A reader sent in this clipping a week ago (apologies for the late response), and with a glint in his eye questioned whether wine “experts” are as useful as snake-oil salesmen. The man has a point. When people start advising on matters that largely concern taste, you need to be extra careful for bullshitters. Not as careful as for a bullshitting anesthesiologist  I’ll admit – a blagging doctor can kill you. But be careful, because there will be more half-arsed winos than there will be doctors.

Before I get into what I think about this, there are one or two things that need to be cleared up, as the newspaper article was definitely written by an over excited journo who was only too happy to stick it to the “experts” before he had read the research paper.

The first mistake was saying that 54 “experts” were used for the tasting. This was absolutely not the case, the tasters were undergraduates from the Faculty of Oneology, where Brochet was conducting the research. The experts referred to in the study (which you can find here) were those whose tasting notes underwent a lexical analysis. The second error, which is more of a glaring half-truth, is the writer’s attempt to make us think that a single molecule carries all the smells in the wine, and the colour of the wine makes us decide on which one we will smell. This is simplifying the study into nothingness. I also disagree that this study in any way suggests wine judges/experts/tasters are irrelevant, or con-artists. I’ll get to why in a bit.

The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between the “vision of colours and odor determination”. I do not want to go into massive detail, but essentially by analysing over 10 000 tasting notes of winemakers, and performing tasting experiments with a group of tasters (described in the clipping) the study showed that “wine’s color appears to provide significant sensory information, which misleads the subjects’ ability to judge flavor. Moreover, the mistake is stronger in presence than in absence of access to the wine color.”

Basically we get conned. The tasting notes showed that the descriptors used to describe wines were to a large part similarly coloured to the wine being tasted – red wine led to red fruit, honey coloured to honey flavours etc. As we attempt to verbalise what we smell, we fall under the illusion of the wine’s colour.

When you taste out of a black glass – so you cannot see the wine’s colour – it is far harder to guess the colour of the wine than you would think. We make assumptions before we taste a wine just by looking at it. When we see a label we know to be highly rated, very expensive, or rare, we are more inclined to enjoy the wine than if it is a bottle of Tassies.

Have you ever had a magnificent bottle of wine on the estate where it’s made? You were with a loved one, you ordered the bottle, sipped it and gazed over the vineyards as the sun drowsily slipped from view. It was an amazing bottle. The best, you thought. You were smart and stocked up. You saved the wine for a special occasion; maybe another sunset moment with your lover. When the moment came you popped the cork, poured the glass and sipped on the most… Hold on a second, this isn’t the wine you had last time. This isn’t the liquid orgasm you remember. This is just, well, wine.

Just as outside influences affect the way we taste and experience wine, so do preconceptions based on sight.

Does this mean that wine experts are useless, and should be jettisoned from our wine experiences like mullets, full spandex jumpsuits and bedazzled jeans should be from human existence? I think not. When we start looking at how this study pertains to critics, we are ambling over into the territory of subjectivity and objectivity in wine appreciation. If we are under certain illusions as tasters, how can there be anything such as objectivity in the tasting? If there is no objectivity, then what the hell is the point? Surely what I like, I like, and sod the fellow in his leather backed chair pontificating over the balance of angels’ foot sweat intermingled with freshly trimmed fern leaves and how it should score 95 points. 95? Eh? How can an absolute number be ascribed to a subjective experience?

My initial response is: tough shit people, it happens all the time. Dancing, gymnastics, surfing, skating – and to a lesser degree, writing competitions – all have winners; with the activity having a large degree of aesthetic appreciation going into the judging. But all also have certain technical requirements that have to be met to even be judged at all. Us couch judges may shout at our screens, “You fuck-wit judges. How could you score that a 6,83! He was freaking vertical, he decimated that lip, he tore that wave up like Hulk’s silk nighty!”

But they’re the experts. We want them, and to a degree we need them. Most people don’t want to taste through hundreds of wines, develop their own solid foundation of what they like, taste hundreds of more wines, challenge their preconceptions, taste hundreds more, learn, experiment, broaden their palates and so on. Most people want to walk into a shop and pick up a few bottles for the lowest cost, with the most stickers. I think they’re missing out, but you can’t blame them. They want to open a magazine and see a top 10, see a best-of list, which wines to look out for and which wines to avoid. That’s the purpose of the wine critic, to inform and advise. To help. The reader needs to trust the critic, and the critic has to be informed, honest and not an arrogant knob-donkey.

Of course we need to acknowledge that there is subjectivity in wine assessment, and that if you don’t like what the experts like that it’s perfectly fine, and that you are probably asserting some sort of mental independence of which you should be proud (although, it is possible you just have terrible taste). There are rights and wrongs. You can love a corked wine, but you are wrong if you think it is good. It’s not. It’s faulty. You can love Twilight, but you are wrong if you think it’s good. It’s not. You’re faulty.

Wine critics are trying to perform a useful task of assessing wines for the public’s aid. They fail sometimes, but their goal is a fair one. By using their experience and knowledge, they are in a position to far more reliably offer wine advice. Just as I may think a triple axle to camel spin might have lacked  the finesse needed for a high score, what the hell do I know about figure skating? My tip? Find a critic, learn their style and get used to what they taste and you will at least get used to their errant subjectivities. Or, you know, just become one yourself.