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Today, the “dégustation” of a wine (closer in meaning to the English word “experiencing” than “tasting,” strictly speaking) comprises three distinct phases: a wine must be evaluated first by the eye, then the nose, and finally the mouth. This procedure has seduced wine professionals, oenophiles and technicians alike because of the way it allows them to codify their experience according to a basic mathematical formula that is almost outrageously simplistic. Wine is, after all, essentially nothing more than an aqueous solution of alcohol.
However, this procedure presents two major inconveniences to today’s aspiring wine taster:
First, is that in point of fact this method of scoring does not correspond to anything that the consumer perceives about the aforementioned aqueous solution. For the customer, the primary question is one of pleasure – the eyes are rarely used for anything more than checking the label on the bottle. Beyond that, the consumer will usually rely on his/her senses.
The second regards wine professionals who are producers of organic or “biological” wine. The least that can be said about us is that the official system of “dégustation” doesn’t understand our project. The winemaking practices of the biological winemaker – often eschewing filtration, fining or any practice that puts stress on the wine – are based on an understanding of the wine as, above all, a living product. It is usually the nose of an industrial wine that betrays it as such; the hand of the oenological industry, which has been selling specially selected yeasts for over 15 years, is undeniable in an area like Beaujolais. The use of a particular yeast that lends the wine the aroma of English bonbons is instantly recognizable in the Beaujolais Nouveaux. In fact, along with scents sprayed throughout supermarkets to entice customers into buying bread or coffee, industrial wine has become part of the great “de-naturalization” of smells that has rendered the nose a poor judge of quality.
It’s the same thing with the mouth – one selects specialized yeasts to produce the desired velvetiness, roundness or front-palate, or to achieve a finish with exactly the right characteristics. Now one even has yeasts that are associated with a particular grape variety, intended to reproduce in less time the taste and mouthfeel usually the reward of the chosen few. I call this phenomenon “passing off bladders as lanterns.” And this is only the start – don’t fool yourself: as soon as we start producing industrially we begin to see that there is an entire arsenal of oenological products designed precisely with the “oenological dégustation” in mind. More and more this system should be thought of as a “dégustation of co-operation,” obligatory for those who would like to raise their wine to the status of an AOC, and squeezing out those who will not follow the orders of those who produce oenological products. This niche is extremely dangerous, since the standardization imposed on winemakers cannot but lead to our demise – the deadline looms near. Nothing would be easier or more profitable for a grand enterprise than to reproduce to infinity the same flavor, the same mouthfeel.
Happily, all is not lost for one reason alone: nature was made well in that the amateur taster is not satisfied – not yet programmed for a single taste – which helps to explain the existence of cellars of individuality among the dozens of identical wines making wines that are truly different. In fact, even American consumers, less acclimatized to our culture, have moved on from varietal wines to like chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon to blends from the Rhône. One can even project that one day we will see more of southern grapes like mourvèdre or rolle (vermentino), or even the grapes of the Loire and Alsace.
But to return to essentials, even if the battle against technology is all but lost, one can at least react by changing the rules of degustation currently so favorable to the banalisation of wine. Lacking a miracle fix, one can at least disengage from certain axes of the system and engage in deeper reflection on the subject of tasting.
The first change that must be made is to return to the base. One must determine of the consumer what expectations he/she has, how does he/she judge a wine, how does he/she decide whether one wine or the other is more pleasurable? A possible response is to propose from the start that we do away entirely with the appearance and the nose. This is not because these two factors are not of interest, but rather we are advocating spending the time focusing on trying to understand what takes place in the mouth, then in the throat, all the way down to the stomach, after which one can return to the wine and switch the focus to the visual and olfactory realms. The more concentration there is on the mouth, the more it is like telling somebody to listen – even to sense the “little night music,” which acquires the sound of a song or the air of an opera (or whatever it is that moves you) and here is the base of the problem.
That which we propose is not other than an escape from the reign of Cartesianism, in which everyone is in competition with everyone else, where there is no longer any trust (above all in our world of wine), symbolized entirely by the word “analyze,” which we propose should be replaced with “comprehend.” The dictionary defines this as: “the totality of characteristics contained within a general idea.” “Analyse” should be relegated to laboratories of analysis (from which it shall never return, no less). Even “comprehension” (“to take in with one’s intelligence”) does not exactly get to the base of what it is we do at the moment when the divine beverage comes in contact with our body. Close your eyes “in” the moment, tell me if what you experience isn’t an entirely new universe that neither the eye nor the nose can accurately render, a universe where everything is new and passionate, where there is no longer the foolish desire to take up a pen and try to record everything quickly – with the slight sentiment of a candidate for the baccalaureate who doubts his own review even as he’s setting it down.
Let us return to the fundamentals from which wine will never depart. Let us not keep from ourselves the full extent of the distress our tasters, our oenologists and our other master savants will feel when faced with the challenge of evaluating wines that stand in relation to one another. It is our responsibility to bring about this change, these solutions, in order to save the passion of wine, for the good of all.
St Remy de Provence, July 10, 2003
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