After Day 1 I didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance in hell of passing this course. Day 2 gave me some glimmer of hope. Today, after Day 3, I don’t know even know if I give a damn any more. I think a little backstory is in order.
I didn’t know shit about wine when I moved to Chicago. Back home I frequently hosted friends and small dinner parties, so I always kept a couple bottles of wine stocked in my bar. My wine of choice was River Boat Red, a local, semi-sweet, compost pile of a wine primarily blended from Concord, the jelly grape. I understood nothing of oxidation and assumed that, like spirits, wine could survive indefinitely once opened… my poor house guests.
Missouri, though home to the country’s oldest AVA, doesn’t have a dominant wine culture, things are different in Chicago. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a wine town, but there is certainly a thriving culture. People here took the time to help me understand wine and they approached it in a way I was able to wrap my mind around. Three years later I’m in the middle of a fairly serious certification class and writing this blog.
While I would never claim to know everything, I still very much consider myself a novice in the wine world, I have learned a lot in the past couple of years, and in the process I’ve developed some strong opinions. Sometimes these opinions are challenged and I have to reassess my position, but other times I feel as though the conclusions I’ve drawn are justified. I guess, the trick is to embrace that Socratic ideal that the only thing I can be certain I know is that I don’t know anything.
In the short time I have been pursuing an active interest in wine the one idea I have never been able to get behind is that taste, or how we experience taste, is objective or quantifiable. One of the reasons I was drawn to WSET over other certifying bodies, is because I felt their curriculum was based more in fact, ergo science, and less in the nebulous art of bullshit. My faith is shaken after today.
I think I may try to expand on this in a future blog, but, in brief, the WSET 3 approach to tasting wine has the student look at five categories of factors: appearance, aroma, palate, quality, and aging potential. Within each of these factors there are multiple points of further examination. For example, in appearance we are to gauge both color and intensity of color, which seems fine on the surface, however there was significant debate today on whether one wine we were looking at was “Lemon” or “Lemon-Green.”
While myself, and several of my classmates, were unconvinced of there being any green in the color of this particular glass, the instructor insisted it was so. She attempted to mitigate criticism by acknowledging that such points are subjective, that the light based on where we were sitting was a factor that would create discrepancy, and that this topic is frequently debated, although she did nothing to clarify how we were to make such distinctions on the test, which, essentially, attempts to quantify the color of wine. In other words, if I happen to gauge my glass in beam of sunlight coming through the window and she determines her in the glow of a GE bulb, we have different answers and mine will be wrong.
That’s the first category. We had the same issue, and debate in class, with each subsequent category. The tasting notes, in particular, terrify me on the test. To try to make this easier, WSET provides a key with terms to be used for tasting. However, the instructor is working outside of the key. So, if I taste a wine and use only terms found in the key and she makes tasting notes including things off the key, I lose points where our notes don’t overlap. I can’t help but feel I’m playing Blackjack against someone using an Uno deck. “Oh, you think you got 21, well guess what? Draw four, bitch!”At one point today we tasted a Malbec that several people in the class rated as “Very Good,” which is quite a high marking. The instructor only marked it as “Good” and this opened up a lot of debate on how we are supposed to determine quality. She said we have to grade it in the context of all other wines and, to elaborate, said “We can’t call a $17 Malbec ‘very good,’ because that’s like saying it’s on the same level as Premier Cru Burgundy.”
That’s the point where I wanted to flip the table over and just yell, “fuck yooooouuuuu!” We’re told price doesn’t equal quality, we’re told that quality is determined by structure, intensity, flavor complexity, etc. but even when a wine achieves those points, it’s not quality because it’s not fucking Premier Cru Burgundy? Why does Argentina even bother making wine?
Look, if these wines can’t be objectively measured with consistency, I have to question the integrity of any system that would try to profit off the idea that opposite is true. The Emperor’s not wearing any fucking clothes.
You know what else isn’t Premier Cru Burgundy? This Riesling I bought. Nearly every German Riesling I’ve had has been from Mosel, but this bottle of Georg Albrecht Schneider Niersteiner Riesling comes to us from Rheinhessen. I bought it because I wanted something that wasn’t from Mosel and the guy on the label looked crazy with that scythe in one hand and those souls in other, although, upon reflection, that might be wheat or something that isn’t souls… they’re probably souls.
This was super dry, with flavors of lime, flint, wet stone, and honeysuckle. For all those people who don’t like Riesling because it’s “too sweet,” this is the wine for you. HIGH acid, super refreshing, decent complexity. It may not be Premier Cru Burgundy, but it’s what I wanted to drink tonight and I’m happy. At the end of the day, isn’t that what should matter?