Is this s--- for real: great moments in uninteded self-parody

Is this for real? Sadly, the answer is yes. For every genuine enthusiast (who also runs a huge wine shop) like Gary Vaynerchuck or analytical scientist like Jamie Goode, there are about a dozen of the type of people in the wine world who I'll be bashing in the rest of this post.

Probably one of the top bullshit artists in the world of wine right now is James Suckling. Pretension in fine wine is unavoidable on some level. But Suckling oozes pretension. If he was a slug, that sticky trail he leaves behind would be pretension distillate. Watch and learn in these two videos as Suckling gives a master class in egotism, stuffiness and, yes, unbearable pretentiousness:

I'm 99 points on not wanting to hear another damn over-enunciated word out of Suckling's mouth ever again.

Of course, making obnoxious videos is not the only way to ruin wine for the general public. You can always write a note with so many descriptors it ceases to have meaning. Now, I like to both read and write thorough notes. But they have to actually contain, you know, information. Words describing body, acidity, tannin, flavor intensity, style--primarily structural descriptors--are very useful. A few specific flavors can be of help, but at a certain point it is not telling you anything other than the author is full of shit. Take this example from a person who calls himself the Sonoma Sommelier:

Anaba 2007 “Coriol” Red Rhone Blend: "a wine that delivers . . . . flavors of acai berries, black currant liqueur, fig bar, tamarind, raspberry bramble, red plum, balsamic strawberries, clove, rose water, cigar box, barnyard, teriyaki, stone, apricot, coriander, butterscotch, hazelnut chocolates, brown leather and Columbian coffee beans."

The enological diarrhea is even more exaggerated in this example:

VJB 2007 Estate Aglianico: "It has both Sonoma Valley and Italian flavors of wild red currants, red licorice twist, raspberry Pimms Cup, red apple skins, barnyard game, suede leather, rhubarb pie, baked red plum, star anise, sage, rosemary brush, guava candies, roasted portobello mushrooms, hibiscus flower, passion fruit puree, lavender, tomatoes on the vine, paprika, horehound candy, sea salt, nori sheets, cappuccino froth, molasses, nutmeg and Connecticut cigar wrapper."

Stop, just please stop, Sonoma Somm!

To his credit, the first sentence or two in both reviews I linked does tell you much of what you'd want to know structurally about the wines, albeit in an annoyingly literary style. But after that, it's just self indulgent garbage. If you tried these wines, you'd never find that many flavors in a single taste. You know why? Because humans can only differentiate a few aromas at a time, and most of what we perceive as taste is really retronasal olfaction.

How this sort of criticism became the norm, I do not know. No, actually, I do know. This variety of sewer feces appeals to people with lots of money but no common sense or knowledge of wine. Why learn about where the wine comes from and how it's made when you can just hear a point score and a bunch of fancy sounding adjectives? It's the easy way out--instant validation.

Are There Objective Wine Faults?

While wine enjoyment is primarily about personal preference, there are certain 'faults' that are identified in the wine trade. Most have to do with intent--still wine shouldn't have spritz, dry wine shouldn't taste sweet, etc. Brettanomyces and its funky byproducts often fall in this group as well, though opinions vary. Oxidation is generally not good, but there are nonetheless oxidative styles of wine that are well-liked. Even volatile acidity (VA, similar to a bit of vinegar) has its place, especially in dessert wines.

I believe there are some faults, though, that have a purely physiological basis. Hence they are essentially objective; there is no context where noticing them is good. The only issue here is that not everyone has the same sensitivity--witness a debate about a wine being corked and this becomes clear. Here I'm thinking of a hypothetical scenario where a person is presented with two identical wines except for the fault--one that is clean, the other that has been dosed with the offending chemical. Assuming the chemical was in sufficient concentration to be smelled, virtually any person would prefer the clean wine.

High Levels of Mercaptans: A mercaptan is used in natural gas (at very low concentrations because most people are so sensitive) to give it a stinky aroma. Skunk spray also has several different mercaptans. The fact that mercaptans are a defense mechanism suggests they are almost universally offensive. I suppose some rotten cabbage, skunk, or rubber tire could be complexing at very low levels. But I doubt many people would find skunk-cabbage wine pleasing if presented with a non-skunky version of the same wine.

