How Much Objectivity Do We Want in Wine Criticism?

Well, we don’t want critics to be influenced by price or the reputation of the wine. Of course, we can mitigate those temptations by insisting that critics taste blind. But do we want that much objectivity? Part of what we want from a critic is their perspective built over years of experience. And part of that experience involves knowledge of a winery and its production method or a vineyard and its terroir. Critics have to assess the degree to which a bottling meets the standard it’s previous vintages set. When tasting blind, the accumulated knowledge and taste memories from years of experience is short-circuited. It makes no sense to isolate an evaluation from one’s prior judgments if the point of evaluating a wine is to see it in light of those prior judgments. Some of the virtues of a wine can be discovered only by putting that wine in context. Not all pre-judgments we bring to a wine are inherently misleading; some are revealing. But what about a critic being influenced by…

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