The 60 Second Taster
Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 11:46PM I’ve now been a wine professional for over thirty years. Before I got in the wine making side of the business I was a wine distributor for almost twenty years. The low point of that experience was more-often-than-not the presentations to retailers. You’d take samples of wines from small estates, where the producers sweated every day over their vines and wines passionately trying to make the best wines they could, and present them to the buyers. Often you were in some seedy back room and the resident wine expert would rapidly blow through the samples making instant pronouncements on the life’s work of others and then subject you to enduring their pontification on the qualities of each wine. Sometimes they would have cheap Libby glasses, but usually they would make their judgments out of plastic cups. You would often have to wait in line for the privilege presenting wines to these “connoisseurs”. Perhaps in their defense it should be noted that they worked brutally long hours for very little pay and this probably forced them into such foul moods and the need to exert whatever power and humiliation they could over sales people and the samples of their poor producers. The best account of this horror is the now famous The Three-Tier Schnook System by Joe Dressner.
Fortunately I have not had to be exposed to such a situation in years, but today something brought that feeling chillingly back to me. I finally saw my first episode of Wine Library TV. There before my eyes was that retailer of my past, only with a Riedel glass instead of a plastic cup. That, at least, is a little progress. I had tried to avoid watching his programs after first seeing him in a horribly embarrassing segment on the Conan O’ Brien Show, but I kept getting so many hits to this site from a link that someone had placed to one of my posts that I had to check it out. That was a mistake as I should have followed my instincts and stayed away, but like someone passing a car wreck I could not avert my eyes.
Under cover of supposedly witty banter, Gary Vaynerchuk with a minute or less thought tells you all you need to know about the wine he is tasting. Not only that, but he actually gives you points so you can have an exact reference to how a wine tastes and can rank it among other wine choices. Well actually he only gives you an accurate reference point if you only drink a wine for sixty seconds before moving on to the next bottle. Once again someone is gaining influence by rating wines in a situation that has nothing to do with how we actually drink them. Many writers over the years have complained that Robert Parker’s method of tasting sometimes hundreds of wines in very short periods, often giving wines scores after only seconds, did not allow for wines of elegance to show their true character, while big alcoholic wines that were not very good to drink full glasses of stood out under the onslaught he put his palate through. Lately we have all been hoping that the explosion of wine blogs would bring so many voices to the consumer that the monochromatic recommendations of someone like Robert Parker would never again dominate the market. The apparent popularity of Wine Library TV once again dashes our hopes as yet again we have someone pumping out casual opinions as calibrated pointy facts after only a few seconds of consideration. Anyone who has tasted a really memorable wine remembers how the wine evolved and developed as you drank it and how the symbiosis of wine and food expanded the experience to a new plane. An experience taking something more than a minute. The method of tasting on Wine Library TV ignores this most alluring facet of wine.
I’ll admit that my dislike of these programs is probably partially generational as I don’t find him funny, just hyper and trying too hard to be cool. However, what bothers me most of all is the lightness which people like Mr. Vaynerchuk take someone else’s’ life’s work. If you define a wine after only a few tastes you will make a lot of mistakes. It seems irresponsible to turn such shallow experience into recommendations that will impact what people will buy. It should be remembered that Wine Library TV is a product that Mr. Vaynerchuk is selling and that the attitudes that he takes are more about selling his product than accurately reviewing wines. Just as The Wine Spectator is not about selling wines, but about selling magazines, Wine Library TV is about getting hits, not about wine. Such advise should be taken with caution.
The Internet’s most passionate wine programming? How sad.
Craig Camp
Let me try to elaborate on what I object to here. What bothers me is the following style of tasting:
swirl, swirl; sniff, sniff; sip, sip; give points next wine please
Every time I see this happen I cringe. It makes me think of my friend Andrea Sottimano, who as I write this is probably out pruning vines in the cold on his family’s estate in Barbaresco. Andrea and his father are not gentleman farmers, but work their land themselves. They give each vine a level of attention that is almost unimaginable and have what I would describe as an almost personal relationship with each vine. The intensity which they pursue their vision of making great wine humbles most other winemakers. Andrea is passionate about his wines and devotes his entire life to making them better even though they are already recognized as among Barbaresco’s elite. The number of hours they devote to producing their few cases of wine is amazing.
Then to take this passion, judge it and award it points in a minute or so is an insult to their entire life’s work. Great wine is more than that.
It’s wonderful that Wine Library TV presents wines in a fun and entertaining way. Lord knows, the wine industry could use more humor. However, as long as Gary Vaynerchuk awards points in such a rapid fire way and then presents those points as a quantifiable ranking that consumers should base their buying decisions on I find the show less than entertaining.
