Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: The Imperfect Palate
By Dan Berger
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — It was a humbling moment but a most instructive one, too. About 40 years ago in San Diego a group of us who regularly gathered each Thursday evening to evaluate a dozen wines faced 20 current zinfandels. My first-place wine was a light, slightly herbal effort that I thought would work nicely with pizza.
When the wines were unbagged, the one I preferred turned out to be the cheapest wine in the tasting and one that I normally disliked. Most of the other tasters hated it. Two days later, when I tried a fresh bottle of it, it wasn’t very good. The participants in the blind tasting were members of a semi-professional group of wine evaluators, all of whom knew that anyone can miss things now and then. No one disparaged me, but after my second try with the wine, I knew I had missed that one.
Over the years I have learned that such embarrassing situations can happen to anyone now and then, regardless of the taster’s skill level. Things change. Whether it’s the placement of the wines, the exhaustion of the taster or any of a number of other factors, the simple fact is that no one can taste all wines perfectly at all times.
We are, after all, human. The nose and palate, no matter how great our training and experience, are not perfect machines that can be recalibrated to accommodate for atmospheric or biological changes. We get colds and allergies; we become sensitive to elements about which we aren’t aware. We get headaches. One day we put on a pair of too-tight shoes. And, of course, there are subtle psychological factors about which most of us rarely have a clue.
I normally taste in a particular wineglass. If by circumstance I get a glass in a radically different shape, the impression I get may differ ever so slightly; a wine may come across differently in smell or taste. Even if the same wineglasses are used, problems can arise. Even the kinds of hand soap or deodorant we use can make a significant difference in how we evaluate, not to mention the impact of perfume, aftershave or even a subtle whiff of cigar smoke.
Wineglasses can pose all kinds of issues. Years ago I was asked to judge a major wine competition at a hotel where we faced a virtual nightmare of extraneous aromas. First came the plastic tablecloths that smelled like motor oil. They soon were discarded. Then all the wines in the first flight had a distinct chemical aroma. A cleansing agent used in the hotel’s dishwasher left a horrid smell on the glasses.
After the dishwasher liquid was abandoned and only hot water was used, the next batch of glasses all smelled like chlorine. It turned out that the kitchen staff allowed the glasses to air-dry, and the city’s tap water had a high chlorine content, which remained on the glasses. I asked if the glasses could be toweled off. No problem, I was told.
Except that the towels had been washed using a highly aromatic detergent. After the glasses had been towel-dried, they all smelled like the detergent. The event’s organizer asked the hotel to wash the dish towels in an aroma-free detergent. The following day all the aromatic issues had been solved, and the wines all tasted normal.
Just two of the many problems that can lead to inconsistency in wine evaluations: The error factor in some reviews is rarely explained, and re-evaluations of the wines for comparison are almost never done. For example, I know that when I evaluate wine that has just been poured for me by the winemaker, I cannot be objective. When I taste the same wine without knowing anything about it, the error factor is very low. However, it rises significantly when I’m sitting across the table from the winemaker.
And for far more accuracy, it’s always best to evaluate more than one bottle, preferably days apart.
Between the extremes of knowing what the wine is versus knowing nothing at all are varying other error factors, such as when I’m distracted, suffering from a cold or simply when I don’t like the category of wine I’m evaluating. (I’m not a very good judge of Italian Amarone since I almost never drink it.)
In a 1983 book, “Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation” by Maynard Amerine and Edward Roessler, Amerine, chairman of the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, said that the order in which wines are served to judges can determine to a degree how the results will be generated. He pointed out that the first wine in a flight of wines more than likely will be scored differently from wines served in other places in the group. One suggestion he made was that the wineglasses be coded and served to the judges in random order.
I was reminded of the subject of wine evaluation after reading a fine old wine article on retasting wines by an Australian wine columnist in which he wrote of the many error factors in judging wines that are very young. One of the points he made was that retasting young wines almost always leads to inconsistencies.
He said that anyone who thinks that wine evaluation is a repeatable, exact science that should consistently reproduce exactly the same results each time “simply doesn’t know enough about wine evaluation.” Some new brands, he added, may be hard to understand. Old, established brands often will hew to a house style as well as an industry-wide standard that experienced evaluators will appreciate.
Evaluating extremely young wines should ideally be done in homogeneous groups, such as all the same vintage. A good idea is to put all the of the same vintage of a particular grape variety in the same group (i.e., a flight of only 2023 sauvignon blancs) and to let the judges know that the flight has only sauvignon blancs of the same vintage.
The information given to the judges probably will not compromise the results, but it does give the evaluators a chance to see wines from the same growing year and to see how the wines’ youth and the condition of the bottles compare with one another.
Several years ago at a wine competition I was evaluating a group of rieslings of varying vintages. The coordinator of the competition declined to disclose to the judges which vintage each wine was from. I suggested that without knowing how old the wines were, the judges couldn’t make a fair evaluation. The coordinator simply said, “That’s how we do things around here.”
