Great response to Eric's post from Wednesday's Dining in section about the cases of wine from Joy and I. So many comments. Lots of good ones...lots of people trying to promote themselves . . .some weird ones . . .and Thomas Matthews very interesting comments on how I agree with Wine Spectator. Kind of an insult to my intelligence but hey he's got an agenda.
Asimov's Blog Comments
Lyle,
ReplyDeleteI was bemused by your comment that it would be an "insult to your intelligence" if your taste agreed, at least in some cases, with those of Wine Spectator's reviewers.
Are there no common standards that different wine drinkers can agree on? Would you be happier if all the wines you tried to sell had poor reviews from us?
I was pleased to see that you recommended wines such as the Huet Vouvray and the Schafer-Frohlich Nahe. We are enthusiastic about these wines, but it takes some hand-selling on the part of retailers like you to help put them on wine-lovers' tables.
Wine Spectator's "agenda" is to bring people into the world of wine, to encourage them to explore their tastes, and to share our passion and our experience with them. How is that so different from yours?
Sincerely,
Thomas Matthews
Executive editor
Wine Spectator
Dear Mr. Matthews,
ReplyDeleteI’m not Lyle, but I have a guess or two about what his issues might be, and disagreeing in public with a person of your position might also be one of them. But let me have a guess, and if I stray too far from Lyle’s own views, perhaps he can correct me, or perhaps not.
Your publication provides generic advice to a mass audience, expressed in the assignment of univariate numeric “points” to individual wines, the awarding of various “top 100” lists, and so on. You provide reassurance to timorous purchasers. You sell advertising. Your point assignments are carried out by a rotating staff of variable expertise and variable palates in a milieu isolated from food or setting or particular guests or the cultural context of the grower and winemaker.
Lyle, on the other hand provides personalized advice to individuals. He can take things into account that you never can, like a request for a wine by a particular individual with a palate known to Lyle for something to match a particular dish for a particular dinner. Or, they can go to Lyle and say, “Joe’s coming over for dinner, I’m making a pork roast, do you think he’d like the 1999 Prager Achleiten better than the ’98?”
It is this sense that it is an error of language to say that your point-assigners “agree” with Lyle. Lyle isn’t giving one number to a wine for all purposes, he’s integrating wine in a complex way into people’s lives. He’s in a different business than you are, carrying out a different activity. I think he might legitimately feel that the fact that one of your reviewers happened to assign a certain number of points to a particular wine is neither here nor there with respect to his view about whether a customer whose tastes he knows reasonably well (Eric Asimov, me) would like the wine better than another with dinner.
What do you think?
Joe
Thomas,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Joe but the crux of it is we do different things and that is what Eric was trying to illustrate in his article and with his comment about points.
Joe, Lyle,
ReplyDeleteJoe's post seems filled with misunderstandings about Wine Spectator.
I don't agree that Wine Spectator's advice is "generic." Each reviewer has his own opinions, based on years of experience, thousands of wines tasted and many visits to the wine regions to explore vineyards, wineries and talk with winemakers. Their reviews are responses to their encounters with specific wines informed by this experience, just as Lyle (or Joe) form opinions based on similar tasting and research. Whether our reviews are informative or credible is up to our readers to determine for themselves, just as Lyle's customers decide for themselves whether Lyle's recommendations suit their palates and their judgments of value.
Most wine buyers are "timorous." That's because wine is complex. Few consumers have the opportunity to taste as widely as our reviewers (or a good retailer). They look to us (and to retailers they trust) for information and for advice. We try to educate our readers about the whole world of wine, from the vineyard through the winery and the winemakers' talents and sensibilities. I imagine Lyle takes the same approach.
Some consumers feel our reviews are "tainted" by advertising. But all our tastings are blind, and independent studies have concluded that scores for advertisers are no higher than for producers that don't advertise.
Some consumers feel retailers' advice can be "tainted" by their commercial interests. Lyle may disagree with them.
Most consumers look for multiple sources of information as they make decisions. In the case of a restaurant, for example, they might compare reviews from various critics, word of mouth from their friends and information from the restaurant's Web site. If the odds look good, they try for themselves and make up their own minds.
Why should wine be different? What's wrong with second opinions? What's amazing is how often critics, retailers and consumers agree, despite the differences in individual palates. The Huet and the Shafer-Frolich wines recommended by both Lyle and Wine Spectator are cases in point.
Yes, we are in different businesses. But does that make us enemies? I have no beef with Lyle. I don't understand why Lyle, or Joe (and by the way, are you the SFJoe who posts on Eric's blog?), appear to be so hostile. We are all trying to share our passion for wine.
Thomas Matthews
Executive editor
Wine Spectator
Dear Mr. Matthews,
ReplyDeleteYou seem like a perfectly amiable fellow, and I’m sure you and Lyle would enjoy a glass together, but you persist in equating what Lyle does with what the various reviewers for your magazine do, and I still must disagree.
I certainly grant that people in the trade have more opportunity to taste and learn than the average consumer.
Your reviews are “generic” in the sense that you seem to imagine that your point score represents some real attribute of a wine, useful for all tasters and all situations. You seem to imagine that abstracting a wine from its context in production or in a meal leads to the true Platonic “points.” This is an inherently silly idea on many fronts that I don’t have time to go into, but let’s take just a couple of them.
I think of a wine like the Muscadet that Lyle suggested to Eric Asimov. With a steak, it would be lousy. With oysters, it would be great. As a young Muscadet from granite soil, I think it would be a better match with Atlantic than with Pacific oysters. With a few years of age, it would be better with cooked and sauced seafood than with raw oysters. I would drink it with most of my friends, but not with the ones who seem to share your colleague Jim Laube’s taste in wine. The enjoyment of that wine is not captured by a single number, and frankly it cheapens Marc Ollivier’s hard work and the palates of my friends to suggest that it does.
People who have a drive-by relationship with wine will probably prefer scores to Lyle. If they don’t have a relationship with Lyle, and only buy wine from him once, they may fear that he is sticking them with something they won’t enjoy. The apparent “objectivity” of points would be more appealing. Of course, if they plan a longer-term relationship with a merchant and wine, they recognize that Lyle is motivated to find them things they’ll enjoy. I should add that I’ve never believed the canard that the WS adds points to the reviews of wines made by your advertisers, though of course I have no particular knowledge one way or another. Frankly, my guess is that the real temptation to your purity would be in neglecting to publish the occasional highly negative review of an advertised wine. That would be much harder to spot from the outside, and would take care of most of the commercial issues. But again, I have no personal knowledge.
As for the “agreement” of various WS reviewers and others, I speak at something of a disadvantage since I allowed my subscription to lapse a number of years ago. Frankly, I find no such agreement in general with my taste when I encounter your scores. I’m sure we both like a well-kept bottle of ’78 La Tache and so on, but my impression is that the WS has been a cheerleader for a bunch of superficially polished but soulless wines from California (Cabs and Pinots, in particular), and similar new wave wines from Spain. It’s hard for you to buck any broad trend in the industry, I suspect. Have you ever tried to derail a nutty trend in the industry (16% alcohol Pinot Noir, for instance?). I find many of the wines you espouse undrinkable, but your reviewers differ. That’s fine, but it undermines the apparent universality of “points.” Taste isn’t universal. Lyle would never try to sell me a wine by arguing that it had received many “points,” because he knows he’d lose my business that minute. I want *his* view that I can hold *him* accountable for, I don’t want him hiding behind your magazine.
Of course, as a commercial matter, there is an irresistible synergy between wine retailers and magazines on the question of points. Lazy retailers use points to sell wines, and at the same time they advertise the magazines that assign them. So you pretty much have to be in the point business. Lyle represents a threat to this, because he sells on his own palate and reputation (and that of the other buyers in his shop). And he can tailor his suggestions to his audience in a conversation that acknowledges the many dimensions of wine that are ignored to reduce a complex bottle to a single number. Not to single out WS, I’m sure your numbers are no worse than anyone else’s. Well, that top 100 list…, oh, never mind.
I am indeed the SFJoe who posts occasionally to the Asimov blog. I don’t have a personal beef with you, Mr. Matthews, but I do have a beef with the methodology of your employer. I understand that you have an obligation to defend them, and certainly don’t hold it against you.
