A Whole Lot of Jackass?

Nothing to blog about for days and days, and then suddenly WHAM! I invite you to visit the Los Angeles Times web site for this little opinion piece on "The language of wine snobbery". Let me know when you are finished...

OK, good. This little column has already generated quite a bit of comment around the internets (here's one on Tom Wark's Fermentation, and another on Steve Heimoff's new blog.) I'm finding the strong negative reaction a little surprising, because I rather liked it.

The piece begins with a great hook about "a whole lot of jackass"; indeed, when a writer comes up with a line like that, the first thing they want to do is run out and use it. Kinda like getting a BB gun or a sex change; the excitement must be overwhelming.

The problem is that we have an inflammatory starting line, and as a result everyone is apparently missing an excellent point.

The problem is that so much wine reviewing has devolved into "it smelled like this, and then it tasted like that". Not very expressive use of the language is it? I think this paragraph sums it up nicely:

"And it's not just wine -- or chocolate, tea, coffee and olive oil -- where the language is now exactly the same. Movie critics, book reviewers and television writers have all become 6-year-olds telling me everything that happened on an episode of "SpongeBob" -- wasting paragraph after paragraph impersonally recounting plot, as if my sole goal as a reader is to glean just enough to get into arguments at wine-tasting parties."

The point being: "I want to know that a Zinfandel, our greatest native grape, tastes like America: big, bold, unsubtle and ready to fight." Do you really care whether it smells like tobacco or instead smells like cedar? What about how it makes you feel?

One of the best reviews I've seen of our wines, in the San Francisco Chronicle, said that our 2006 Verdelho was "...a ballerina in steel-toed boots." I'll take a review like that any day.

(Illustration above from Chateau Petrogasm, a little ironic poke at Mr. Wark, which I sincerely hope he appreciates.)

Comments

[Robert McIntosh]

That is such a great quote to use, and particularly ironic that it was about how great the (other) quote is:

"...when a writer comes up with a line like that, the first thing they want to do is run out and use it. Kinda like getting a BB gun or a sex change; the excitement must be overwhelming"

ROFL

[Arthur]

Jeff,

Stein's piece is just obnoxious. He has some giddy, adolescent problem being comfortable with knowing something. He is hung up on being a 'snob' (read some of his other posts) which he believes is based in what he THINKS he knows about wine. His piece propagates an ignorant, xenophobic attitude about anything that can be smelled and tasted. I blogged a commentary on this piece on Friday.

[Tish]

I'm with you, Jeff. Wine writers will always make ripe targets for mainstream observers of culture. Nothing new comes from Joel Stein; he is trying extra hard to be clever and has a great soapbox. Unfortunately, there are so many organoleptic tasting notes being churned out that the esoteric style of tasting-note is what people consider "wine writing."

[Kevin Erskine]

I liked the original article as well as your response Jeff. I did a piece sometime back about the obnoxiousness (and non useful information) cropping up in Whisky Notes - a direct result of the wine tasting world.

Did a quick thing on it today.

[Dr. Debs]

When will people learn that Zinfandel is not a native grape??

But that's besides the point.

I think what bothered me the most was that he somehow thought that telling you how a wine made you feel was easier to understand/relate to than a more traditional description. I say use both--since people may not respond to "ready to fight" as much as they would respond to "blackberry."

I may be in the girlie minority here, but sports metaphors as a rule do not blow my dress up and make me want to rush out and by a wine. But that' me. Thousands of GaryV viewers find it's just the thing for them.

Isn't it why there are so many flavors of ice cream--including blackberry with a sweet, creamy finish?

[Fredric Koeppel]

As usual the Good Doctor hits the nail on the head, which is a metaphor meaning that she gets right to the point and says the exact right thing to say, because we're not talking about carpentry here, we're talking about words and perceptions and writing. Sometimes, especially when we're dealing with notions of which some qualities are ephemeral, ineffable and highly personal (like the character of wine) we have to resort to metaphors or to descriptions that may be evocative and provocative but that draw from other areas of pleasure. Sure go ahead and use a sports metaphor to convey the sensation a wine creates, I'm with the Doctor here, sports metaphors don't impress me, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do to get the job done. I think it's fine to say that a wine is, let's see, "robust, full-bodied and powerful," but I know that as a wine drinker and a person who tastes a lot of wine and drinks special wines with dinner, that's not enough. I want a review of a wine (and of course there's a difference in writing about wine as history and place and beverage and writing reviews of individual wines, that should be pretty damn obvious) to tell me about the wine both in a broad sense and in its details; I want a complete picture of the wine, especially how it evolves in the glass over several or many minutes. And that's why I write wine reviews the way I do, in a combination of straightforward description and metaphorical attention.

www.biggerthanyourhead.net

[Craig Camp]

"I want to know that a Zinfandel, our greatest native grape, tastes like America: big, bold, unsubtle and ready to fight."

Might someone want to point out to this wine illiterate that zinfandel is not a native American variety?

[winebroad]

I also liked Stein's piece. It's supposed to be funny, and it is. What get all pissed off about it? But then, I also liked his rant about a year ago about how all writing/journalism doesn't have to be "interactive" and how he doesn't want to engage in any "dialogs" with his readers. I laughed my ass off, though I didn't agree with all of it.

[David Zeitman]

You're dead on with your analysis, Jeff. As someone 're-engaging with wine,' I find all the tasting notes and references a bit overwhelming and/or pretentious. In general, I believe this language works against the wine industry – creating a barrier to entry, rather than a welcoming turnstile...