Is all taste equally valid?
Sure it is! There’s a feel-good, all-American democratic answer for you. One man’s opinion’s as good as another’s and all that. It is self-evidently the right answer to the question.
It’s the question that’s bogus.
One evening at the ballgame I had the good fortune to sit next to one of the advance scouts who attend every game, gathering intel on the players. It was a slow night, and I asked if he could “think out loud” for me, tell me what he saw. And what he saw was an entirely different ballgame from the one I saw. I sat in admiration of his trained eye.
Similarly, if I take my car to the mechanic he hears different things in the engine’s hum than I do. A piano tuner hears minute tonal variances to which I am effectively deaf. A massage therapist discerns muscle tensions of which I’m not consciously aware.
All these are examples of expertise we take for granted. And yet if someone asserts expertise in wine, we are promptly suspicious; we sniff for snobbism, we get defensive and put up our dukes–and I have always wondered why.
Wine writers such as my friend Jennifer Rosen feel a degree of responsibility to “demystify” wine, to make it accessible to everyman. That way, they reason, more people will drink it, thus improving the world. Other wine writers want to reassure you there are no “rules” and that you should always drink what you like; reasonable advice on the face of it. If you like drinking young Barolo with a dozen raw oysters I won’t stop you (though I’ll shudder to think what’s going on inside your mouth). If you like a beer after steeping a bunch of sardines in it for a half-hour, go on and drink it that way. No one wants to keep you from the consequences of your perverse taste. No one denies your “right” to it.
Some of us, however, like to call things by their proper names. Not from snobbism, sadism or any other ism, but because it helps to order the world of experience. It fends off the chaos.
I had a conversation on an airplane recently, with a cellist in her 20s. We talked about music, naturally, and it became clear to me her tastes were wider than my own. (I’m an ossified old geez in his early 50s.) I remarked upon her ecumenical listening habits. “Well,” she said, “don’t you think one should search for the virtues in everything?” Much as I wished to say yes, to do so would have been false. Instead I said: “No, I think YOU should seek the good in everything; that’s where you are in your life. But what I need to do is identify that which annoys or wounds me, and avoid it.”
Stuart Pigott once wrote: “We should…start making wines with balance, elegance and originality sound so utterly astonishing that our readers feel they have just got to try them,” and this of course is true. A critic must stand for something; otherwise he is merely pusillanimous. And so our first task is to find the good and praise it. But any time we take a stand FOR something, we imply the thing’s shadow, i.e., the thing we love suggests, ineluctably, the thing we don’t love. And we cannot shrink from naming both things, especially not for fear of wounding the delicate sensibilities of the philistines (who, by the way, are both robustly insensitive and also have no scruples about insulting US with labels such as “snob” or “elitist”).
God knows we’d prefer to be everyone’s best friend, and we feel humane and generous telling anyone with unformed (or simply atrocious) taste that his taste is as good as anyone else’s. But it’s a lie we tell so we can feel noble, and furthermore it is unfair to the recipient, who, if he’s being patronized, is entitled at least to know it.
Pigott went on to claim that any wine anyone likes is ipso facto “good” wine, and this is just the slippery slope we can’t help sliding down when we try to be “democratic.” It is manifestly impossible to support a definition of “good” as “wine that someone, regardless of who they are, finds to taste good.” This is irresponsible; it ducks the question. Once at a presentation I was terribly busy and opened bottles without a chance to screen them. A punter remarked upon a particular wine that it was “fantastic; I never had anything that tasted like this, wow, how was this made…?” and his enthusiasm infected me and I poured myself a taste of the wine. CORKED! What should I have done, based on Pigott’s definition of “good”? The gentleman liked a patently flawed wine. He has every “right” to like it; no one disputes this. But I felt honor-bound to discreetly correct him.
Thus I can’t endorse a definition of “good” that is as “inclusive and democratic” as some desire. I do not believe nature has any use for our democracies; she is in essence hierarchal. Some things are better than others, and one of our functions is gently to guide our readers toward appreciation of these distinctions.
If we take these democratic principles and apply them to any other thing about which aesthetic or cultural criticism is warranted, do they stand up? Shall we endorse a statement such as “all art is good art as long as someone likes it”? Does this sentiment apply equally to architecture, poetry, cuisine? Or is wine somehow “special” because too few people drink it? And should we pander to every sort of unformed or misguided taste because we’re trying to get more people to drink wine?
Let me be clear: no one has to like wine the way I like it, or the way any “expert” likes it. If wine is a casual beverage for you, then the discussion ends. Wine is complicated and therefore intimidating to people, but I’ll make you a deal: you promise not to lash out at me for what I know because you feel intimidated, and I’ll promise not to guilt-trip you into acquiring “expertise” over a subject you don’t care that much about. Deal?
For wine writers the truest reason to write humanely is because it is good to be humane. That is a real reason; others are bogus. Any professional who uses words does well to shade them so as not to deliver gratuitous insults to people with dubious or uneducated taste. But that doesn’t mean he abrogates his entire judgmental faculties – which by the way are why we hired him – in search of some romance about inclusion or democracy.
There are no “invalid” moments of pleasure in wine. But, there are higher and lower pleasures. Once you have graduated from the low you can always return. It’s fun to return! If you’re somewhere in the process of honing your wine taste and you want to continue, no one is helping you who fails to delineate the distinctions between inadequate, ordinary, good, fine and great–or between “industrial” and “agricultural” wines. Maybe there is a thin line between this and Pigott’s “attach[ing] an imperative,” but the way through involves the nurturing of one’s own kindness and the honing of one’s craft with words.
I feel it is indeed unkind to flatten all taste to a specious equality, made even more pernicious by encouraging the philistines to set the level.
Me, I have a powerful aversion to wines that gush and scream; they annoy me, and I tell my readers why, and they make up their own minds. MY imperative isn’t everyone’s, self-evidently: but I strive to send clear signals, to advocate what I think is worthy and to identify and explain what I think is unworthy, and if my tone is “superior, even dictatorial” then the fault lies with ME. I have failed to communicate my point. But, the POINT remains.
Terry Theise is a leading importer of wines from Germany, Austria and Champagne. To read more of his writing and learn more about his wines, go to: