Following on from last week’s post, this week I am thinking of points again. Having said that, whereas last week I voiced a freshly-formed opinion that came from reading Terry Theise’s excellent Reading Between the Vines, my thoughts this week have been knocking around my head for much longer.

You know the old adage; you have to read the tasting note, and not just the score. It’s a ‘warning’ that has long been voiced by many critics and publications where wine opinions are accompanied by a number. The score tells you whether the critic liked a wine or not. So should the tasting note although sometimes, especially with more ‘technical’ analyses, it’s not that easy. Sometimes you can read a note and yet when you come to the end remain uncertain as to whether the critic actually liked the wine; this is where scores can be useful – they provide a quick and easy view into which wines the taster thought ‘best’ on the day. The note can achieve much more than this, though, because, language is so much more descriptive than mere numbers. The tasting note can describe the style of the wine.

I’ve tasted a lot of Bordeaux in my time, with a focus that starts in the 1980s, with occasional forays back to older vintages such as 1975 and 1961. But more recent vintages have come under greater scrutiny, as I’ve made regular assessments of vintages from 2003 onwards either at two years of age when the wines have just been bottled, as well as tastings at four years of age at the Institute of Master of Wine, and I’m now a regular visitor to Bordeaux for the primeur tastings. My experience with these most recent vintages and my trips to Bordeaux have taught me many things, from the veracity (or lack of it) to be found within barrel samples, to the huge size of the Bordeaux region (a drive from one appellation to the next can take a long time).

But one thing I have learnt more than anything else is that points are rubbish at describing wine.

This has been hammered home by the recent 2009 and 2010 vintages in Bordeaux. By now you will know that 2009 is widely acclaimed as a great vintage. You will probably also know, even if the thought of it makes you roll your eyes in despair at the marketing hype, that 2010 has also received a lot of positive press. This latter vintage currently remains in barrel, so (in view of what I wrote above) we should remain circumspect for the moment, although having tasted a handful of 2010s in Bordeaux in October I’m confident – as the wines seem to taste better and better with each encounter – that the early reports on quality are not unfounded. And so we have two great back to back vintages. Both have received praise, and both have been showered with high scores.

None of which tells you anything about how the wines actually taste.

The two vintages are completely different. Like chalk and cheese, Laurel and Hardy, Sarkozy and Merkel, you would never mistake one for the other. One is round, voluptuous, seductive whilst the other is firm, composed, generous but less easy to appreciate (I’m talking about the wines, not the politicians). The 2009 vintage has given us big, creamy, velvety textures, quite unlike any other wines I have tasted before. The 2010 is much more classic, much more ‘of Bordeaux’ I think, and as it takes on a little weight or flesh in barrel I think I may come to prefer it to 2009, much more than I did during my primeur tastings. It can be joined by a thread to previous vintages, such as 2005, 2000 and 1996 on the left bank. You can’t do that with 2009; there are no valid comparisons.

At no time, now or in the future, will a point-based assessment tell you that. And yet both critics and consumers seem so hung up on scores. James Suckling and his “I’m 96 points on that” videos spring to mind; why is that a valid statement to make about the wine, when you have decades of tasting experience and could do so much more to describe the wine, give something to your readers (or viewers) that actually informs? And a handful of MWs and other critics I’ve talked with seem totally obsessed with points and how they validate their palates. The post-tasting back-slapping when critics score wines at the same level (agreement between Critic ‘Smith’ and MW ‘Jones’ that the just-tasted Château X is a 95-pointer – this really happens!) is always amusing; it suggests that the two believe that the points are an intrinsic quality of the wine, there to be perceived by palates that – if they settle on the correct number – are clearly ‘great’ palates. And yet, if you like voluptuous wines rather than structured wines you should be scoring 2009 high, whereas if the opposite is true you will prefer 2010. In the same way, some will prefer La Mission Haut-Brion, and some will prefer Haut-Brion (would that I could afford either!). Points, I think, do little to help us understand any of these wines, but do much I think to inform us about the palate of the taster, to which they are perhaps more closely related.

Perhaps this latter aspect of points is the most useful. If you can gauge the taster’s preferences from the points they dish out, perhaps this implies they are a consistent ‘taster’, and you can judge therefore whether (a) the critic’s opinions are useful to you, and (b) whether your tastes align with (buy the wines they like) or are different from (buy the wines they don’t like) those of the critic. If you look at the scores and find you can’t gauge the author’s tastes or preferences, perhaps they aren’t a very good ‘taster’, and you should walk away.

