TN: Three wines with Christian and Remo

[David from Switzerland]

Christian graciously treated us to a delicious Italian dinner out in a local restaurant where we were exceptionally allowed to bring our own wines (the chef plays cinque birilli at Patricks pool hall).

Castello di Ama Merlot LApparita 1993
My second to last bottle, and the best ever I have tasted of this wine. It is true that it holds such fine sediment it almost cannot be properly decanted when the bottle has been moved the same day (if not longer), and that this was the first time I let one rest in upright position for a day, decanted it at home (into a low surface virtually bottle-shaped decanter) cool from the cellar, and carried that through a chilly winter night to the restaurant, where it was poured still too cold to be enjoyed right away. What was so different? First of all what oak there may once have been barely showed anymore other than in something like a pink marzipan sweetness floating in florality (Remo, who much preferred this bottle to one in May last year, said it was like a flower just coming into bloom at this instant). The youthful gloss to the full ruby-red colour (yes, this even looked better!). More importantly, it was impossible to tell what was more seductive, the sweetly ripe florality of the fruit, or the gingery freshness of the acids, or the harmony and length of it all. One of the two or three greatest bottles of Apparita I have ever had, along with the great 1987 (and an exceptional bottle as with the 1993, not all are the same of the 1990). I am stunned to think this once started out much like the 1997 Masseto... Rating: 96-

Avignonesi & Capannelle Toscana 50 & 50 2004
Thanks to Christian. A blend of Sangiovese and Merlot. Purple-ruby that is dark, but not really dense. Huge thistle, vanilla and caramel from the oak. Extremely modern-styled, if quantitatively speaking balanced wine. Smells like a blend of something half-bright and half-tired. Some duck meat to grape peely blackberry and mocha, backed by healthy acidity and tannin, neither of which seems to have much flavour, let alone life of its own. Fairly high alcohol which integrates well, but that I am afraid may stick out like a sore thumb in the long run. Neither hot nor roasted. Quite strong minerality if totally non-descript in terms of terroir. Quite long on the finish, although by no means endless as Christian claimed who kept raving about this. Remo was politely tight-lipped, whereas I could not bring myself to finish the second glass I was poured against my will. Having said that, there is little inherently wrong with the wine, other than that it lacks personality (oddly enough, Christian finds this utterly unmistakable). Should probably mention this is rather outrageously priced... Rating: ~90-?

Beaucastel Chteauneuf-du-Pape 1990
Thanks to Remo. A pristine bottle, perhaps the best I have ever had (certainly a less variable wine than the 1989). Garnet-ruby, soft black reflections, some orange at the rim. Another 1990 Beaucastel that tasted better than it smelled: some horse sweat, leather and baby poo (I realize some people are delighted by the latter in particular) on the nose. The horsiness integrated quite admirably with airing, by the way, and at any rate, it was not bothering to begin with. A bit cheesy raspberry coulis with a touch of rowan berry on the palate, complex and quite deep, not too soapy at all, a well-balanced, harmonious wine, and very long on the finish. Hard to tell if this is still on the way up or safely arrived on its plateau of maturity, but I would not hesitate pulling a cork now and then. Rating: 94+/95-?

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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J'ai gch vingt ans de mes plus belles annes au billard. Si c'tait refaire, je recommencerais. Roger Conti

 

[Redwinger]

BYO pool hall. Very cool.

Bill

 

[David from Switzerland]

originally posted by Redwinger:
BYO pool hall. Very cool.

Bill

Actually, although you misinterpreted something here (I wasn't very clear: Theo, the restaurant owner only exceptionally allowed BYO because he plays Italian billiards at our mutual friend Patrick's pool hall), you're right: Patrick doesn't mind fine wine BYO at his pool hall as long as he gets his share. ;^)

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

J'ai gch vingt ans de mes plus belles annes au billard. Si c'tait refaire, je recommencerais. Roger Conti

 

[SFJoe]

originally posted by David from Switzerland:


Castello di Ama Merlot LApparita 1993

Avignonesi & Capannelle Toscana 50 & 50 2004
Should probably mention this is rather outrageously priced... Rating: ~90-?

this is a particularly arresting tasting note, in a horrifying fashion. I haven't had the wine, but it sounds remarkably vile from your very clear and articulate description. and yet you grant it "90" of the blessed points. WTF? Onto which perverse linear axis do your vectors project?