TCA/corked wine: At low levels, it seems simply to flatten a wine. At high levels, it's like a moldy basement. I don't think TCA could ever be a positive feature. Humans are programmed to generally avoid eating mold, and without fail when a corked wine is compared to a non-faulty version, the clean version is almost universally preferred.

Are there others? Geosmin, a byproduct of moldy grapes, is sometimes mentioned. But often enthusiasts enjoy earthiness, and moldy grapes can also give rise to certain 'noble' styles. I think what I describe as seaweed and like as a complexing aroma probably is also related to moldy grapes. I purposely left out volatile sulfides (non-thiol sulfur compounds), though, as these seem to be double edged swords, often contributing to varietal character lit black currant in Cabernet.

It does make me wonder about Brettanomyces byproducts. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that humans would avoid moldy and skunky smelling foods. So why not cow pasture smelling foods? Feces are not good to eat, hence people are repelled by the smell. But it seems at low to moderate levels if you did the thought experiment--one clean wine, then the same wine with some 4-EP--the latter might be preferred, though probably only by enthusiasts.

This is what makes this question tricky. If horse sweat and barnyard can be acquired tastes, what's to stop skunk and moldy rag? Farmyard is more positively evocative, and to me has a nice rustic and agrarian connotation. But does everyone feel this way? Maybe burning rubber tire and stewed cabbage are nostalgic for a person who grew up on a cabbage farm next to a tire manufacturing plant.

Revisiting Zins

It's no secret I don't drink a lot of Zinfandel. The popular style relies too much on jammy, raisined fruit, high alcohol and generally exaggerated characteristics. In my mind, this unbalanced approach looks a lot like this in the form of a polar plot:

However, since I've had more Bierzos than Zinfandels, California's 'native' grape, I figured it was worth re-visiting the local favorite. I picked one out that was recommended because of its more elegant approach. As shown above, it was much more acidic than my archetypal mental picture and also less over the top full bodied (due to high alcohol and extract). While better balanced than most Zins, it still was fairly one dimensional and a bit tart, albeit fresh.

So I'm still looking for that elusive medium bodied Zin brimming with complexity. This one was a fair value for the price, though.

Wine Styles, Graphically Speaking

As I mentioned in my original post on plotting wines using structural descriptions, I think it's potentially a good way to give a sense of balance, style and especially intensity. As an example, here are three hypothetical wines, each of which would be considered balanced:

Wine A represents a powerful young wine with lots of stuffing, and is probably the sort of wine that critics would love. While consumers sometimes suggest that critics will rate flabby wines highly, based on the few highly rated wines I've tasted, more often the wines are simply packed with lots of everything. This isn't the only path to quality, though.

Wine B represents a slightly mellower wine, either because it has a bit of age or is simply made in a style that stresses complexity or finesse over raw power. A younger wine with these characteristics likely is the epitome of what critics score in the high 80s. Personally, this would be my choice as the white hot intensity of the previous wine tends to lead to palate fatigue.

Wine C represents a balanced wine that's pretty much boring. There's nothing offensive, but nothing impressive, either. For me this epitomizes a solid, mass-produced 'grocery store' wine. Balanced, yes, but lacking concentration, aroma and flavor. One could do worse, though.

I'd probably find the first wine over the top and fatiguing, especially with food. The last wine just wouldn't be that interesting. Wine B probably would be my choice. But each type has its supporters. There's no right or wrong in taste, only preference.

Wine Flaws

After having a Pinot Noir a few weeks ago that had wickedly aggressive acidity, I've come to think about what constitutes a wine flaw. This was a Pinot I've tasted before, and at least in the tasting room context it was much more harmonious. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention that day and was seduced by its incredible aromatics. Or maybe some bacteria or yeast went to town and caused the acid in that one bottle to go nuts.

In this context, I'm thinking about bottle flaws, the stuff that goes wrong after the wine goes into the bottle. When entering notes into Cellar Tracker, one has the option to tag a bottled as flawed. I didn't do this for this Pinot, though. I wrote that it smelled good, but had mouth puckering sourness. I'm aware there are a variety of "technical flaws" like volatile acidity, overwhelming Brett and in-bottle fermentation. But to be honest, in a communal setting, I don't think a wine should get a pass for these sorts of flaws. If it's corked or heat damaged, that's beyond a vintner's control, and that's a flawed bottle. Technical flaws point to a flawed wine.

