Judgement of Berlin
Chile Con Carnage
Interesting article on Wineanorak website re a rerun of the Judgement of Berlin. https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4102088&postID=997917938899062444
It is that chestnut of lining up some superstar Bordeaux and their brethren, chucking in a few Chilean ringers and letting the Cabernet hit the fan. If the Chilean wines perform well or even better than expected they will have been deemed to have earned their place in the line up. If the results are totally mixed, it’s bully for subjectivity; if there is broad agreement it supposedly demonstrates that experienced tasters can apply objective criteria and find a communal yardstick for quality.
Judgements of Paris and Berlin? Fiddlesticks and poppycock! We could trump all these Olympian competitions with our Assessment of Acton, Conclusion of Colindale or Prognostication of Parsons Green. To me these wine beauty contests are like deciding who is the loudest, fattest tenor in the grand opera. The wines themselves are essentially monolithic in an opulent way and opulent in a monolithic way, bursting with inflated prices and reputations. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t mind drinking Chateau Margaux (show me the money!), but have not the greatest wines become almost defined by their pretentious price tags? I believe in an aesthetic of quality and that hierarchical judgments can be made, but my aesthetics are probably rather different to the majority of critics, so my hierarchies would be perceived as somewhat topsy-turvy.
Here are some questions that these tastings always raise for me.
*Who determines the format of the tasting?
*What is the objective of the tasting and what are people trying to prove? Is it that certain wines are different, indistinguishable, or better than others?
*If you put reasonably good wines in the company of great wines does that necessarily make fit them for comparison? Could you not do this with any wines?
*If Chilean wines gain the higher marks what does that say about the taster(s)?
*If French wines gain the higher marks what does that say about the taster(s)?
*If the results are all mixed what does that say about the tasting? That chacun à son gout rules, and that the results cancel each other out?
*Did the wines show well? Did all the wines show equally well? Did they show to their full potential? Should that be factored in? If not, why not? Or is the tasting purely a snapshot of a few chosen wines?
*Are judges truly objective? What is an objective standard?
*How does recognition of a wine affect the way one marks?
*Does one mark on how the wine shows on the day or on the potential of the wine?
*Does price has any relevance in the marking criteria?
*What about the arc of development for each wine? Did the tasting take into account every single factor (when the wine was bottled, the exact nature of the vintage, how long it normally takes before it reaches the peak of drinking?)
Other points:
*What does it say about a winemaker that they try to create an iconic wine? It is like trying to create an aesthetic using money as your primary tool.
*These high end wines are about intensive layering and finical refinement. The layers are the building blocks of the wine; the wines are often impenetrable and certainly undrinkable in their infancy. After a few years the different elements knit together and a complex final product emerges. You hope.
*Brilliant wines can be made without the gloss and maquillage. If you have a unique terroir that delivers beautiful nuances of flavour into the grapes why, oh why, slap it down with overt extraction and the full array of winemaker’s tropes?
*Consider this: Is the best chef the one who allows the central fresh ingredient to express itself or the one who makes the best sauce?