Beaucastel Chteauneuf-du-Pape 1990
Thanks to Remo. A pristine bottle, perhaps the best I have ever had (certainly a less variable wine than the 1989). Garnet-ruby, soft black reflections, some orange at the rim. Another 1990 Beaucastel that tasted better than it smelled: some horse sweat, leather and baby poo (I realize some people are delighted by the latter in particular) on the nose. The horsiness integrated quite admirably with airing, by the way, and at any rate, it was not bothering to begin with. A bit cheesy raspberry coulis with a touch of rowan berry on the palate, complex and quite deep, not too soapy at all, a well-balanced, harmonious wine, and very long on the finish. Hard to tell if this is still on the way up or safely arrived on its plateau of maturity, but I would not hesitate pulling a cork now and then. Rating: 94+/95-?

The '90 Beaucastel is less variable than the '89 because it is the most consistently brett-fouled of their wines in modern times. While most of the truly poo-flavored wine was diverted to the Coudoulet, the '90 is a wine that has lost a great deal of its warm-vintage punch to brettanomyces esterases. But I'm glad yours had some other flavors intact. My concern about microbial activity would incline me to earlier rather than later consumption.

 

[David from Switzerland]

originally posted by SFJoe:

originally posted by David from Switzerland:

Avignonesi & Capannelle Toscana 50 & 50 2004
Should probably mention this is rather outrageously priced... Rating: ~90-?

this is a particularly arresting tasting note, in a horrifying fashion. I haven't had the wine, but it sounds remarkably vile from your very clear and articulate description. and yet you grant it "90" of the blessed points. WTF? Onto which perverse linear axis do your vectors project?

You may remember I once said (and meant it) that I'd no longer discuss numerical rating. But: it may help to remember I'm a teacher, in a habit of attributing numerical scores regardless of personal preference. Basically it's the same thing in school: students have a hard time believing it can be done. The fact is, it can be done more or less well, more or less fairly etc., and more importantly, that it is being done all the time, by people who are more or less qualified, one subject matter that is more or less quantifiable etc.

So yes, you caught me: I try not to rate wine based on personal preference, which per se means little more than I try to rate wine and not style, accepting style as a given. I do try and take care to mention what style I like and which I don't. It may be no fun to admit, but we're all able to do it if we try: served every vintage of the most abominable wine one knows, one would still be able to accept such a vertical as a paradigm (an exceptionally simple example, I'll admit that) and proceed from there. The longer and more often one does it, the more variables one will take into account, in other words, one can get better at it. Obviously, there will be more or less objectivity to those variables, and the way we view them, e.g. balance, ripeness, concentration, freshness, complexity, finesse etc., nor will the list itself ever be exhaustive (and there's reason to presume it shouldn't be).

Even so I would insist it's not all a matter of experience only: I find it remarkable how much we all agree on average. We may disagree on e.g. liking a certain wine or bottling, but easily agree on which vintage of that wine or bottling is preferable. As soon as one tries and concentrates on what makes people agree, and one will see that the variables by which we grade can themselves be graded in terms of usefulness or as-if-objectivity: style is apparently something people can barely agree on. For example, I meet many more people who like modern wines (such as 50 & 50) than ones who don't. But it's possible to get a grasp on why admirers of the bottling think the 1999 and 2004 are standouts; in other words something must be objectively there that makes us agree, so what I try to do is look for it.

If all this sounds overly complicated, fussy or like nonsense to you, what about this: if I damned every modernistic wine regardless of whether it's more or less well-made; if I were unable to appreciate them for what they are; if I were unable or unwilling to figure out in what way they differ from each other, what it is that makes their admirers prefer one over the other - would you take my judgement seriously?

Ultimately, I do not defend rating (be that numerical or using words) per se, by the way, I believe it's unavoidable (everybody does it), and that it is the combination of curiosity, memory, and sheer love of the matter that makes a good taster and critic, because that is what it ultimately boils down to: without it the paradigms according to which we welcome or reject each new sample would be as useless as the weakest link in the chain (the variable we least agree on, regardless of which it may be).

I am afraid that weakest link may be style. It is tempting to say style is itself a qualitative characteristic (I am convinced that to some extent it is), at least if applied in the negative, for example insofar as most will agree that whatever detracts from varietal typicity (and/or terroir expression, seemingly more of a moot point), e.g. when Riesling no longer tastes like Riesling, so that in the positive, one might say non-interventionist winemaking is good style (or wishful thinking, depending on whom one asks).

