Wait, I heard that 8 years in the desert can dry out pro critics’ nasal passages.
sometimes in wine you gotta meet people where they are, especially if you want to make any money for your restaurant as a somm. the same person who enjoys the Prisoner is gonna think the Somm is terrible at their job if they get offered Chambolle or old Bordeaux. rather they drink the prisoner than yellowtail when theyre at your restaurant.
If you think these are mutually exclusive terms, your English teachers failed you.
^this. Like, x1000000
I don’t like the wines at all. Not even close. But they are made in an extremely popular style, use a lot of labor in making the wine, and do the job they are intended for. Idgaf if “anyone who knows about wine doesn’t like them” because that’s an absurd statement to make to begin with.
I love Nebbiolo to death, but it’s also a grape that isn’t exactly accessible to wine drinkers that aren’t part of the .1%. I don’t see how that makes me better when people who buy Orin Swift are spending at a premium price to buy them. All of those people who bought them made vastly more than the $14.50 per hour I was being paid for me to be a smartass. And I very well know that some who bought the wines are extremely smart and insanely successful.
I never said they were mutually exclusive. Rather, when I think of Coca-Cola, I don’t think of it as being particularly well-made and crafted. I think of it as being a combination of a bunch of chemicals dumped into a giant vat and mixed around until ready to be dispensed. That sounds pretty confected to me.
Chris, it’s not the right analogy. Disdaining Orin Swift is more like saying, “I think Trabants are lousy vehicles,” it’s not like saying that not liking those wines means that I think red wines should not exist.
All true, but I am looking for critics who speak to me and my tastes rather than that of the herd. We are still looking at subjective and objective, but here the question is about intent.
There is an element of subjectivity in well made. Given the criteria, again subjective, and the wine/film/car/soft drink meet the criteria does not necessarily mean it is well made. It just means it fulfills somebody’s objectives well.
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No critic is going to make a living pandering to the tastes of Wine Berserkers. This thread is just another example of a tiny slice of the wine community thinking their taste preferences are the global standard.
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Absolutely right. The wines do not fulfill my criteria for good wine, which front and center should reflect where they come from. I realize this is not the goal of most wine drinkers, and there are plenty of winemakers out there who recognize the demand for the Orin Swifts of the world and manufacture the wines accordingly.
Wine Berserkers (apart from Jay Hack and a large minority 
) don’t tend to like this style of wine.
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Having just looked at some of the OPs past posts, all he ever seems to do is whine and complain. He even went so far as to say in a thread that most people who own wine shops don’t stock or drink good wine. That’s some pretty ballsy shit to say or completely obtuse. Take your pick
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I don’t understand the point of the post. If you don’t like OS don’t drink it. No one is forcing you to drink it.
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Perhaps professional critics have more flexible understanding of what is good wine, rather than being stuck on a single style. 
The other possibility is that the critics are provided the first run bottling, from the best lot, that hasn’t been beaten up in bulk distribution.
Certainly for the mass produced, formerly OS wines like The Prisoner and Saldo, I don’t see how the critics’ bottles can really be 100% consistent across > 100k cases. For the ‘real’ OS wines, the productions still seem to be in the 10k case range, which is significant but not exactly mass production.
Ultimately, though, the critics’ reviews provide all sorts of Parker-esque key works like “brooding, preserves, compote, knock-out, unctuous, and pie”, just scanning a few examples. Combine that with the ABV, and anyone with common sense should have no mistake what these wines are.
If anyone should be irritated, it’s cult producers like SQN and Cayuse. OS wine branding is a sort of caricature of the labeling and branding of the edgy, artsy styled cult wines. OS has basically taken something that was only available to the 0.1%, and created a cheaper, but not truly cheap facsimile plausible enough that it can be a splurge buy for a wide swath of more casual (or less wealthy) buyers.
Going down that conspiracy theory rabbit hole are we?
The thing about people who argue that “even if you don’t like it, it’s well made” is that as far as I can tell they have zero objective standards for what “well made” means. So first they say that your viewpoint from tasting a wine and liking it or not liking it doesn’t count because it’s supposedly subjective and irrelevant. Then they say that their equally subjective and ungrounded take on whether a wine is “well made” is supposed to count! Thanks guys, but I’ll take a subjective impression on whether a wine is pleasing, subtle, well balanced, etc. based on an actual tasting over a subjective take on whether a wine is “well made” that as far as I can tell doesn’t anchor to personal experience. Maybe the “well made” belief is based on the assumption that people buy it so there must be something good about it? I really can’t tell.
I have no issue with people liking any kind of wine. But it bums me out lots of people out there view these as safe crowd pleasers and order them early and often.
This is very true! I guess it’s good for me since it means I don’t buy random red wines off lists but something non-alcoholic and healthier instead.
This is just not true. If looking at a wine objectively and stating a distaste for the style but still acknowledging that there is good winemaking involved is impossible, then basically every MW is worthless using your logic
No comment on the worth of MW, but as I understand it what they do there is teach you a means of structuring your subjective impressions as to balance, structure, complexity, etc. so as to make them more communicable and objective. I understand people in this thread to be arguing that OS sucks by exactly those criteria laid out in MW courses and the like. If people want to argue that OS is in fact well balanced, complex, etc. that would be interesting.
as someone who will be applying for it, this is almost correct but not entirely. It’s about critically evaluating a wine. I don’t have a bottle in front of me, but from memory I would absolutely note the high alcohol, and likely lack of integration of alcohol that would prevent it from being an outstanding quality wine. But, there is a lot of fruit and oak complexity that would show that there is winemaking and quality grapes involved in making the wine. In a note, you certainly would indicate the lack of balance, but there has to be more than just that to properly asses the wine itself.
Again, I say all of that as someone who predominately drinks white burgundy, piedmont, and champagne. These wines aren’t intended for me at all, but there is clearly a style that is being achieved that is pleasing to a very wide breadth of consumers
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