Getting a Read on Readers
Answers to questions from the mailbag
The more I write, the more you write, so here are some answers to questions I've received in the past couple of weeks.
How can you rate the same wine differently, giving it a high score one time and a lower score the next?
You can only taste and rate the wine in front of you. That's the beauty of blind tasting. While someone who owns a wine may be frustrated when it gets different scores, it's also frustrating to me. In a perfect world, a dozen bottles of the same wine should all taste the same. But in reality, there is often significant bottle variation, and as wines age, those differences often become more apparent. That's why experienced tasters often use the phrase, "There are no great wines, only great bottles," to describe this experience.
That's also why I taste almost every wine I review twice, and I always have one of my colleagues taste the wine, too. It's a way for them to gain experience and analyze wines, and for me to understand what they're thinking. And while I value my colleagues' input and experience, it's my call as to the final rating.
There are many days when I'm tasting that I wish winemakers could sit in and experience what I consider a high level of bottle variation—everything from bad corks to spoilage. I suspect that many winemakers do understand this, and that's why they are more than willing to submit two bottles (or more) for tasting, knowing that things happen.
Why do so many California Chardonnays taste the same?
They do and they don't. So many winemakers use similar techniques—harvesting ripe grapes, barrel fermentation and lees stirring in new toasty oak, malolactic, etc.—that it is to be expected that the wines they make would share many of the aromatic, taste and textural traits that style of winemaking produces.
For instance, many of the wines I liked best from 2002 and '03 show a strong smoky, toasty oak character. With time, the woody character will integrate into the wine and become less obvious. From my tastings this past year, though, my favorite Chardonnay is the 2000 Marcassin Sonoma Coast Three Sisters Vineyard (98 points, $75). It defines elegance and grace and is not overly reliant on oak.
It's also important to remember that Chardonnay is a fairly neutral-flavored wine (as wines go) and does not share the intense varietal character of, say, Sauvignon Blanc. Winemakers like to barrel-ferment both wines because of the silkiness it gives the texture.
As an aside, I wish California vintners greater success in creating a Chablis style of Chardonnay that's less reliant on oak, etc., and more marked by flinty, mineral flavors. I suspect that day is coming, but winemakers cling to the style that sells, and critics can only review what they taste—even if that means lots of wines that share common flavor characteristics.
Why bother giving low scores to wines you don't like, when it only hurts the producer?
It's our intent to let readers know what we think about any given wine, and frankly, critics who don't publish reviews of wines they don't like are shortchanging their readers. In publications that use 85 points as the cutoff, you'll never find a $100 wine with an 83 or 79 point rating, and that information is of value if you follow reviews.
Critical reviews are important. While they may anger a vintner or consumer who owns the wine, in the end they're a way to measure quality. And producers who have their wines reviewed by several publications usually value the feedback—which is why they submit wines for review in the first place.
Producers also know that the market determines quality, too. If a critic doesn't like a given wine but it sells, then it's successful. If a critic raves about a wine and it doesn't sell, that's significant, too.
How can you rate a winery's regular bottling higher than its reserve?
Wineries that bottle reserve wines do so for several reasons. One is that the reserve wine is often made in a slightly different style than the so-called "regular" bottling. It might be a riper wine; it might spend more time in oak; it may be a different blend of grapes. That doesn't necessarily mean it's superior—just different.
Also, don't overlook the profit margins on reserve wines, which are often two or three times more expensive than the regular bottlings. There is a market for reserves.
I know many winemakers who admit to liking their regular bottlings more than their reserves. They just don't like to talk about it much.
As for ratings, if a critic's reviews all fall into line with a winery's pricing scale (that is, the most expensive wines get the highest ratings and inexpensive wines never get high marks) that suggests they don't taste blind. One of my favorite wines from last year was the Acacia Pinot Noir Carneros 2002 (90 points, $20). Acacia's single-vineyard wines were good, but I preferred the blend, and it cost a fraction of the price of the single-vineyard wines.