And here's the rub: if I have learnt anything on the subject of judging/rating wine, then that there is something to learn only discussing common factors (e.g. paradigmatic variables, varietal characteristics etc. - things we agree on and that function as a conceptual benchmark) with people who are willing to discuss them. The seeming impossibility of the matter seems a given (even if "seeming" is the operative word).

In other words: from a professional perspective (teaching, evaluating and marking papers), experience has taught me that discussing the drawbacks may be best left to those who have tried it, and I mean, those who have failed giving it their all.

As to the wine itself: the important thing to note is that what is wrong with it (= the part I may have overemphasized in my tasting note, because it's the part I care about most personally) mainly has to do with qualities most people aren't even looking for (= my problem is about what it lacks as a consequence of an almost universally accepted modern style, not that I don't like the most part of what is there). If my tasting note sounds more negative than it was meant to, I'm afraid that is a reflection of a more general kind of stylistic disillusionment.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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J'ai gch vingt ans de mes plus belles annes au billard. Si c'tait refaire, je recommencerais. Roger Conti

 

[SFJoe]

Thanks, David. I hadn't really cared so much about the numeral, but the dissonance was jarring.

I disagree, of course. Saying, "this is the best poetry in the mode of Rod McKuen I've read all year" is a compliment dissatisfying to the point of irrelevance in my book. But there you are.

 

[Thor]

if I damned every modernistic wine regardless of whether it's more or less well-made; if I were unable to appreciate them for what they are; if I were unable or unwilling to figure out in what way they differ from each other, what it is that makes their admirers prefer one over the other - would you take my judgement seriously?

Absolutely yes. More so than if you wasted your judgment trying to figure out what other people like, and why they like it.

First, such guesses are far too often wrong. Second, the reasons for guessing are inexplicable unless they're an attempt to pander, which is understandable but not exactly admirable. (Clarification: I'm not suggesting that that's what you're doing.) And third, there are always critics who love the other stuff and dislike whatever it is you like; why not cede the territory? Because people prefer affirmation to the actual marketplace of ideas? That seems...sad.

It's not the attempt to understand that's wrong. That's admirable. One should always be open to changing one's mind. It's the attempt to take on others' judgment as one's own where everything goes astray. In the note Joe's objecting to, your description is your own. But the score, for all the reasons you detail in your followup, is not wholly your own. And the error begins when the word "objective" enters the discussion.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

There is not only a point, but a necessity, in judging the worthiness of a category. As Joe said, saying a work of art achieves its ends is not sufficient to show its success if its ends are uninteresting. There may be no category of "Rod McKuen" poetry exce[t Rod McKuen's and all of that that I have read (not much I readily admit) is about equally atrocious, but saying that work "a" is a fine example of a melodramatic suspense thriller isn't equal to saying that it is a good novel.

That being said, once one has established that category judgment, there's little point in bringing it constantly to bear because it doesn't provide more information to the person reading it, assuming that person knows your criteria. Probably a person who thinks that thrillers are always not great just shouldn't read and review them. There are people in the world who like wines for which descriptors like vanilla and caramel and mocha are apt. Those people, like people who read melodramatic thrillers, might want to know the good ones from the bad ones (because within any categories, distinctions can be made)and a critic who could do that would be performing a service to those people.

I do suspect this Board doesn't have a large number of people in that audience. But who knows?

 

[David from Switzerland]

originally posted by Thor:

if I damned every modernistic wine regardless of whether it's more or less well-made; if I were unable to appreciate them for what they are; if I were unable or unwilling to figure out in what way they differ from each other, what it is that makes their admirers prefer one over the other - would you take my judgement seriously?

Absolutely yes. More so than if you wasted your judgment trying to figure out what other people like, and why they like it.

First, such guesses are far too often wrong. Second, the reasons for guessing are inexplicable unless they're an attempt to pander, which is understandable but not exactly admirable. And third, there are always critics who love the other stuff and dislike whatever it is you like; why not cede the territory? Because people prefer affirmation to the actual marketplace of ideas? That seems...sad.

It's not the attempt to understand that's wrong. That's admirable. One should always be open to changing one's mind. It's the attempt to take on others' judgment as one's own where everything goes astray. In the note Joe's objecting to, your description is your own. But the score, for all the reasons you detail in your followup, is not wholly your own. And the error begins when the word "objective" enters the discussion.

