As a wine lover, I have been wondering whether such descriptors resonate with us, regular wine consumers. Recently, I got an answer to my question, and it was a resounding ‘no’.
Last October and November, Jan Andrzejewski, a researcher and wine merchant, and I convened tastings and focus groups that are part of a larger project on wine communication. A few of the almost 50 participants had attended wine courses in the past, but the group was entirely one of self-declared non-professional wine consumers.
Among the questions asked was this: ‘What, for you, is good wine?’ Almost every answer centred around one theme – the respondent’s relationship with wine. Whether they spoke about liking a wine, the pleasure it affords them, the occasion, meal pairing, or memories sparked, inevitably the answers all related to the individual’s experience of the wine. Participants talked about what good wine gave them, what it meant, or how they experienced it – rather than about the wine itself. A good wine was one that offered a good relationship, be it in terms of taste or something else altogether. And it was never merely an object of removed appreciation.
Equally revealing was the fact that the ‘good wine’ talk has its source in general wine talk. When we asked the participants to describe the wines they were tasting, they couldn’t help but describe how they experienced them. And at one of the events we were able to understand just how strong this kind of narrative is. At the last tasting, one of the participants started following a sort of systematic approach to tasting. He talked about the wine as an object of inspection, much as a wine professional would. I feared the man would hijack the tasting and that the rest of the group would follow suit. Amazingly, what happened was the opposite. At first, the other participants started referring to the common wine descriptors but inevitably casting them in terms of their experience: ‘for me it is’, ‘I sense’, ‘I taste’… and then, they all dropped this way of talking. They moved again to talking about their relationship with the wine. Again and again, we didn’t hear what the wine was like, but how the participant experienced it – what it meant for them. Wine was always ‘for me’, never possessing ‘objective’ characteristics.
There is a significant gap between professional and consumer accounts of wine. While the former sees it as an object of inspection and analysis, the amateur wine lover sees it as a source of experience. For the writer, wine is objective. For the consumer it is something to have a relationship with.
Does it all matter, though? I think it does, for two reasons. Firstly, because wine critics and wine lovers speak differently. There is no bridge between these two ways of speaking and if a wine lover wants to access professional accounts of wine, they must learn a new way of speaking. With wine consumption and wine readership declining, this is hardly helpful. Consider then acknowledging that the language of wine, whichever way you define it, is ours and not yours! For all our sakes. If you start writing like we speak, perhaps we shall be happier to read what you have written.
Secondly, this objective kind of writing is likely to exclude the average wine drinker. Instead of feeling frustrated because most people can’t smell melon in a wine, or don’t know what ‘body’ in wine means, critics should recognise, I suggest, that it is writing about wine-as-object which is far more the problem. It is not for me to learn to understand you – it is for you to reflect the many wine worlds in which I live.
When you write about your wine experience, you are inviting me into a dialogue with you. I am acknowledged as a person to share in your story. In choosing to write about wine as just an object, you are missing out on a conversation we might have.
In my glass this month
Robert Parker considered Blaufränkisch a godforsaken grape. Perhaps if he had got out more, he’d have found examples of the variety that take your breath away. Yes, in Central and Eastern Europe, forever at the margins, grappling with its ambiguities, at a crossroads of civilisations. I am drinking Dorli Muhr’s Ried Spitzerberg Obere Roterd 2019. Muhr says it is expressive of its place. I think it touches your soul, a balance of harshness and tenderness. It commands love, so be sure to drink it with a loved one.