One riesling ended up with a silver medal, but it obviously was older and had aged gorgeously. I believed it was worth a gold medal. The other judges on my panel compared it to the youngest wines and said it was “tired.” I defended it, saying, “I believe this is an older wine, and it is really sensational.” But without knowing the vintage, the older riesling ended up getting a lower medal than it deserved.
One aspect of wine evaluation that almost nobody discusses is how extremely young wines almost defy proper evaluation because of their youth. Whites that are released too soon frequently display slight traces of sulfur dioxide. Most consumers either ignore this problem or cannot detect it. Many wine judges either ignore it or detest it.
Dealing with this issue is extremely tricky. I have been judging wine for 45 years. In that time, I have developed strategies that seem to work for wines of this sort. Yet there have been times recently when I was on a panel with a tyro judge who identified a particular problem and immediately said the wine was flawed and deserved no medal at all.
After about an hour of swirling one particular white wine, however, the sulfur dioxide had completely dissipated, yet the novice judge said that the flaw instantly disqualified it from medal consideration.
Then there are the tannic red wines that in competitions are so astringent that they are termed “bitter” by younger judges, some of whom do not understand that some of these wines were designed to display more interesting characteristics with time in the bottle. And there are red wines that are evaluated by younger judges as extremely tasty but that do not have sufficient structure to improve.
At a wine competition in Dallas several years ago one judge was a young retail wine shop clerk. We were served 15 cabernets. The young man said nothing before beginning his evaluation. After tasting about six or seven of the wines, he said he wanted a clarification: “Are we judging these wines for how they taste now or how they will be after they get some age?”
The question was appropriate, of course, because he was so young and new to the judging circuit. What was hard to explain was that either case was valid. However, what I tried to explain was simply that a gold medal ought to be awarded to a cabernet that had balance, even though it might be drinkable now and did not have much of a chance to benefit from age.
I don’t think he understood. After evaluating all 15 cabernets, when we were beginning to discuss which ones deserved which medals, the young retailer said his favorite wine, which he believed to be worthy of a gold medal, was one that he said, “I could sell the hell out of.” I rated the same wine to be barely worth a bronze medal because it was unbalanced.
Berger’s Wine Discovery of the Week
2023 Charles Krug Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley ($23): Napa Valley can produce exceptionally good sauvignon blanc, an allegation that has been proven just often enough. Unfortunately, however, most often Napa Valley SBs that are acclaimed are not only ordinary but usually also cost outrageous sums of money. That’s because some Americans believe that the more you pay, the more you should get, and the “more” usually is in the form of too much oak, too much alcohol or too little acidity. Most of these “attributes” give us wines that have no variety character whatsoever. I tend to think of the emperor’s new clothes. This historic winery has taken a much simpler approach – which proves that Napa can produce great SB by not trying too hard. The first step is to plant excellent grapes on the home ranch and farm them perfectly, then hand-harvest the grapes and do careful skin contact to extract varietal aromas. This wine has a multitude of subtle aromatics, including lemon verbena, a trace of new-mown hay and no extraneous elements. The alcohol is a modest 12.9%, and the acidity is perfect for pairing it with food. A beautiful example of restraint and precision. Bottle Barn in Santa Rosa has this wine for $18.99.
If today’s story captured your interest, explore these related articles:
Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: Proof That Napa’s Older Cabs Can Age
Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: Napa and Sonoma as True Vinous Siblings
Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: The Nostalgia and Nonsense of Barrel Tastings
Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: The Evolution and Art of Winemaking
Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: How Wine Is Packaged Can Affect Its Quality
Dan Berger has been writing about wine since 1975.
Dan!
I have been enjoying your weekly submissions to Napa Valley Features.. keep 'em coming!
As a wine writer, grape grower and winemaker (in Napa Valley), I wanted to add a few comments to your observations about wine judging.
1. No two bottles are the same. (And if they are -- what a coincidence!) I have spent my wine life judging wines (my own and others) and rarely do two bottles with the same label from the same production run taste DNA-identical. Don't ask why. It;'s just what is, is.
2. One of my pet peeves in group tastings is this: before tasters assemble, wine prep people pour glasses from bottles as they walk around the room. I have even seen this done at the venerated CIA -- half the room will get wine from one bottle... and tasters' glasses in the other half of the room are filled with the same labeled wine -- but from a different bottle. Once the blind tasting commences, I have seen such commotion in the room. Half the room will give the wine a high core (poured from one bottle), while the other half of the room, tasting from a second bottle, gives the wine a thumbs' down.
How can you have a meaningful group appreciation of a wine when what has been tasted has come from DIFFERENT bottles? The real confusion arises when two tasters get into a dust-up about a particular wine... not realizing that even though they are seated immediately next to each other, their wines were poured from different bottles of the same-labeled wine.
This piece, today, reminded me of a comment made by the late great British wine writer, Harry Waugh when asked if he ever confused Burgundy with Bordeaux, his reply was ‘not since lunch’!