Mr. Vaynerchuk claims he is changing the wine world. It seems like more of the same to me.
Craig Camp
However, rapid fire tasting and rating as practiced by Mr. Vaynerchuck and so many others has nothing to do with the way any consumer actually drinks a wine. Wines may be opened and consumed without decanting, but they are not sipped, spit and pointed in seconds. Most wines are opened and enjoyed over the course of a meal or conversation. Drinking wine is inherintly a leisurely activity and that’s one of the reasons so many people love it.
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Reader Comments (42)
This is an interesting post. I'm tempted to agree with you at first but upon further review I think that you are missing some important aspects of Gary's approach to wine in general. Gary brings a lot of fun into wine drinking by taking a casual approach and re-enforcing time and time again that people should drink what tastes good to them, not what tastes good to the critics including himself. That's in my opinion what is missing so often from the world of wine. A vast majority of Americans feel scared to talk about wine and some to even drink it because the so called “connoisseurs” make people think that they must have a degree in all things wine related. You say <<rating wines in a situation that has nothing to do with how we actually drink them>> I disagree… at least partially. The majority of consumers do actually drink their wines immediately upon opening the bottle. Should they? No, but they do. Some because they don't know any better, many because life is just too busy to have to wait for a bottle of wine to breath and evolve before having dinner, cleaning the dishes, bathing the kids, reading the bedtime story and paying the bills before going to bed. I drink wine every night sitting right next to my 1 and 4 year old kids. You cannot imagine how incredibly difficult it is for me to concentrate on the wine and appreciate everything that it can offer. So, that first taste is often what I go by in deciding if I would by that wine again. I certainly agree that many wines need some time to evolve after opening the bottle and that food does wonders to a wine - I’ve also experienced this many times. But overall, I’m betting (I have no hard data to back this up) that Gary’s approach is not dramatically out of touch with the reality of how a family consumes their wine. I think that it is important to educate people about wine drinking but this has to be done in a way that leaves people feeling comfortable and having fun. Gary’s approach may not be perfect but to me it certainly is does that.
My major objection to rankings produced in such a way is they cannot be reproduced. If we lined up fifteen of these wines and had Gary (or anybody) rank them, then took the same wines and changed the order you would get different rankings. The same goes if you changed the day as the ability of the taster, yes even that tasting machine Robert Parker, varies from day-to-day and even from morning to afternoon.
If Gary would just give his opinions and descriptions I would have no problem, but as soon as points are introduced it changes everything.
Unfortunately, this cost appears to be lost on the local cheerleaders out there who praise Gary's efforts for highlighting Washington state wines in his shows. Granted, the exposure is welcome and very much needed, but should it be endorsed in this form? Like you, I would rather see folks praising our region's wines as a result of enjoying them during a slow paced dinner, rather than a quick taste and spit.
Fortunately, a better approach exists in the show, The 3 Wine Guys. This podcast features three guys who share their experiences with different wines served during dinner together. Their wine reviews are grounded in sharing a meal together. Best of all, you get three perspectives on each wine, sometimes in agreement or far apart. If you can get past the show's occasional explicit humor, then you will find a truly unique approach toward discovering new wines.
http://beyondthebottle.com/blog/2007/10/why_i_like_the_3_wine_guys_1.html
I think they have their place, but points really tell you about a wine's relative quality - not whether or not you're prone to liking that wine. Which is why I advocate a structured tasting method for getting to know *personal* wine preferences better (rather than relying just on scores) - http://1winedude.blogspot.com/2008/01/1winewine-dude-ebook-how-to-taste-like.html .
You regret the fact that some people may base their choices solely on what Gary says, but notice that many of them (including me) wouldn't even condsider "getting into wine" if it hadn't been for the show. I think that I am not exaggerating, I stumbled upon the Wine Library TV and it helped to convince me that you don't have to be a wine snob to embrace and enjoy wine.
As far as the "wine snob" thing I think that's a concept that died years ago. As I wine snob myself I can say that with authority.
As I mentioned above, I applaud Mr.Vaynerchuk for the entertaining format, but object to the way he scores wines.
That's the rub, thoughtful commentary doesn't sell. People want to know the winning wine only. Wine TV needs to be sold so he uses points.
Everyone who knows anything about wines knows that the better the wine is the more it will change and develop in the glass. It's the mass produced industrial wines that don't change from minute-to-minute or, for that matter, bottle-to-bottle or year-to-year. Perhaps points are the best way to rate such wines. However, living wines are always a moving target hiding and showing different things as you experience them. The better the wine is the less you can understand in just a few minutes.
I have posted the entire episode above.
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