The Makings of a Great Wine Critic Are in the Past
It was Antonio Galloni’s announced departure from the Wine Advocate yesterday that raised the question, “what makes for a good wine critic”? The question arose from the fact that with Mr. Galloni’s departure, the venerable Wine Advocate again needs a new California Reviewer.
I offered the following recipe for a good wine critic when I responded to a colleague and told him that the Wine Advocate is looking for “someone who knows CA up and down as well as its history, someone who can taste a huge number of wines annually, someone who can write really well and someone with the kind of gravitas that will result in respect from the industry and consumers.”
The absolutely critical ingredient in this recipe is easy to pass over: Someone that knows the history of California wine.
The possession of historical knowledge may in fact be the most important ingredient informing great wine critics. Without knowledge of what was, it is simply impossible to put any wine—no matter what its aromatic or flavor characteristics—in its proper context, which is the foundation for any good critical review of literature, music, film, architecture, art…and wine.
In a recent piece about this very subject, wine writer, wine blogger, wine critic and wine historian Steve Heimoff made this very point about the impact of a proper historical education:
“I’m glad that, by the time I took wine writing on as a career, I’d built up a very extensive knowledge of wine history through the reading of books. That gave me a basis later on for making qualitative judgments about wine.”
Today’s average reviews of wine don’t often allude to a context or perspective that falls outside simple categorization and delves into the “what”, “where”, “when” and “why” that only a historical view can offer. The format of today’s wine reviews tend to be truncated and bound to strings of flavor descriptors. This is useful to many—to most readers really. But it’s not the kind of serious criticism (or reviewing) that gives criticism a good name.
A Napa Valley French Colombard might deliver refreshing notes of lemon zest, pear and lime notes with moderately crisp acidity a slight finish. One could write this and be done with it. But the critic hasn’t really touched the important part of the surface. What would make this rare wine a more enticing choice is the knowledge that Napa Valley French Colombard is indeed a rare wine when at an earlier time it was not rare at all but a fairly commonly planted variety in the Valley’s vineyards, played a key role in producing wines that helped put the Valley on the map but was supplanted in the region’s vineyards by issues of changing American tastes, grape prices and more. No matter what the critic wrote in the service of describing the aroma and flavor of this wine would likely help move it off the shelf as quickly in comparison to writing about what makes the wine a rarity today.
Context and perspective is everything in the realm of criticism. Nothing matters more if the goal is to make a contribution to the genre, be it literary, art, film, music, architecture, food or wine criticism.
The art of wine criticism seems to me to be viewed as nothing of the sort today. Today, wine reviews and the wine critic are understood by most as simple utilitarian tools wielded by jotters, not writers.
And today, “Short and Sweet” is the order of the day, an approach that serves a deficit in attention skills of the average person. A short, sweet, review laden with descriptors seems to be what folks want and need today. History is neither short, nor sweet. Still, I believe that in the realm of wine reviews, the needs of today’s “move along” generation can be satisfied and at the same time perspective and context can be delivered. It’s harder to do and requires an excellent kind of pen. But I think it can be done. What prevents an 90-word wine review from including allusions to or explicit reference to the context of a wine?
“Derivative of that style of wine that once informed early Napa winemakers….”
“Set at the bleeding edge of a relatively newer trend of letting fruit talk first…”
“Harkening back to his education under the great Sonoma Winemaker Mr. Smith, this Pinot…”
“A throwback to when Napa Cabernet merely hoped to be understood in a Right Bank Bordeaux context…”
Just a little history, just a modicum of perspective, merely a trifle of context can produce a wine review of a different sort that I think today’s readers of wine reviews deserve more than ever. It’s knowledge of history that is required to accomplish this. And Steve Heimoff is right. It is his understanding of the history of California wine that serves as the most critical foundation for his work as a critic. It will be the critical element informing the new California critic for the Wine Advocate if that person-to-be-named-later is great or seeks to be great.
Tom,
As you might expect, I agree 1000000 % about the necessity for historical context.
As you might not expect, I believe those brief references that you suggest are not the answer.
If something derivative of else is it safe to assume that everyone knows what that something else is?
If someone’s winemaking is like someone who has gone before, can the writer assume that every reader knows who that earlier winemaker was?
Historical context requires explanatory writing not just a droplet or two..
don’t know where the words went, but I wrote: “If something is derivative of something else…”
Dear Mr. Wark–
You want too much. You want the Wine Advocate to hire me, not Galloni. You want the WA to steal Jim Laube from the WS and finally allow him to write tasting notes that do run ninety words and not 25.
It ain’t gonna happen. Oh sure, the WA will find someone, but the WA will now have a hard time being a major voice in CA wine. It is not because the WA has no readers. It will be because it hires someone who lacks the very understandings of which you speak.
I do not even think those understandings are necessarily part of tasting notes. Historical perspective of the type to which you and Mr. Pellechia refer do belong in longer essays. And they need not even be said in print.
But, if someone has not grown up knowing the difference between wines of the West Rutherford Bench and the east side of Rutherford or has never heard of Burger (not Dan Berger), then that reviewer will be a wordsmith, not a savant.
I can even accept the notion that I am a snob about knowledge, experience, perspective that informs without being splashed around in catchy phrases. I cannot help but wonder if the title of this column is not more prescient than you have meant it to be.
I wonder it the days of the informed critic have not past. Guys like me are aging out of the wine biz, and just as Prohibition is something I read about in books, so too will Andre and Joe Heitz and Mr. Mondavi and Ambassador Zellerback and Napa Valley French Colombard be only historical footnotes and not live memories to the next set of wine reviewers. They will never know the thrill of the Paris tasting in real time. They will never now the AVA battles, good and bad, the varietal content rule changes that propelled CA into the quality wine world.
But, then, neither will the readers, and as Mr. P. comments, if they don’t understand the derivatives, do they even exist?