It's the latter case where I think consumers should take a stand and describe or rate a wine as they experience it. A lot of vintners seem willing to compromise consistency in order to pursue stylistic goals, whether its minimal sulfite addition or ultra ripe fruit with a high pH reducing the efficacy of sulfites. I'm sure there are also cases where the vintner simply doesn't know his wine in unstable or has been careless at some point. For example, if a winemaking choice or mistake leads to every other bottle going overwhelmingly Bretty, a vintner shouldn't get a pass. Unless Brett was the vintner's goal, it means the wine was not stable going into the bottle.

The communal aspect is important. A major critic has to be careful about trashing a whole vintage based on one bottle. But we as consumers can give feedback on a bottle by bottle basis. One neg rep isn't the be all end all. Many honest consumers eventually will determine whether there was an isolated problem or a systematic one, as was the case with the Sierra Carche controversy.

Anyway, this is just something to think about. If you browse Cellar Tracker ratings, you'll sometimes see bad bottles of highly rated wines given a pass as flawed for non-bottle reasons. I don't think it always occurs to people that the wine was rated very young, and often a producer may have a limited track record with respect to how their wine holds up. The very things that make it exciting young--effusive ultra-ripe fruit, new oak, residual sugar, low acidity, ultra soft tannins--may be compromising its long term stability. Critics guesstimate how well a wine will do in the bottle, but it's up to us as 'end users' to take the actual data.

Graphical Representation

I've been a bit agitated recently with the subjectivity of tasting notes. One man's raspberry is another's black cherry, after all. I'm an advocate of structural descriptions like acidic, tannic, and full bodied, just to name a few, as opposed to description by analogy like naming very specific smells and flavors. But the question is, how does one best convey these structural terms?

Ann Noble's Aroma Wheel offers a great starting point:

While there are specific aromas listed, aromas are grouped into families such as fruity, herbaceous, woody and so on. The broader families are what I'd term as structural descriptors, as opposed to analogous descriptors. However, the aroma wheel doesn't paint a full picture because it only addresses smells.

To bring flavors and mouth feel into the picture, I've come up with a polar plot representation that I'm hoping will offer a relatively straight forward graphical depiction of a wine. It's still subjective, of course, but it largely dodges terms that rely heavily on individual experiences:
The 9 (it could be more or less, certainly) structural categories are:

Body - A measure of weight or viscosity, ranging from light bodied at the smallest radius to full bodied at the largest radius.

Aroma - The strength of the aromas, with a very 'tight' wine having a small amplitude.

Fruity - The presence of fruit character, ignoring whether it's blackberry, cherry, citrus and so on.

Herbaceous or Earthy - These are sort of arbitrarily grouped, but represent the strength of aromas and flavors of bell peppers, mushrooms, veggies, leafy stuff and basically anything that grows or come from dirt.

Funky - This encompasses meaty, barnyardy and sulfrous aromas and flavors or even aromas like ethyl acetate (nail polish remover smell) that could be considered flaws. It's kind of a measure of umami, as well as generally unexpected qualities that are neither fruit nor veggie.

Floral or Spice - Again, an arbitrary grouping to limit the number of categories, but I think of these as both 'high-toned' aromas.

Oak - This category includes vanilla, toast and certain spice aromas as well as the occasionally astringent woody flavors and mid-palate weight resulting from barrel aging.

Tannin - Purely a measure of the intensity of mouth-drying tannins, though there is some ambiguity as tannins can be astringent, soft, sweet, fruity and so on depending on their source and maturity level.

Acidity - This is how sour a wine tastes, as well as how mouth watering it is. The more sour, the higher the acidity and the larger the amplitude plotted.

Here I've plotted a 'stereotypical' Parkerized wine and an Old World wine as an example. The graphical representation really highlights that the modern, California style wine stresses fruit, oak and density in the mouth, while a typical French or Italian wine will often be focused upon aromatics, earthy and funky qualities, and acidity. It also suggests the two styles are near polar opposites in terms of acidity, funkiness, fruit expression and use of oak.

