I had the good fortune to attend a dinner recently featuring Louis Tres. After sitting with a one ounce pour for a half hour or so, I told the host that without sounding cynical, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. I thought anything so exclusive and with the accompaning hype, would have a hard time meeting lofty expectations. I was wrong. The aromas were incredible and the taste sublime. If time had not been an issue, I would have gone a lot slower.
Except that everyone on this board is already self-selected for being in the top 1% of 1% [of 1%?] of all wine tasters in the world, so our self-selected knowledge ought to help us bat significantly better than average.
It’s when we bat merely average that we start to worry whether something’s badly wrong.
And there, of course, the answer would be that some of us are not in the top 1% of 1% of 1% financially, so we can no longer taste the Cotes de Nuits & Beaune, nor the Piemontese, nor the First Growths, nor the German Auction Wines [is Keller G-Max sold at auction?], to which we were once privy.
Increasingly, even just tasting Cote-Rotie & Clos-la-Neore & Le Bourg is getting way out of our financial comfort zones.
Nope - we self-sabotage more than the average consumer. We set even more unreasonable expectations.
The existence of great requires the existence of terrible. Sounds like you need more terrible in your glass.
For those of us who are not in the Top 1% of 1% of 1% financially, the unreasonable expectation was that the phenomenon of the world’s Central Banksters, acting in unison, to flood the world with Fake Money, would not eventually have had a deleterious effect on our purchasing power.
The bottom line is that:
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Financially, those of us who are not in the Top 1% of 1% of 1% simply are not drinking as well* as we once did [prior to the explosion in Fake Money], and
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The world’s winemakers have not been able to come up with new combinations of Terroir + Cultivar + Winemaking-Recipes that can break the Supply Side monopoly which sites such as the Cotes & the Baroli & the First Growths & the Mosel Auction Wines are wielding when it come to producing the tastiest juice.
*Unless one were to uncork the Cellar Treasures, which were purchased back when prices were still relatively sane.
Back in the day, you could stumble upon affordable Great in almost any hole-in-the-wall wine store of the First World.
But these days, with all the Fake Money flooding the system, and with the instantaneous flow of information [about what’s Great] to all corners of the world, you gotta mosey up to the table with some serious coin if you wanna taste Great.
Or else be the 1-in-a-million oenophile who discovers Great before everyone else, keeps his mouth shut about it, and purchases up all of the existing supply before the word gets out.
Nathan - You are completely off base, but that’s par for the course.
To us the top one percent, or maybe one-half of one percent, of global wines are just good or very good. It takes a lot to be “extraordinary” once you’ve been collecting for a while. The top one tenth of percent, one fiftieth of one percent? And then, to have that “extraordinary” experience you need the right setting and mood as well. Everything has to be right, if you are distracted from the focus on the wine an experience that could have been extraordinary can become just “good”.
For me, the more common “very good” experiences are also very enjoyable and something I can’t get from any other kind of consumption. That’s possibly because I ration my drinking to a couple of times a month.
Nathan has a point about the “fake money” too…but all that money has increased winemaking investment as well…there are still some fantastic wines out there at the $50 and under range
Not sure about anyone else but I’ve been drinking a lot of great lately. Then again they aren’t 10 to 15 dollar wines
Awesome, well played sir!
I think you’re right. Appreciate the insights.
At the risk of being overly serious, I take back my initial response. This Cali PN was a very nice wine. Produced by someone who is well respected on this board and frequently contributes. I’ll leave it at that. It was well made and very enjoyable. A wine I’d be happy to share with friends, family, and aficianados alike. But it wasn’t great. Or glorious. Or a ‘one percenter’. And many of you rightly pointed out, that’s okay.
Hey Scott, watch your cold meds, allergy meds, blood pressure meds, pine nuts etc. lots of stuff can dull down your tastebuds.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I too often find myself unable to choose a wine from the cellar. Sure, there are special wines that are earmarked to share with specific people and/or on special occasions and/or with specific meals but that leaves a whole bunch of ‘good’ wine that I’m more and more often not excited by.
I think part of the issue for me is living in PA - I can’t go to a good wine store and grab a couple of interesting/challenging bottles on a whim. Most of my purchases are case + and when doing that I tend to stick with what I know and like.
I guess it’s time to take some chances and perhaps get some bad wine for perspective and contrast!
Scott,
Another issue at work here is that “outstanding/exceptional” is an individual judgment and varies from one person to the next. What you might consider exceptional, I might not and visa versa.
This was brought home to me a few years ago when I gifted a case of wine from my cellar to a neighbor for keeping and eye on our house while we were out of town. She is a typical $10-15/bottle wine drinker. I selected a variety of aged wines from several of my favorite producers and asked her to keep track of which wines she preferred. She is a good friend and completely candid in her review of the wines from my cellar. The bottom line was that she preferred her $10-15 bottles over the “outstanding” bottles that I gifted her.
We often forget the other part of the equation when we evaluate a wine. The drinker! Our state of mind at the moment of experiencing a wine has a direct effect on our enjoyment of the same. When I enter the cellar the first thing I do is ask myself what is the best wine for me NOW. Sometimes I need a comfort wine if the day was tough. Other times I want to be inspired or challenged. Not all wines fit all moods. Yesterday I wanted a good wine that would not overshadow the conversation to be had with my father. A Foillard 2015 Morgon fit the bill. Emotional intelligence for me is an important component of wine enjoyment. Cheers.
Interesting perspective . . . and a good reminder.
I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon. Wine taste better when you share it with friends, family, or generous strangers.
Completely agree with all of the above.
In my experience a mediocre wine tastes extraordinary given the right setting and right company (and vice versa)
Having low expectations also helps with pleasant surprises.
I’m down to less than 12 bottles of Cali Pinot in my cellar–and it’s mostly Arcadian. It’s been more than a year since I’ve bought any–and that was Arcadian. i have about five times more German pinot than Californian–and I don’t have much German pinot.