originally posted by mlawton:
Oh, come on guys - I was just getting my popcorn ready. Remember "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"? Where is Don King? Let's get it on!
Damn you and your incessant need for bread & circuses.
The thing is, I just sorta shrugged, because I took Levi's response about as seriously as I took Brad's. So it was hard to get all het up. But I'll give it a shot, just for your entertainment...
So Thor, just so I understand correctly, it's not okay to understand a wine in the context of the vintage, but it is okay to impose outside conceptual criteria on a wine that reflects an individual's preference (ie. precision) rather than an understanding of the region where that wine in question is from. If you impose Mosel/Trimbach criteria on the Riesling of the Nahe, then of course both Diel and Donnhoff will come up short, especially in a year like 2006.
The rest of the thing is, I have no idea what Levi's talking about here. He makes up a bunch of stuff I didn't say or mean, and of which there is no evidence in the actual tasting notes, attributes it to me, and then argues against it. This reminds me of Coad's story about Brad's blind bottles always representing the climax to some long-harbored grudge that no one but Brad has been harboring, and about which no one but Brad is aware. He might as well have accused me of judging the Dnnhoff by Uruguayan tannat criteria for all the sense his argument made.
But just so there's clarity all 'round and Levi can be at greater peace with himself, I did neither of the transpositive things of which he accuses me. I judged the wine on its own merits and then suggested why I liked, but did not passionately adore, it. If it's Levi's suggestion that Nahe rieslings, or Dnnhoff, or wines from the Krtenpfuhl, or 2006s, are inherently capable of possessing precision and/or definition, then we're going to have to disagree on all points.
Now, if I had written that it lacked the precision and definition of a Mosel (or a Trimbach), he'd have a complaint. I didn't write that. I didn't write anything even vaguely like that.
And really, Levi complaining that tasting notes' language might reflect "an individual's preference" is ludicrous on the face of it, unless the notes are free of any and all opinion. Since Levi well knows that mine never are, I don't understand his newfound objection to their form. If he wants purely objective tasting notes, I suggest he read...well, I don't know, but I'm sure there's someone who foolishly thinks they're objective.
So let me restate: I thought the Dnnhoff would have been better if it had more precision and definition. I noted that these lacks kept it, in my subjective opinion, from being "very good," and left it at just "good." That this is an artifact of any external criterion -- vineyard, region, producer, vintage -- is a
reason, but it's not a
refutation. A hypothetical wine may be acid-deficient, laden with underripe tannin, and a chore to drink; because this hypothetical wine is a 2003 from somewhere in France doesn't mean it's
not those things, it just explains why those things were more likely than the alternative.
Perhaps if I had appended to the note a treatise on the mesoclimate of the Krtenpfuhl vineyard in 2006, it would have mollified Levi. But really, I just wanted to post some notes on some wines I tasted at the Lawtons'. If Levi wants to send me a check, I'll get to work on that treatise for him. Otherwise, he's out of luck.
