Topics Beauty

Question People say that the more wine you drink, the more you "learn to appreciate" fine wines (we're talking about over the course of a lifetime, of course, not over the course of an evening!). Assuming this is true, is one's taste in wines actually improving over time? Or is it just changing? If the connoisseur likes dry red wine from France, and the "pleb" likes sweet white wine from Romania, what makes the connoisseur's taste superior to or more refined than the pleb's taste? Is it just the institution of wine-loving that contructs one taste as superior to the other, or do the connoisseur's taste buds literally detect marks of quality that the pleb's doesn't?

Accepted:
April 6, 2011

Comments

Of course there is any amount of snobbery and pseudery associated with the connoisseurship of wine. But still: it is a real phenomenon, coming over time to appreciate more of the complexities of taste and aroma and "feel" in the mouth that there can be in fine wine. That requires (enjoyable!) practice, paying attention, learning to discriminate, coming to recognize aesthetic qualities like balance and refinement. So yes, the more experienced wine enthusiast can detect differences that are really there, and which can be lost on the beginner (and, sadly, seem to some extent to get lost again as we get rather older).

It isn't just a matter, then, of the connoisseur having different tastes in the sense of different preferences, but also the connoisseur will have different tastes in the sense of different and more complex experiences as he drinks.

But let's not get too precious. Wine is there for civilized shared enjoyment, not for being pretentious about. And I'll add that there is nothing "pleb" about appreciating sweet white wines, which can be simply wonderful!

The philosophical investigation of wineexperience has become a popular topic recently, with several bookshaving come out. You questions go right to some of the most commonlyaddressed problems.

First of all, notice that the questionsuse terms such as connoisseur or pleb, and contrast France withRomania. This is politically and socially charged language, andsometimes it is difficult to avoid the conclusion (hinted at in yourlast question) that what is really going on here is that a region (onthe side of producers) or a group of people (on the side of thetasters) are conspiring to maintain class distinctions or prop up thesales price. I don't think this is true.

The first thing to say is that thescientific study of wine and wine tasting is quite advanced – notsurprising since it is a huge world-wide industry. There isconsiderable empirical evidence from the scientific community thatstudies wine to suggest that quality differences are real. 'Fine'wines tend to be more complex and concentrated (in ways other thanalcohol or sugar). In addition, there is good evidence that trainedexperts can detect features in wine that inexperienced tasterscannot. The detecting and identifying of subtle flavour or odourcomponents is not 100% reliable, and experts can and do get it wrong.Nevertheless, there is a statistical reliability. So, it is not thecase that connoisseurship is simply a con.

But, saying that some wines aredifferent from others, and that people with the relevant experiencecan taste some of those differences, is only half the battle. Whatyou want to know is whether these differences amount to a superiorityin terms of quality. That is trickier. Here, the notion of quality or'goodness' is relative to the standards we set up based upon whyor for what purpose we are judging. So, implicit in everystatement of 'that is good...' is the additional phrase '...for thispurpose'. This is a good wine … to have with a BBQ; this is a poorwine … to drink on a hot summer's day. Your pleb is perfectlyjustified in saying 'this is a quality wine … for pleasing me' andhaving the opposite judgement of some other bottle costing twentytimes as much. Everyone's taste is different, it seems.

However, experienced or expert tasters– again not perfectly but with statistical reliability – havetastes that tend to converge on particular regions, styles, vintages.To that extent, their tastes in wine are shared. Experienced tasters,then, not only learn to detect different things in wine, but alsolearn to gain pleasure or stimulation from wines that rise to a setof quality standards. There is clearly a role for the variousinstitutions of wine production and consumption, but it looksincreasingly unlikely that this role is just about snobbery or money.