Best,
Joe
Mr. Matthews-
ReplyDeleteI'd like to follow-up on the essence of Joe's point. While I am more apt to think in terms of Platonic form than Joe, his argument about the multivariate (and multidimentional) nature of wine is the important one to appreciate. Your "points" are univariate by design (not just that, you assume that whatever sub-sets of points are additive). It is an inherently silly idea from a purely measurement standpoint, never mind the connundrums that Joe explores.
Nonetheless, you seem to be earnest in your attempts to explore interesting wines (congrats on "discovering" Huet) and seem to really want to cultivate the wine-geek cognescenti and my friends in the importing business all feel that you treat them and their wines fairly, but points are inherently untenable as such. Look at the kinds of contortions RMP must go through to try to justify them. It just isn't possible.
I would also guess that in moments of honesty, you must know that your magazine is more of a lifestyle magazine than something to appeal to anyone truly serious about wine. This isn't a criticism per se, it is a reality of the market space that your magazine occupies. It is very different from the market space that Lyle, Joe, and I tend to explore.
Thanks for taking the time to discuss your views. I hope my comments are taken in the spirit in which they are given.
vlm
Interesting comments from Joe and Thomas Matthews both. I'd like to take a different tack, setting aside the debate over the "points" methodology used by Wine Spectator and most other reviewers. Let's stipulate for the moment that it's perfectly sensible to grade every wine on a scale of 100 and that the higher points correlate to higher quality, greater enjoyment, or more profundity.
ReplyDeleteThat would validate Wine Spectator's methodology, but it wouldn't validate the substance of its criticism. If the Spectator's reviewers were working retail and Lyle and his colleagues at Chambers Street Wines were publishing tasting notes and points on glossy paper, I'd stick with the recommendations of the Chambers Street crew. Not because their methodology is better -- both retailers and journalists are equally equipped to guide consumers to quality wines -- but simply because I think they've got better taste!
Critics inevitably give their best reviews to wines made in the style they think is best. A good retailer, too, uses his shelves to promote the wines he thinks are best. The Spectator, and most other critics, promote a style that emphasizes concentration, density, and assertively ripe fruit. Producers trying to achieve that style tend towards later harvests, more aggressive extractions, more new oak, and various scary-looking machines that help increase concentration. Chambers Street promotes wines made in a different style, emphasizing, for example, elegance over power, minerality over fruit, and energy over weight.
In my experience, the more one learns about wine, the more likely one is to favor the sort of wines Chambers Street promotes over the sort of wines the Spectator promotes.
Keith,
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty interesting point. I, too, would probably hear from David Lillie on a Loire wine or a Beaujolais, or from Jamie on Barolo, or maybe even from Lyle on Germany.
But I would so much rather have an iterated conversation with David about a Chinon that hear his pronouncement. I think that's the real deal--I can tell him that I liked the '02 Breton Franc de Pied in part for its very low alcohol, but also for its complete ripeness, and that I found it the perfect wine for an afternoon party I'd had. David is likely to have some suggestions from more recent vintages that match that.
I don't know enough about the guy(s) who review the Loire for WS to know whether they are capable of a similar conversation.
David, Jamie, and Lyle's taste probably matches mine better than most other folks. But even if it didn't, I think they'd do a better job than a magazine in helping me find a wine I'd like. I happened by the shop this afternoon, and damned if they didn't have a bunch of Turley zin to sell me if my tastes took a different tack. But they would be able to have a dialog, get to a sense of my palate, or my planned dinner, or what have you. Magazines don't talk back, nor do they listen.
Keith,
ReplyDeleteDon't you think that there's a contradiction in the following? If there really were a perfect scale, how is one assigner better than another (not counting correlation to your and my palates, of course, for fairness).
"Let's stipulate for the moment that it's perfectly sensible to grade every wine on a scale of 100 and that the higher points correlate to higher quality, greater enjoyment, or more profundity.
That would validate Wine Spectator's methodology, but it wouldn't validate the substance of its criticism. If the Spectator's reviewers were working retail and Lyle and his colleagues at Chambers Street Wines were publishing tasting notes and points on glossy paper, I'd stick with the recommendations of the Chambers Street crew. Not because their methodology is better -- both retailers and journalists are equally equipped to guide consumers to quality wines -- but simply because I think they've got better taste!"