Filed under: Bordeaux, Opinion
Posted by Chris Kissack on November 25, 2011 at 7:18 am
11 Comments »

As I hinted in my recent introduction to my latest set of notes concerning 2009 Bordeaux, I’ve been reading Terry Theise’s Reading Between the Vines. I don’t seem to read as many wine-related books as I used to, a symptom of how busy I am with Winedoctor I suspect, but that’s something I’ve been working to rectify recently. It’s important to read and hear what others have to say, as it can challenge and stimulate the mind. And it can be very pleasurable too – I enjoyed Theise’s book immensely – and with that in mind I know I should pen a short review for Winedoctor. Soon, I promise.

One of Theise’s arguments concerns the use of points or scores when rating wines, and the peculiar way this has filtered through from wine critics to wine consumers. I have to confess I had just taken this activity for granted, as ‘normal’ behaviour, and yet if you stop and think about it for a moment, the whole practise suddenly looks really weird.

Scoring wine appears, for the wine trade, to be a necessary evil. It’s necessary for the critic, as this is how they convey their ranking of a wine, superb or otherwise. Whether it is Decanter’s five stars, or the 100-point system favoured by Parker and Wine Spectator (and many others – I sense that some feel the 100-point system gives them credibility), or the 20-point system favoured by the British and European press (Jancis Robinson, the now-retired Clive Coates, World of Fine Wine, La Revue du Vin de France) just about all critics use some sort of method of rating or ranking wine. Even the likes of Hugh Johnson has his buy a glass/buy a bottle/buy the vineyard system. It’s a way of conveying which wine you thought ‘best’, which were in the middle, which were ‘worst’.

Scoring for the trade also appears to be part-and-parcel of the job. Theise appears to detest scores, and makes an impassioned (and very convincing – after a page or two of his argument I was ready to rip up scores forever) plea against their use. Nevertheless, he also admits to using them himself, but only within the context of his wine catalogue (he is a wine importer as well as gifted writer, by the way). They’re necessary to sell wine, it seems. But when drinking at home, it is pretty clear that he does not use them.

But what about the wine consumer? It’s not necessary to score a wine when you drink it at home. Sure, you might have used the critic’s score to settle on which wine to purchase, but once you have it on your table, shouldn’t you just enjoy it? Part of the pleasure is delving into the wine, sensing its nuances, understanding its context within the world of wine (by which I mean its origins, I guess), seeing its beauty. I’m all for that. Part of the pleasure is also enjoying the wine within its current context, not within the larger world of wine, but within that environment, with that meal, on that holiday, on your balcony as you savour a beautiful sunset. I’m all for that as well. And part of the pleasure may be some discussion or debate, with your drinking partner or dinner companion if you have one, or perhaps online on a blog or forum. That’s also something I would support. But why the score? What’s the (sorry about this pun) point?

So many aspects of culture are reviewed and recommended (or trashed!) by critics; films spring immediately to mind, but also restaurants, theatre productions be they drama, stand-up comedy, ballet, opera or otherwise, books, new music releases, and so on. And yet in so many respects debate among consumers about these cultural genres remains free of points and scores. Earlier this week I watched Scottish National Opera perform The Barber of Seville; I went because I am an opera fan (not a knowledgeable one) and not because I read a review, but I’m sure the production has been written up, picked over, reviewed and quite possibly awarded a rating of some sort by some expert somewhere. But I didn’t leave the theatre saying to my two companions “wow – I’m 96 points on that opera – how about you?“. Wouldn’t that sound rather infantile?

In case you think my argument is hackneyed (the old “how many points for that Botticelli?” argument) then let me be clear that this isn’t the message/question I’m trying to get across. I accept, as Theise seems to do, that points are a necessary evil and that critics and the trade will continue to use them despite their many flaws. So I’m not trying to argue away scores on the basis of “wine is art and you can’t score art”, because that’s been done too many times before. The question I’m asking is this: why do so many wine-interested consumers feel that wine appreciation must involve assigning a score? If you’re not a critic, or a wine merchant, what is the purpose in scoring wine? Do you feel it gives your opinion some sort of validity, or does it facilitate debate, perhaps? And if you do score wine, do you also score other aspects of your life?

And coming back to the title of my post….did you have a 90+ point sleep last night?

