treat it as they would with a serious food hobby-- they take it farther than the norm.
If you’re the person who chooses to take wine/food more seriously than the norm, then do you need to eat at casual restaurants to appreciate fine dining? No. You can even enjoy both. If you’re interested with better ingredients, chefs, and cooking methods (despite not even knowing them all), then eating at more mundane restaurants doesn’t really do much for such a hobby. You should already know that white truffle served at a high-end establishment is far better than white truffle oil you get on everyday fries.
For sure having an elevated understanding of anything requires exposure to many examples. I don’t disagree for a minute. I do think you subtly changed the question, though, by making it about whether the person can recognize or evaluate wine as being great without context. To that question, I also completely agree - you can’t say whether something is great without something to compare it to. But the OP didn’t ask “can you tell it’s great versus average or good, without tasting lesser examples?” They asked “can you appreciate it.” The meaning of that word encompasses some other aspects than judging relative value, as I pointed out by listing the various usages. Under most, I think the answer is obviously yes. But under one, as I said, I think the answer is no.
I believe all the things we’ve mentioned, including wine and basketball players, can be appreciated, in the sense of valued and admired, on their own. You can sip your first wine and be moved/struck by it enough to both value and admire it, though I agree you don’t have any legitimate basis for saying it’s great. I also think that watching the movements of a talented athlete can be appreciated without knowing whether he scores more baskets than other people, because there is fundamental grace and control and beauty regardless of whether others have or don’t have that much.
Yes. I think we should have a National wB Day of Appreciation where we get together regionally and chug through a few bottles of Barefoot, 2 Buck Chuck, Apothic Red and Meiomi to keep us honest.
Great discussion. Jeff asked my thoughts; I absolutely think you need context, but what the definition and the quality of that context is interesting.
The topic came up when one of my guests mentioned a very wealthy acquaintance who had just got into wine. He decided to go on a yearlong buying spree accumulating (and drinking) First Growths from top vintages, as well as large amounts of great Burgundy, starting with DRC and going on to Roumier, Coche, Rousseau etc etc. The question was whether just drinking top wines young and old could give him that context or should he have drunk their lesser wines, years or lesser producers?
An excellent question. Pinging off of Todd’s response, and borrowing one of my friend Heather’s famous quotes, “yes but no but yes”
On an overall level, yes, I want to have “scale and scope” be a part of how and what I taste so that yes, when a wine is truly special, I will be able to, um, pick that up. BUT, there is an aspect to that which often interconnects directly with meditation and thinking about such a wine. There are times when I don’t want to do that and rather want to simply enjoy an outgoing, simpler wine. Bottom-line, I guess my answer is reflected in my cellar. I do have a couple treasures. But I also have much lower-end stuff that I don’t mind at all pulling out if it’s the right time or circumstances to enjoy it.
Does that help?
Michael’s comment just above is a worthy one as well, and somewhat of a danger to this idea. I like the reminder.
we actually agree on this one! the trip up is the use of “lesser” and “appreciate” they’re both too loaded and undermine the fact that there are in fact benchmarks or standards for these things.
Since a bit of thread drift is inevitable with such a broad question…
On New Years’ eve, we served our guests rack of lamb with this wine:
1999 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie Château d’Ampuis (it was terrific!)
Our guests enjoy wine, and have interest, but are far from hobbyists.
When drinking this, I stated that if you don’t like this wine, then you just don’t like Cote-Rotie…and maybe not Northern Rhone syrah. One of the guests responded something like “…then we don’t know good wine?”, so I tried to explain that rather what I was getting at was that I had tasted a decent amount of syrah, Rhone, Cote-Rotie…and that I thought this was an exemplary version…so that notwithstanding producer variation etc., if you don’t like this wine then your personal taste just doesn’t run towards Cote-Rotie, because this is a very good and typical one.
So I would just say that tasting broadly up and down the quality/reputation scale is necessary to form an educated opinion, just as is tasting a variety of grapes, regions, and vintages.
Good discussion, I especially want to ++ Sarah’s posts. In general I land on the ‘yes’ side.
Another key point is how variable our palates are. Your lesser is different from my lesser. Your epiphany wine is merely good to me. Sure there are extremes - DRC is nobody’s lesser wine. But unless we get into a semantic argument about whether lesser = price, the personal or subjective variability of wine tastes/experiences means that we each have the unique ability to figure out what is great to us. So I’d argue that in order to figure out what your great wines are, you need to try a lot of different ones. Aside from the rare billionaires who can dismiss those crappy lesser Rousseaus and stick with their Jayer and DRC, the rest of us benefit from trying many wines of varying quality, price, rarity, market demand, etc.
I don’t think you need to keep drinking particular lesser wines to maintain the ability to appreciate greatness. We’ll experience plenty of variability among the wines we like to keep our palates alive.
On the subject of regular appreciation of the good in our lives: I don’t believe that humans naturally lose their appreciation of regular experiences. For example, I have lived in San Francisco for over 30 years and still have ‘oh wow I’m so lucky to live here’ moments nearly every day.
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