A Mean Spirited Column

This is going to be something unusual for us; a mean spirited column. To begin with, let us set the ground rules. We are wine writers not wine critics. We write about wine in all of its facets and often give our opinions based on over thirty years of experience. These opinions are derived by our tasting a wine and comparing our opinion of it. What we like, you may hate and vice versa, so we give only our opinion.

            What galls us is the number system used by the wine snob magazines. How are these numbers derived? Simple, on a particular day a group of “experts” gather around a table and drink water and/or eat crackers, after about three wines, their taste buds are shot. Think about it; there is alcohol in wine and what do you do with alcohol when you get a mosquito bite? You put it on the bite to deaden the itch; duh.  These experts then go on to damn or glorify a wine. Too much responsibility with too little information. To prove our point try sampling three of the same type of wine one right after another; then sample them one at a time at one hour intervals. The difference can be dramatic. Let us now put the final nail in this coffin. These magazines exist on advertisements from wineries … need we say more.

Our next pet peeve is something never mentioned by the geek magazines but definitely exists; we call it the drop dead factor. Have you ever opened a bottle of wine and have it taste and smell fine but by the end of the meal the wine has gone totally downhill?  It is neither your taste buds nor the meal, it is the wine. For some reason, some wines, when exposed to the air, go rapidly downhill. One of us, being a chemist and the other a dietitian, can explain it in very technical terms what we believe occurs, but we still do not know for sure exactly why some wines die and others don’t. A corollary to this is that if you finish half a bottle of wine, properly stopper it and perhaps even pull a vacuum on it, then put it in the fridge, the next day you open it and it is dead. Why? Again there can be many reasons, but what it comes down to is that there must be something in the production of the wine or the growing of the grapes that causes this in some wines and not others, regardless of price. Perhaps if the wine press paid more attention to the drop dead factor it would engender some investigation into the causes. Whatever way they solve the problem, it will certainly save a lot of money and frustration when yesterday’s magnificent vintage goes down the drain.

Something that we have always found interesting is the different labels put out by the same vintner. When we asked a distributor why, and got the terse reply, “different price points; different consumers. Is the wine the same just labeled differently? We honestly do not know but with today’s business morals, cost control and taxation on stored wine we strongly doubt that everything here is on the up and up. If producers are selling the same wine with different labels and charging different prices, this is definitely a deceptive and in our opinion despicable process. What can be done about this; we haven’t the foggiest idea but to be forewarned could help.

Unfortunately, there is little that we can do about any of these problems. We, as writers, can call our readers attention to the facts and an informed readership helps, but it will not correct the problem. We will always try to guide our readers to the wines we believe are worthy of your interest and always try to illuminate the best wines for the best price and from there just hope for that we have made a difference.