Filed under: Opinion
Posted by Chris Kissack on November 18, 2011 at 7:26 am
23 Comments »

It’s been pretty hectic recently, with two major Bordeaux tastings – of the 2007 and 2009 vintages  – in the last few weeks. I’ll be writing them up imminently, with 2009 first in the queue, following the UGC tasting in mid-October. But first something tangential, an aspect of wine tasting I confess I haven’t considered in any great detail before, and that’s the effect of changes in atmospheric pressure on our assessment of wine.

Low atmospheric pressue is said, by some, to have a negative effect on the taste of many wines, and although the mechanism remains up for debate the most commonly proffered explanation is related to carbon dioxide moving out of solution with the arrival of low pressure (taking with it freshness and vigour) and moving into solution with the arrival of high pressure (reinvigorating the wine). Why would my mind turn to this, at a tasting of Bordeaux 2009 at two years of age? Simple; the tasting prompted me to think back to the 2009 primeur tastings in April 2010 when, in their Bordeaux 2009 reports, the low atmospheric pressure system which passed over Bordeaux during the tastings was reported as negatively influencing the showing of the wines by a number of critics. Perhaps the most notable comment on the effect of the low pressure system was from James Suckling, who has such tasting acuity he felt the wines change as the clouds rolled in, as documented in this blog post. And similar comments came from Robert Parker, in his Bordeaux 2009 report, but in this case describing the beneficial effect of the higher atmospheric pressure and clearer skies that blessed Bordeaux a week or two before the primeurs proper got underway, the wines tasting bright and fresh as a result. I would link to his comments, but they sit behind a paywall so there seems little point. They are within the introduction to his Bordeaux 2009 primeurs report, if you are interested.

Reviewing the atmospheric pressure over Bordeaux during the primeurs week in April 2010, however, suggests a story rather more complex than some have suggested. On the Sunday, as the main week of tastings kicked off, the pressure was a very reasonable 1018 mbar, before dropping to 1004 and 1003 mbar on Monday and Tuesday, rising again to 1010 and 1017 on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. The preceding week had seen a similar dip but also, in a similar fashion, some days where the pressure was respectable, whereas those tasting a week or two later enjoyed much higher pressures. Thus the atmospheric pressure was indeed on the low side, especially on the two days at the start of the week, although on many other days the recorded figures are, on retrospective examination, unremarkable. If you believe it is not absolute figures that are important but the changes in pressure, a detrimental fall at the start of the week was more than matched by a beneficial climb thereafter.

Either way, these figures look less than convincing to me. First of all, if the atmospheric pressure really has such an important effect, why did I not see (of course, I may have missed it – please let me know if any critics commented on this) reports that the wines tasted later in the week were showing much better than earlier in the week. Secondly, taking the measurements at face value, the pressure certainly varied, but these are very small changes. How likely is it that they would influence carbon dioxide solubility at all?

A little research led me to any number of documents and publications, but I will link to just one, the most useful and pertinent I feel, which is this paper, The Solubility of Carbon Dioxide in Water at Low Pressure (links to pdf, so you will need Adobe Acrobat if you click this link), published on the National Institute of Standards and Technology website. It’s from 1991, but as the laws of the universe haven’t changed too much in the last two decades, I think it is still relevant. “Low” in the context of this paper, by the way, means less than 1 Megapascal (which is 10 times atmospheric pressure) – you would be surprised how many papers focused on pressures much higher than this.

Looking at the paper, Figure 4 is the most important for my argument. To save you clicking through, I’ve reproduced it here, without the authors’ permission, I hope they will forgive me that.

Normal atmospheric pressure is 1013 mbar, so just above 0.1 MPa on the pressure axis going up the left-hand side (which is a logarithmic rather than linear scale, by the way). Trace the line across and you will see this corresponds, using the 20ºC plot, to a carbon dioxide solubility about 0.07 mol%. Now, consider these two situations:

(a) how wine tastes in an aircraft. It has long been held that wine does not taste as good at altitude, even in commercial airliners where the cabin is pressurised. Let’s suppose this is related to reduced carbon dioxide solubility because of the lower pressure within aircraft – although pressurised, they are not pumped up to 1013 mbar. Instead, a figure of 750-800 mbar would be more typical – that is why your ears still pop as you ascend and descend. Find 0.075 MPa (i.e. 750 mbar) on the Pressure axis on the left and, again using the 20ºC line, you will see this corresponds to a solubility of about 0.05 mol% – about a 30% reduction. I might be prepared to believe, therefore, that changes in taste of a wine under these conditions might be due to carbon dioxide solubility. It’s not proof, I’m merely suggesting plausibility.

