Chronicle of the Unknown Taster

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept that in the world of wine everyone has their own taste and what I like might not be something you like. This is, of course, total bull since great wine is great wine and what you or I like is not the issue. The issue is do you like great wine? Or even do you like good wine as opposed to swill?

At some level there is no “to each his own” in the world of wine unless you have a skewed or weird palate that has never been trained or exercised properly so you can tell good from bad. If you don’t care about the difference then that’s OK too but there should be a standard for excellence that everyone agrees on.

The standard may vary over time, but there needs to be an agreed upon standard.

I’m reminded of a tasting panel I was on where one joker apparently did not like any wood whatsoever on the wine, nor did he like buttery Chardonnay or the slightest hint of complexity on the nose preferring fresh fresh fresh. In other words all he liked were very well made (I give him that) young cheap refreshing quaffer type wines. Thus fabulous wine after wine from famous wineries was rejected out of hand in favor of Dolcetto-type wine. “Too much oak,” he’d bellow. Geez. That’s the logical extension of “everyone has their own taste.”

If it is a style of wine that is odd like Retsina or an acquired taster like some Adriatic wines there are still good ones versus bad ones. If you do not like Retsina in any way, that’s fine, you probably won’t be asking about it in the first place. And you shouldn’t be judging it either.

Nobody should ever go to a wine store or to a winery or a wine bar and ask, “What is your best wine?” and get the response, “Well everyone has their own taste.” No, they don’t unless they are clueless and have no taste whatsoever. Just tell me the best wine in the house. I can assure you that there is one. Generally speaking the guy who begs off like this doesn’t know what wine is best because he is simply incompetent.

The competent palate knows exactly the best wines and why they are the best and would promote them as such. Even if he misses the mark if will not be by much because he has confidence in his palate and would normally like to show off his or her skills. “This here is the best one!”

Now if we are talking about Leoville-Las Cases next to Richeburg and I ask which is best there is the legitimate excuse that one person might prefer one over the other but nobody can say that both are not great. So to the question “What is your best wine” the seller should say “We got two.” He should not say “It depends on your taste” or “What I like might not be what you like.”

Now if your palate is not trained at all and you really cannot tell the difference between Cantemerle and Leoville-Barton (a stretch of the imagination since my dog could tell the difference) then the wine sales guy should tell the customer that one is better than the other and let the customer fine-tune his taste. He should not encourage a crummy or skewed palate with “Everyone has their own taste. You might like Cantemerle better.”

This is not to say that someone wouldn’t like Cantemerle better than Leoville-Barton if someone really disliked noticeable new oak. They probably won’t like any high-end wine. But they should at least recognize the fact that the Leoville-Barton is a better wine. How will they ever do that with the “to each his own” approach to wine?

People need to be guided. I would fire immediately any floor salesperson who ever said “everyone has their own taste” to a customer. Why even sell wine if you are going to say that. You may as well let people buy wine at Safeway by deciding which has the most color-coordinated label.

Curiously I recently had someone at the Wine Club in San Francisco say to me “Well what I like might not be what you like” when asked what was best within a category. I was shocked. I should have said, “Well you must have a pretty crappy palate.”