Since I've been critiquing standard tasting notes, I guess I ought to propose an alternative. Well, here it is. I'll be using these polar plots with my notes to offer a graphical representation of each wine I post here. I'll be interested to see how this little experiment turns out. My thinking is that at the very least it may make it easier to justify the use of terms such as balance or complexity. Chances are if you see a curve that's more spiky than round, a wine is not balanced and probably lacks complexity as well. Meanwhile, a mundane wine may have a round shape to its plot with small amplitudes, indicating that it's balanced but provides little of interest to the taster.

Graphite

Graphite, unlike quince and toast (a.k.a. pain grillé), is not something one typically tastes. And yet it's a fairly common tasting note descriptor. Well, you can taste it, but you'd really need to go out of your way to do it. There's plenty of precedent for non edible descriptors like barnyard, flint, smoke, cedar and so on. However, graphite is nothing more than carbon bonded in sheets. The reason anything smells is because of volatile compounds such as esters. When your compound is bonded together into a crystal, you're not going to smell much of anything.

It appears likely that graphite as a wine descriptor is related to other terms such as #2 pencil lead, pencil shavings and even cedar. After all, most people experience graphite as a component of pencil lead (though lead is a misnomer since pencils no longer contain any lead). But it turns out that graphite isn't even the proper description for the writing part of the pencil. It's graphite and China clay, which has kaolin in it. Kaolin, apparently, has an earthy, metallic aroma.

Yet most people don't smell the kaolin by itself. It's usually ground up with the cedar wood part of the pencil and mechanically volatilized. Thus while pencil shavings have a distinct smell, they're neither lead, graphite, kaolin or cedar individually. They a mix of kaolin, cedar and perhaps the yellow paint or other impurities in the clay,

In sum:

Graphite = WRONG. It smells of nothing, is not readily tasted, and what smells in pencil shavings is just about everything else.
#2 Pencil Lead = WRONG. It's overly specific, and pencils aren't made from lead anyway.
Pencil Shavings = OK. Between the cedar and mechanical volatilization, there's a very obvious and unique aroma associated with it.
Cedar = OK. Even as a chunk of wood, it is distinct and very aromatic.

It seems in the interest of unnecessary degrees of specificity, the wine world has rather ironically added a term with an ambiguous meaning to its lexicon. What good is a descriptor if it has no commonly understood meaning? Ask several winos what graphite actually means in the context of wine, and you'll likely get several different answers. This is a case where everyone would be better off if the pretense were to be dropped. Wine is already complicated enough between the appellation system, hundreds of varietals, stylistic preferences and myriad terroirs that it's wholly unnecessary to invent meaningless descriptors. Let's stick to the logical ones: metallic, earthy or even, yes, pencil shavings.

Anchoring: It's Not Just for Boaters Anymore

Anchoring, based on my layman's understanding, is the tendency of an initial review to serve as a basis for future evaluation. This is not unlike the logical fallacy known as poisoning the well where a preemptive argument is used to discredit an opponent in a debate. Although anchoring is not an intentional act, the effect is the same as the more malicious poisoning the well: opinions that follow are given less weight if not completely ignored.

Certainly with wine anchoring is a prominent phenomenon. Critics' ratings, price and producer reputations all tend to anchor consumers' opinions. In effect the well has been poisoned when any wine is accompanied by high expectations. Dislike a highly regarded wine, and one might as well admit to having poor taste.

Reading tasting notes like those posted on Cellartracker illustrates the various guises that anchoring assumes. For example, it's not uncommon for an under performing wine to be given a pass with statements like "needed a 12 hour decant," "opened too young," or "required time for alcohol to blow off." There are indeed cases where decanting allows a wine to show its best. It's also entirely possible that a wine was not opened at its optimal age. But if a wine just wasn't that great, whether it was a bad bottle, a bad vintage or bad timing, there's no reason to make excuses. The wine just wasn't that great, and I'm not blaming myself for not waiting 12 hours for it to squeeze out a hint of vanilla soaked cherries.