(b) now consider this – Bordeaux primeurs, March-April 2010 vs Bordeaux UGC tasting, October 18th 2011. Let’s take the lowest pressure for the former, from the data presented above, which was 1003 mbar, or 0.1003 MPa. The latter figure, taken at midday on October 18th 2011 in London, was just a shade over 1010 mbar  (0.101 MPa) – I’m using this figure as I haven’t heard any comments about how bad the wines tasted on the day, but you could take a higher figure if you wish – my argument would still hold. Look at the Pressure axis – both figures lie a mere hair’s-breadth above the 0.1 MPa marker. Tracing across to the 20ºC line illustrates that carbon dioxide solubility is essentially the same, about 0.07 mol%. In other words, no big change. A fraction different. I really do doubt that such minute alterations could have such a profound effect on the taste of a wine. I’m not saying I have disproved it, of course, but there is certainly a lack of plausibility here.

My conclusion is that if you believe the taste of a wine is negatively affected by low pressure weather systems, you might need to find a better explanation than carbon dioxide solubility. Big changes (such as on an aircraft) might have some effect, but I’m dubious about atmospheric fluctuations. The taste of a wine is an interaction between palate and wine, and I wonder whether weather doesn’t have more of an effect on the owner of the palate, than on the wine. This is particularly important when considering conditions during the London tasting, where tasters ‘endured’ pressures very similar to those during the primeurs (1010 mbar vs 1003 mbar), and yet I do not think we will be reading reports of how difficult the wines at the UGC event were to taste from all the acute and sensitive palates in attendance. 

After all, it’s easy to comment on how atmospheric pressure affects your ability to taste, assess and comment when you need to generate a ‘story’ about the vintage, and outside there are gales blowing and rivers are bursting their banks (as was the case in Bordeaux in March-April 2010), but when the cues aren’t there (mild Autumn day in in London, October 2011), I don’t think it is such a prominent thought in many minds. Even though atmospheric pressure on the day of the tasting in London in 2011 was very similar to that experienced in Bordeaux in 2010.

Maybe some of these pressure-sensitive palates aren’t quite so sensitive after all?

Filed under: Bordeaux, Opinion, Wine Writing
Posted by Chris Kissack on November 11, 2011 at 10:00 am
20 Comments »

Welcome to the new Winedr blog!

As from today blogging comes in from the cold, as I have replaced my old Blogger platform with this new blog, fully integrated within Winedoctor. It’s long been my intention to do so – finally I have gotten around to actually doing it.

Early on the old Winedr blog featured a lot of new tasting notes and links through to Winedoctor, but with the passage of time a nagging doubt grew within me that this wasn’t really what blogging was about. Blogging should more spontaneous, honest, provocative, engaging and stimulating (as I wrote in my post, Censorship by Harassment) than that. Dare I say it should be more opinionated?

In recent weeks I have been using the blog to express my opinion, rather than just link through to Winedoctor. There’s been some good debate as a result, which I have really enjoyed. Sometimes I’ve been cheeky (as in Bordeaux: who are you reading?), sometimes more critical (as in Bordeaux: trade down or trade away?) and sometimes I’ve used the blog to increase my understanding, both of wine and my own palate (as in Oxidised Wines: Where’s the ‘Charm’?) often with some success, it has to be said. Debate and discussion is a two-way process, and I’ve learnt from my blogging. It’s been good.

So much so that I have imported all these posts, those that have stimulated debate and which on review seem worthwhile, into my new blog here. Those simply linking back to Winedoctor (as in “today’s update is….”) I haven’t brought here. All the relevant comments have been imported (by hand – not a quick or easy task), and no tasting note has been lost – all have been filed somewhere in the depths of Winedoctor right from the outset. This is important, because I don’t intend leaving my old blog up for all eternity; duplication of content on the internet is probably not a good thing, and I’ll be taking it down rather than leaving it as an archive.

There are a few features that still need tweaking – I won’t bore you with all the details, but I need to make sure the navigation is good (please inform me of any broken links you might find) and it would be good to get some avatars (or gravatars as they seem to be called on WordPress, which is what I am now using) installed – but otherwise we are good to go.

Please feel free to test out the comments (fingers crossed it works!).

Filed under: Miscellany
Posted by Chris Kissack on November 4, 2011 at 7:28 am
17 Comments »