Obviously there is a reason I spoke of "as-if-objectivity". As to differentiation you're making, the way I see it, both the note and the description invariably remain my own. We both know those memorized paradigms, a lifetime experience in wine-tasting, goes far beyond what one would ever be able to offer as a definition of what makes another wine good, or typical etc., but it's clear that without paradigms, there could be no rating to begin with. My curiosity in what is achieved in a given style, regardless of whether I like the style per se, is part of my nature, and it works effortlessly thanks to what I lovingly call my memory for the irrelevant. Trying to understand what fits a paradigm and what doesn't is not an attempt at self-denial (that would indeed sound like no fun, I agree), after all, these paradigms are a cumulation of knowledge and experience, and they're based on what one tastes, not what one would produce oneself given the freedom to choose. There is some similarity to the marking of papers, where I've always tried to understand what a person tried to achieve and whether he or she did, apart from the way in which this differs from what I would have tried to do. In fact, I have always found the former more interesting than the latter, so much so that what I would have done instead has always appeared irrelevant to me, and this is even more true when it comes to the appreciation of wine (my ability to write being at least somewhat superior to my experience in making wine - that is, none). Or else I should be making wine instead of collecting, tasting and drinking it.

There is a limit to all this that is worth pointing out: that which one cannot and/or refuses to understand. I've sometimes read tasting notes of yours that reflect precisely that, among them ones that were hilariously funny. Equally importantly, however, you appear to get fun out of writing those notes - I wouldn't. I get to taste many such wines, but ultimately, those are tasting notes I rarely take the time to write. I guess it's a matter of what one judges to be a loss of time or misapplication of learning and effort. I can only guess, but without curiosity, what I do would probably be unimaginably boring and sad. Given curiosity and that memory for the irrelevant, the question has never seemed to pose itself.

Be that as it may, I probably shouldn't have answered Joe's question in the first place: what you make sound like an effort of mine only looks like one once one tries to dissect it, and/or, and there you have an excellent point, if someone else tried to do it. But: I'm not trying to tell others to try and do it unless they're doing it naturally. And that is the point: I've noticed over the years I'm not unique at all, on the contrary, many people do what I do without reflecting on it - it's basically why some but not all of us have the ability to recommend to others what they might like versus exclusively recommending what we like ourselves. It's not so much as you put it an effort to understand what others like, it has more to do with returning a favour, that is, giving one's own hunters and gatherers instinct free rein, allow others to partake in one's findings, in the form of an offer that others may accept or refuse. At least that's the way I see it. There is really very little to it.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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J'ai gch vingt ans de mes plus belles annes au billard. Si c'tait refaire, je recommencerais. Roger Conti

 

[David from Switzerland]

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
[...] That being said, once one has established that category judgment, there's little point in bringing it constantly to bear because it doesn't provide more information to the person reading it, assuming that person knows your criteria. Probably a person who thinks that thrillers are always not great just shouldn't read and review them. [...]

Agree: if there is a limit to both the fun of doing it and the usefulness to others, that would be mine, too. Basically, writing tasting notes on wine one understands but doesn't like may already be an academic exercise, but if one has to bring oneself to understand it (or can't), it takes out all the fun and can't possibly result in a helpful tasting note. I'll admit that from this perspective, my TN on the 50 & 50 in hindsight looks more borderline than it should have (it's simply a sloppily written tasting note, which doesn't do the wine justice, but then, I'm not getting paid for it, and after all, it was the third wine drunk in the company of two friends on an evening when two out of the three wines we had did justify posting notes), which reminds me why I feel justified in not writing tasting notes on a plethora of wines I care so little about: I would hardly have the nerve to satirize them.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.
_________________

J'ai gch vingt ans de mes plus belles annes au billard. Si c'tait refaire, je recommencerais. Roger Conti

 

[VLM]

originally posted by David from Switzerland:
Obviously there is a reason I spoke of "as-if-objectivity".

I have a different take. I feel that my judgments really are pretty close to objective truth.

 

[Thor]

Equally importantly, however, you appear to get fun out of writing those notes - I wouldn't. I get to taste many such wines, but ultimately, those are tasting notes I rarely take the time to write.

Well, if my tasting notes were as long as yours, I wouldn't take the time either. (This is where the emoticon would go.)

I feel that my judgments really are pretty close to objective truth.

As do we, Nathan.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

originally posted by VLM:

originally posted by David from Switzerland:
Obviously there is a reason I spoke of "as-if-objectivity".

I have a different take. I feel that my judgments really are pretty close to objective truth.

What's the status of your feeling about your judgments?

 

[Jeff Grossman]

David, what do you teach?