2010 trend : wine critics don't determine, they confirm

The modern wine industry is a conundrum. 

    Here you have a product that has always been most esteemed for its subtle, individual characteristics. Every tool of marketing is utilized to emphasize the qualities that set one wine apart from all the rest. But wine is a global commodity. To be successful a wine has to appeal to broad taste.     

So, you read all about the care of production and the expression of individuality on the bottle and you taste, more and more often, a wine that is generally appealing. The characteristics that have made wine fascinating and enjoyable for centuries are giving way to a competitive pressure to appeal to ever expanding markets. 

    

Consumers who actually prefer, and have developed their tastes by drinking mass-produced soft drinks, bottled waters, juices , dairy drinks, lager beers and distilled spirits are being pursued by the wine industry with big production, industrial products. One cannot fault them for doing this. It’s business. But the paradigms of wine quality are refuted by large production. The marketing arm of the wine industry continues to sell artisan individualism. The ‘story’ of wine is used to sell the reality, even as the story grows more estranged from reality. 

    

Thus: conundrum “a riddle”, a “puzzle.”  

   

 Thus, I say wine journalism has a responsibility to peel back the story and tell the truth. Difference may be more important than scores, as Hugh Johnson the English wine writer has asserted but, the reality is that difference is fading, categories are broadening and idiosyncratic individuality is losing its cachet. A wine that few understand is a useless anachronism. Understanding modern wine is not as complicated as it used to be. 

    

Human perception is every bit as complex as it has always been and that’s part of what must be emphasized. Wine journalism has to encourage people to go back to their perceptions , to reverse the polarity of wine discourse from 

           wine - critic- consumer

to

wine-consumer-critic

Use the critic or the writer to confirm assumptions and clarify perceptions not to set tastes. 

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