Scoring is even more dubious in this regard. It's not at all hard to find expensive wines with descriptors like "hot," "awkward," and "unbalanced" accompanied by 90+ point scores. Why? Because a critic likely gave it a 90+ point rating. An interesting example concerns a Pinot Noir rated something like 96 points by Robert Parker. A significant number of notes refer to noticeably high alcohol levels, yet only one person posted a score below 90. Perhaps this wine has everything else going for it and many tasters have insensitive palates. But it's nonetheless interesting that a wine with a repeatedly noted flaw still averages 93 points communally.

This brings me to the ultimate example of anchoring, the infamous 96 point rated Sierra Carche. Here are a few of my favorite notes from Cellartracker, without points, which I'll list at the end of this post:

Was hoping for a little more since Jumilla is one of my favorite regions in the world--although still very good. Possibly still too young, coupled with the fact that we didn't decant. Will take better notes next time when I'm not at a dinner party.

This wine will EITHER develop A LOT MORE (?, at least I HOPE !!!) OR GV was out of his mind when he said this wine blows CLIO away ! A HUGE disappointment, decanted for several hours and nothing really improved. Already tried 2 bottles with same results. Dry, tannic. Still have 22 bottles to go !!!!!! Anyone interested ??

very dissapointed with this wine. Considering the Parker score and Gary V's push for Clio lovers, I bought several bottles. I feel robbed! No nose of any kind when opened, no nose of any kind after decanting for 3 hrs, beautiful color but that's about the only good thing about this wine. It took quite an effort just to finish the bottle. I have had $10 bottles of wine that would blow this away.
Take my advice and pass on this one!

Rose petals, violets, earth, espresso, liquorice, blackberries and blueberries on the nose, which is unmistakeably influenced by the mourvedre ( a good thing!!!), along with some harsh stemminess. Medium bodied on the palate, but dominated by drying unripe tannins. This might come into balance in 3-5 years, and would merit a higher score.

Now, for those of you keeping score at home, the tasters' ratings are 91, 89, 88 and 90, respectively. None of these notes indicate this wine is particularly enjoyable or special, with the second and third expressing serious distaste for the wine. Yet the ratings indicate it's a borderline very good to excellent wine. Over 48 notes, many of which are ambivalent, the average score is 89.4 with a median of 90.

Just for good measure, I'll throw in another personal favorite, the 2006 BenMarco Malbec. This wine received a 90 or 91 from all of the "major" critics. Now, look at the first dozen or so tasting notes, all of which are clustered around the 90-91 point range. Eventually more variance creeps in over time. Even without attempting some calculation on the odds scores would be randomly clustered like this, it's pretty clear there's more anchoring here than at your local yacht club!

It's human nature to trust an authority to ground your own opinions. And very few people can actually taste even a fraction of the wines they buy before hand. In that respect critical notes provide a valuable service. But it's clear consumers as a whole need to be willing to trust their own palates. We may tend towards being herded like sheep. However, we have the ability to override this instinct once we have access to the information we need. All that information is in the bottle; you can't drink the label, the price tag or the scores.

No More Points

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm doing away with point ratings in my blog posts. There are simply too many instances where scoring become paradoxical. If I try to base ratings on quasi-objective standards, instances where a wine has a pronounced weakness tend to place a ceiling on a score regardless of its other attributes. At times I'm compelled to give a fascinating wine a lower score than a sound, yet innocuous wine. If ratings are simply an expression of how much I like a wine, though, they become utterly subjective and have no meaning from one wine to the next.

So I have a new approach. I'll list empirical observations as either pros or cons instead of assigning a number score. This allows for a succinct description expressing my opinions that nonetheless can be interpreted by a reader in terms of his or her tastes. Although observations of body, texture, finish, acidity, tannins and aromas still have an element of subjectivity, noting these observations is much fairer than somehow synthesizing them into a numerical result. This is particularly important when it comes to the New World-Old World dichotomy. If I'm expecting a wine to show a sense of place, but it turns out to be very international in style, I'll probably end up disliking it based on context. At times, though, I'm up for some creamy oak and barrel-derived aromas. Many wine drinkers, though, abhor Brett or oak or bell pepper altogether. For them, there is no middle ground. If I tell an Aussie Shiraz fan about a 92 point Chinon without mentioning that it has minimal oak influence, fresh acidity and a whole barnyard of Brett on the nose, what good is that?

