But how can we have a critical vocabulary if everything is subjective? Are we really going to say that the wine neophyte who prefers Yellowtail to Giacosa is making a critical evaluation that’s as valid as yours or mine?
The way I think of this is to separate the issue into two parts: Personal Preference and Critical Evaluation. Personal preference is just that - the person who likes Yellowtail more than Giacosa shouldn’t have to apologize for that. This is the classic “well, I like what I like” argument. Ideally, someone can talk intelligently about why they like something, but it’s not really open to inspection.
Critical Evaluation tries to inspect things like why a wine is considered good, what good means, the cultural and historical issues, etc. I think this is what JIm is talking about - the idea isn’t that there’s One Correct Style, but that there are boundaries and qualities that DO remove a wine from being considered a good wine. Some wines will fall comfortably inside these boundaries, others may not. The point isn’t to define a single standard but to ask th question of what makes a good wine - which necessarily means that there are wines that can be made that are not good. This isn’t unique to wine - it’s similar to any aesthetic field.
To use ripeness as an example, there are grapes that are obviously underripe - no one would that wine made from a grape barely through verasion (or not through it) would make good wine even presuming you could get it to ferment. There’s such a thing as overripe grapes, too, I’d imagine. This goes beyond ripeness of course… many would argue that a small amount of brett doesn’t hurt some wines… but that too much or that same amount in a different wine is a flaw. We can have those discussions and rely on preference, but then it’s a boring discussion - “I don’t like Wine A because it has Character X”, "Yeah, well I like that… " All of that is fine, but it’s not very interesting.
Maybe I am the only one, but I see the desire to produce wines with lower alcohols to be different than the desitre to produce “natural wines.” As mentioned earlier, Lapierre was recently in the mid 14s and certainly Coturri makes wines wine no additions, but in the 15s often. — I think these two concepts have been intermingled, but they are really quite different.
Fine questions and a good, well thought out discussion. Thank you.
A couple of thoughts.
First, although I love wine and find it an integral part of my life — one of the problems, IMO, in this thread has been comparing wine styles/ripeness decisons to morality, analysis of our educational system (which is what “The Closing of the American Mind” was really about), etc. I am sorry…but I can’t put wine at that level of importance. I’d rather my kids be moral and well-educated and never taste a drop of wine.
One of the problems with analyzing wine from an historical point of view is that many things have been done…just pick a different region, a different time, and a different technique. So, for instance, very ripe wines have been made historically in different parts of the world…and less than ripe wines have been made. You say that no one would argue that wine made from grapes barely colored up would make great wine – but I think Champagne is a great wine — and that has historically been made from grapes in the 17-19 brix range (we are a bit riper now). And no one would argue that wine made from over ripe grapes is good…but winemakers dry grapes on straw mats to the point of raisins and make great wines. Both of these are on the edge (I think) and I certainly would argue that California Pinot fall between the two…so does that make it reasonable?
Clos Mimi produced an 18.5% ABV Syrah (with some RS to boot!) by following the Biodynamic calendar as apparently they needed some suitable combination of fruit days and full moon. I supposed Biodynamic is pitched “uber-natural” in some way. But this is a wine that is decidedly not low alcohol.
This probably comes back to natural wine being defined based on what some person likes . . . . which is a whole different discussion. At any rate, I agree, “natural” and low alcohol are two different issues.
Adam, while I may find the second paragraph of this response to contain some truth, I also find the first to be highly disingenuous. Noone here is actually comparing the importance of wine to children’s wellbeing, that is the sort of reasoning which allows something like the CARE act to gain hold. What several people have done here is to discuss the idea of relativism as it relates to wine tastes and the very notion of critical evaluation of anything. To say that one is being put on a par with the other is deliberately misleading. You yourself have stated earlier, in your response to me, the importance of discussions like this in your life. I assumed that that meant both as a practical pursuit and as a theoretical endeavor. Therefore, you should have no problem with the theoretical nature of the responses here. If you find the connecting thread between the two propositions too tenuous then attack it directly, but I just can’t stand to see someone throw out a platitude about children’s wellbeing. It seems like grandstanding.
It does seem to be a bit of grandstanding. As does the red herring about Mick Jagger. But I don’t know Adam and can’t speak to his intentions.
There are a lot of very able philosophers who are a ton smarter than me who have argued over whether aesthetic beauty is in the thing itself or whether it’s in the eye of the beholder. Alan, the Bloom book is illuminating to this discussion because it explains well that this current cultural assumption that appropriateness or taste — or any other moral judgement – is to be defined soley by individual opinion has very shaky foundations.