I think it might be instructive to look at some specific wines reviewed by both Lyle and Wine Spectator. I notice that Lyle recently visited the Mosel estate of Fritz Haag and was enthusiastic about the wines, posting some tasting notes in his blog.
ReplyDeleteBruce Sanderson is Wine Spectator’s lead taster for German wines. He once lived in Germany; he has covered the region for us for nearly a decade; he has visited the producers many times. He also likes Haag’s wines.
Here are notes from both Lyle and Sanderson on two Haag 2005s. (I believe they reviewed the same wines; Lyle’s nomenclature is sometimes unclear).
Wine #1 - kabinett
Lyle’s note:
'05 Braunberger Juffer Kabinett - My notes just say "Wowsers! Best Kabinett of the Mosel so far." Just classic, transparent elegant Mosel Riesling. Perfect. I am buying a case.
Sanderson’s note:
Fritz Haag Riesling Kabinett Mosel-Saar-Ruwer Brauneberger Juffer 2005
Well-delineated and racy, with lime, floral and slate notes, this is a textbook kabinett. Light-weight, yet packed with flavor. Subtle balance, with length and harmony. Drink now through 2015. –BS
Score: 92 Release Price: $28
Wine #2 - BA
Lyle’s note:
'05 Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Berenauslese - The purest fruit of any BA of the trip. Like sucking perfectly ripe Riesling off the vine. So elegant with vivid pink grapefruit flavors. Genius stuff. Long finish. Will last a lifetime.
Sanderson’s note:
Fritz Haag Riesling Beerenauslese Gold Cap Mosel-Saar-Ruwer Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr 2005
A mix of lime, peach, honey and sweet corn remain complex and well-defined by the vivid structure from start to finish. Elegant and seamless, with a supple texture and a long, mouthwatering finish. Drink now through 2035. –BS
Score: 98 Release Price: $225/375ml
In my opinion, Lyle’s notes are more impressionistic, serving mostly to convey his enthusiasm for the wines. Sanderson’s are more detailed in terms of flavor elements and wine character; his level of enthusiasm is summed up by his scores, which represent his evaluation of their quality as informed by his experience.
I would note that Sanderson’s reviews come from blind tastings, evaluating the wines in the context of their peers. Lyle’s notes were, I assume, from non-blind tastings conducted by the winemaker. Nonetheless, comparing their reviews, I think it’s clear that both men came to similar judgments.
So in this case, Joe, what is your objection to Wine Spectator’s taster, his expertise, our methodology, our results? And Lyle, what would your objection be if a customer came into your shop with Sanderson’s reviews, looking for these wines?
I write not from some “obligation to defend my employer.” I work for Wine Spectator because it supports my passion for wine, and because I believe in its mission to spread that passion by educating other wine consumers.
To the extent that Lyle or any retailer shares that passion and that commitment to education (as opposed to pushing the wines with the highest profit margins), we are working together. I don’t expect to convince Joe of this; he seems to have jumped to a conclusion that Wine Spectator is unethical or incompetent, or both. But I do appreciate the chance to share my point of view, hoping that some more objective readers will get a better idea of what we are trying to do.
Thomas Matthews
Executive editor
Wine Spectator
Mr. Matthews,
ReplyDeleteI thought I was defending you on the ethics question, which frankly you were the one to raise.
Joe
And may I suggest that we run the same experiment with, say, 2000 Brunellos, 2002 high end California cabs, and Pinots from the Santa Lucia Highlands of the vintage of your choice?
ReplyDeleteMr. Matthews,
ReplyDeleteI drink quite a bit of wine from the Loire, and while I don't subscribe any more, I'm wondering--how often do your correspondents visit the Loire?
Best,
Joe
Joe asks, "Don't you think that there's a contradiction in the following? If there really were a perfect scale, how is one assigner better than another (not counting correlation to your and my palates, of course, for fairness)."
ReplyDeleteThat's only a problem if you're one of those people who think that a score is a metaphysical property of a wine determinible through critical analysis, sort of like an element's atomic number. But if the scores are just a shorthand way of saying things like "I like this one better than that one but not as much as the other one," then there's no contradiction.
In other words, the reason to oppose Wine Spectator's scoring a wine 95 points isn't that the rating is meaningless, but that the wine probably sucks.