Additionally, I'll be including my perception of the QPR, or Quality-Price Ratio, and my thoughts on decanting the wine. QPR will be listed as Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair being an average wine for a given price point. A "Fair" QPR performs as I'd expect given the price. As much as possible in the context of QPR, I'll attempt to consider the quality of the wine in terms of its intended style. The question of decanting is probably more subjective, but it's worth noting if a wine develops for the better with exposure to air. Decanting doesn't fix problems like heat or excessively hard tannins in my experience, but for wines built to age, it can unlock secondary aromas and flavors that are suppressed by the reductive world of the wine bottle. If I find a wine develops for the better (or worse as occasionally happens), I'll be sure to note it.

Instead of this:

Score: X
Price: $Y

You'll now see:

Pros: A list of what I liked
Cons: A list of what I didn't like
Decant: Yes/No with a time period suggested
Price: $Y
QPR: Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point

What to do when your Weber BBQ is ailing?

Ever so often, I'll read a tasting note and wonder, what the hell is this guy talking about? Take for example the ubiquitous "pain grillé." How does the pain of a busted-up grill related to the stuff in the 750 mL bottle? And more importantly, are you trying to tell me that my Weber BBQ is suffering because its wheel fell off?

As it turns out, no, my grill is just fine. "Pain grillé" is French for toasted bread. But I suppose it does sounds more sophisticated to note that a wine has aromas of pain grillé than of toast. After all, any average Joe knows what toast smells like and might even make toast every day. But it takes the cultivated palate of a connoisseur to appreciate the subtle aromatic intrigue that is pain grillé.

Understandably, there is jargon associated with wine as there is with any well-developed field. Describing a wine as tannic, having a round (or hollow) mid-palate, or displaying a lengthy (or non-existent) finish helps to describe the tastes, textures and sensations of a wine. In other cases, certain phrases such as "saddle leather" or "barnyard" are polite euphemisms for aromas that may remind some of straight up cow poop. A leathery Merlot with a lengthy finish is meaningful in the right context even if its not the most common description outside of the wine world.

But then there's turns of phrases that are just tossed out there to throw most everyone off the reviewer's trail. Takes "truffles," for example. How many people have actually tasted truffles? I certainly haven't, but truffles are a fungus like a mushroom that sprouts downward instead of upward. Given how inexact a science extrapolating aromas from a wine is, I suspect "mushroom" would more than suffice as a descriptor other than it just doesn't sound all that luxurious.

"Kirsch" is another popular term in wine reviews that refers to a type of cherry liqueur. Personally, I'd just say cherry liqueur since everyone would understand what that means. Just like if I had said licorice. But it seems "fennel," "anise" and "tarragon" are generally preferred to licorice in tasting notes (though I'm told fennel, anise and tarragon all have varying degrees of licorice flavor).

This confounding practice, however, achieves its absolute pinnacle with the descriptor "stone fruit flavors" because not only is this an unfamiliar terminology, but it also is less precise than virtually any other description the reviewer could have written! Stone fruit is a synonym for a drupe, or fruit with a pit. Peaches, apricots, nectarines, dates, plums and cherries are all stone fruits. But it gets better because bramble berries like blackberries and raspberries are actually aggregates of "drupelets." (This explains why I don't like blackberries very much--I get all those mini-peach pits stuck between my teeth.) Basically, "stone fruit flavors" could mean just about anything from cherries to peaches to even berries. This is one case where perhaps greater specificity would be beneficial.

Of course, you might say, "don't throw stone fruits at that patched-up grillé in glass houses" and you'd be right. The second you write a tasting note, you're in the same racket as those who feign to detect "the faintest soupçon of like asparagus and just a flutter of a, like a, nutty Edam cheese." But maybe, just maybe, there's a way to be accurate and complete in one's description without veering into the realm of absurdity.

Grade Inflation and My Rating Scale

I've noticed that I'm posting a lot of 90+ point wines lately. However you decide to set up your semi-arbitrary 100 point system, usually 90 (but not 89 or 91, of course) is a magic number that divides very good from excellent. Have I been engaging in rampant grade inflation?