I will say it one last time and be done. Pinot noir approaching Syrah is no longer Pinot noir. I don’t believe this to be a mere preference or whim.
How is it a red herring about Mick Jagger when Bloom does (if I recall correctly — been awhile since I read the work) devote an entire chapter to the (negative) effects of popular music on students and specifically cites Jagger several times as one of the primary leaders in this downfall? — Personally, I remember thinking that while Bloom began by taking on the educational system (which needed criticism), he quickly moved into social commentary which was, in my opinion, both rather outdated for a generation coming of age during the Reagan administration (I had recently graduated college when I read the work) and also just plain silly at some points. ---- In my opinion, bringing Bloom into this conversation, with his most salient points being on education, elevates the importance of ripeness in wine to a level that it is undeserving of.
By the way, ripe Pinot Noir isn’t Pinot approaching Syrah (Syrah is a different grape with a different makeup and a range of alcohol levels all its own) — it is Pinot getting riper – no more, no less.
Bloom is relevant here because the main theme of his book is that education since the 1920’s has had as it main goal “inculcating the virtue of openness.” What could be wrong with that, you say?
What’s wrong with that is that all moral distinctions, aesthetic and otherwise, are now seen as mere individual preference. The idea that all truth is relative is seen as a condition of free society, and to question it would be as to question 2+2 = 4. But the fact is that relativism is a idea born of late 19th century German philosophers. Bloom argues convincingly, I think, that these philosophers were wrong.
And only in light of these ideas can Alan can make his comment above that there is no difference in aesthetic value between DRC and Marcassin. Hogwash!
My point is about the nature of the argument, and I think that it was you and not Jim who tried to parallel this discussion to children’s wellbeing. Let’s all pretend that we are adult enough to accept a theoretical proposition without needing to draw literal connections.
Where I would disagree with Jim (and with Bloom) is that I would say that aesthetic distinctions have a far wider range of tolerability and that that individual preference plays a much more important part in those distinctions. —
Moral decision are different, in my opinion, and cannot be lumped together with aesthetic choices. — I think Bloom fell down on this point, and Jim seems to be doing the same thing.
Jim: as you recognize, the battle you’re fighting isn’t just against trendy wines but against the core dogma of the modern age. It is probably unwinnable. There is only one absolute truth acknowledged in our society: that people who believe there is any such thing as absolute truth are evil and mean-spirited and must be crushed, shunned, and humiliated. (There is no tension or contradiction of any kind perceived in this belief.)
But I don’t think this is a battle you need to fight to make the point when it comes to wine. Objective standards in wine quality plainly exist not solely as a result of aesthetics and whatever objective standards may govern that field, but as a result of the way human beings are hard-wired by biology to taste certain things. Flavors that strike us as pleasant or disgusting are only subject to personal preference within an extremely narrow band, relative to the complete spectrum of all possible flavors. There is room for debate whether one wine tastes better than another but all can agree that wine tastes better than rat poison. So the existence of some hierarchy and some objective standards is obvious to anyone who stops to think about it for more than a minute; the only debate is over how fine that hierarchy goes.
You know one other thing that came to mind? Assuming I’m right about where those distinctions between too little and too much should be drawn, would it even be possible for someone so deeply invested in a particular wine aesthetic to somehow miraculously admit a longstanding mistake – in the face of commercial success and critical acclaim – and change his or her ways? Not likely, huh?
Absolutely, but I don’t believe for a second that we are discussing them in this thread. You apparently do, at least with respect to the upper boundary, but where there exists an equally legitimate community of persons who disagree, it renders your objective boundary pretty subjective, outside a discussion of aesthetics, and into a discussion of agreeability (preference) as contemplated by your second sentence.
Frankly, I don’t think you’d get much disagreement from Bloom on this point were he reading this thread and reconciling a debate on overripeness in wine with aesthetics.
Jim, I’m actually in agreement that moral relativism has spread far to widely, and that there should be more distinct standards of conduct and behavior in society. Unfortunately, I cannot agree at all that this same argument applies to taste in wine (as I would argue it can apply to tastes in music - but there because of the lack of musical creativity and the disgusting nature of modern lyrics).
As much as I would like to, there is simply no way anyone can claim objectively that DRC is a better wine than Marcassin. That’s completely a judgment and taste call. If you want to say that about the comparison between DRC and Gallo Hearty Burgundy, everyone would obviously agree.
Your tone has reached the point where it is useless to discuss any longer. You are, quite frankly, being offensively intolerant of other people’s opinions and tastes. You are just wrong.