Maybe, but probably not. I tend to post only wines that I really enjoyed on this blog. There just isn't much point in bashing a wine I didn't enjoy. It's much more constructive to give an accurate stylistic description of a wine that maybe will get someone to try something new or different. There are so many bad wines to hate upon that it's not worth any one's time, unless he or she is a paid critic, to create an encyclopedic list of plonk. The ratio of good to bad wines is small, and there's greater value in pointing out the few good ones than steering people away from a few bad wine.

Furthermore, the wines I drink are self-selected. I tend to know something about what I buy. I pretty much know that a $15 Australian Shiraz will be pretty deplorable and borderline undrinkable based on my own likes and dislikes. That's not to say I don't accidentally pick out wines I hate. But for the most part I tend to match my selections to my tastes on a macro level, and to my meal or mood on a micro level. If I was being given a random selection of wines to review, I'd have many more negative comments to make.

Finally, my overall rating are subjectively based on the sort of "matrix" I've shown to the right. In terms of the bouquet, I tend to look for a combination of fruit, floral, earthy, vegetal, spicy and funky aromas that add dimensions of complexity to the wine. I'm not put off by barnyardy Brett aromas, though if that's all I can smell the wine is essentially one dimensional. Vanilla from oak is also nice in small quantities, though again that should not be the dominant aroma. Rotten or sulfide based aromas are a definite flaw in my book. The smell of alcohol or (vinegar-like) volatile acidity is also a big demerit.

As far as how the wine tastes, I'm looking for wines that have a good burst of flavor on the attack, sustain well on the mid-palate, then finish with a pleasant, lengthy aftertaste. Excessive oak or alcohol flavors are flaws and can be deal breakers if too far out of balance. Bitterness or tartness, especially on the finish, is not desirable. Wines that taste sweet also are not to my taste, though certain styles are supposed to be sweet. I'm particularly interested in the balance of acidity and tannins. Wines with "good" acidity are a bit mouth watering without tasting really sour. I appreciate a wide range of tannins from nearly imperceptible to mouth-coating, but the key is that the tannins should not be too astringent or bitter. Quality, not quantity, is the key. Concentration of flavor is also important in that I do not like wines that taste watery. But extreme concentration is not desirable if it comes at the expense of elegance, particularly on the finish.

The third corner of the triangle is entirely subjective. Here I'm looking for a wine that has some individuality. Creamy oak, for example, rarely tastes truly bad. But oak is a flavor that is rather ubiquitous. Extremely fruity wines are delicious, but again taste and smell pretty much alike. In some sense individuality is synonymous with complexity. But it also means to me that the wine has combinations of flavors, aromas and textures that are not found in your average wine. The wine isn't over-processed or over-manipulated, and the varietal or region in which it's grown are somehow reflected in the finished wine. So I'm looking for some idealized, Platonic expression of typicity, but with a unique imprint. This plays a huge role in the enjoyment of a wine for me; it tends to leads into conversation and thoughtful discussion about the wine.

To give a more concrete example of how this triangle factors into scores, here's a rough key.

0-50 = Not wine.

50-69 = Varying degrees of serious flaws ranging from undrinkable to highly off putting.

70-74 = Flawed, but drinkable.

75-79 = Drinkable, but extremely bland, confected or possessing a minor flaw/imbalance.

80-84 = Good, balanced all around wine, but lacking complexity/uniqueness. Also could be an "interesting" or really tasty wine with some moderate degree of imbalance. This could be a wine that really "lights up" one corner of the above triangle, yet doesn't do much on the other two vertices as well.

85-89 = Very good all around wine that may be a bit one-dimensional or maybe has a really good bouquet, but isn't quite that delicious or wine tastes great, but doesn't have wonderful aromatics. Wines in this range usually must show some typicity and/or individuality unless they are absolutely delicious. A "two corner of the triangle" wine would be something that typically falls in this range.

90-94 = The whole package. Great aromatics, delicious flavor, structured, balanced and showing a lot of character. Elegance is necessary here. Very hard for a wine without individuality to do this well unless it is just mind-blowingly delicious. Generally must be a wine that hits upon all three vertices of my tasting triangle.

95-99 = A rare wine that has everything going for it. Perfectly aged, complex, elegant, powerful and so on. Something that changes your world view. I've tasted nothing yet I'd rate here.

100 = Perfect wine, your dream wine. Impossible to achieve.