Judgment in Napa Continued…Pt 2

Last week, as you may remember, I started the process of following along with the thought patterns of a Master of Wine as she tasted through some of the best wines in the world. I do this so you can compare your own thought process and impressions as you taste and, thereby, improve your own skill.

It’s consciously comparing your process to hers that makes you better. You don’t have to think the same thing. I just want you to become more aware of whatever you are doing and see if there’s anything you could change to make it better.

Last week, we got through the actual tasting part, and now we’re ready to look at how to think about ranking them.

Once again, we start with the disclaimer:

Clare Tooley published her notes in Decanter Magazine (London, England) on December 28th, 2021. My gratitude goes out to her for providing a teaching tool based on real life and in real time. There’s a button at the end of this article that will link you to the original article if you’re interested.

To keep things as clean as possible, I will indicate quotes from the Decanter Magazine article with the usual quotation marks rather than mention Clare’s name 536 times in attribution. Clare’s words will also be in bold. All rights to those words in quotes (bold) belong entirely to Decanter Magazine and/or Clare Tooley.

As before, I don’t know Clare, or anyone who matters these days at Decanter either.

Clare writes:

“Restraint is also often correlated with quality. The world’s finest Chardonnays rarely sing on first pour or sip but take time to stretch their sinewy structure and backbone of acidity in the glass. The 22 minutes to evaluate 10 such wines was never going to be enough time to fully appreciate their beauty.”

I admire her for this paragraph. 22 minutes is too fast. The wines do need to be visited several times to see how they develop during the tasting in order to appreciate (or not) whatever they have to offer.

“But, was I really interested in exploring their provenance and ‘nailing’ their origin? What did that fundamentally have to do with the ranking I was tasked with giving them? Would it in fact reveal my bias if I identified the Burgundies, or the Californians, then placed them first or last?”

She makes an important point here—guessing where the wine is from is a game for Sommeliers or wine parties, but it is completely unrelated to the quality of what’s in the glass before you. Judges shouldn’t care where the wine is from or who made it.

“I concentrated therefore on intrinsic quality or the famous BLICCT acronym (Balance, Length, Intensity, Complexity, Character, Typicity) that we students are so fond of. …”

I’ve never heard of this acronym. It’s not famous with people who actually make wine. As she says, it’s apparently used to teach students how to talk about wine—since wine is a lot more than just these six words, it’s limited at best but there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

If it helps, use it.

Final assessment and the results

“I looked back at my notes and decided that the wine I wrote the most about, with the least clarity in such a short space of time allowed, its sheer quality belittling my ability to describe it adequately, would be my number one….”

A cool reason for her ranking. Most people wouldn’t talk about their confusion or lack of clarity but they should. Everybody has it. There’s apparently too much going on in this wine to evaluate so quickly. And, in the time allowed, you have to make some short cuts.

Results

“There was, however, a distinct drop in noise level to a hushed murmur – not quite a stunned silence but close – when the overall winner from both our Expert Panel and the Event Panel (those who bought tickets for the event) was revealed. It was Wine G, Leeuwin Estate’s Art Series Chardonnay from Margaret River in Western Australia.”

A delicious echo, perhaps, from that day 45 years ago when Chateau Montelena beat top-notch Burgundy to claim the winning spot….

For what it’s worth, I had placed the Leeuwin as my fourth pick, my personal number one was Wine J – Aubert Wines’ CIX Chardonnay from the Sonoma Coast: a Californian beauty made by a team who had been tutored by a Burgundian legend. I loved its intensity which I matched with Wine H, Hudson’s Seashell from Carneros. I equally loved its restraint, which I linked to Wine B, Ramonet’s Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru which I placed as my number two pick…

“Judging wine and blind tasting both have their flaws, but revealing intrinsic quality through comparison rather than competition is a worthy pursuit for all who care a great deal about wine and care about the future of the finest.”

This is to me, the most important thing she says. Comparing wines leads to many fine skills, competition leads to mostly silly results, suitable only for putting up on labels for liquor store shelves. Although, it has made some people rich and famous.

The 2018 Leeuwin Artist Series Chardonnay from the Margaret River area in Australia sells for around $100/ bottle.

When the results of the Judgment in Paris in 1976 were announced French judge Odette Kahn demanded her ballot back and later criticized the Paris tasting. The French are still touchy about that tasting.

Rankings

If it should happen that you know these wines that were used in the tasting, then you know how good they all are. Barring a bad bottle or bad storage, they will all make you smile. If you can afford it, and most people can’t, buying these bottles and reproducing the tasting would prove enlightening indeed.

Notice the three categories of tasters didn’t agree on most things—there is no such thing as the “right” rating or the right reaction to a given wine.

The Premier Cru Puligny from LeFlaive is one of my all time favorites but of course I don’t know what it tasted like on this day. The experts ranked it 3, but the semi-normal people at the event ranked it 10, and Clare ranked it 9.

I used to own a liquor and wine store in New York City (Manhattan) and sometimes people would hate a $20 bottle and love a $3.99 bottle.

I believe I have mentioned before that how the wine tastes depends as much on you than it does on the wine.

That Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru from Ramonet is usually magnificent and both the Expert Panel and Clare ranked it 2, but the party goers ranked it 6.

So, who’s right?

All of them. It’s a trick. There is no single right answer.

They are all ranking from their own set of values and experiences and preferences. Some of them could be lying but if they are telling the truth they could all be right from their own perspective and purpose.

I hope you will remember that when someone is trying to tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just check out below how differently the same wines were ranked, even though they were being tasted at the same time, and probably from the same bottle:

Judgment of Napa: the Chardonnays

WINE A

Joseph Drouhin, Clos des Mouches 1er Cru, Beaune, Burgundy, France 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 2

Event Panel ranking: 4

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 6

WINE B

Domaine Ramonet, Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru, Burgundy, France 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 2

Event Panel ranking: 6

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 2

WINE C

Kistler Vineyards, Vine Hill Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, California, USA 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 3

Event Panel ranking: 7

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 8 —

WINE D

Domaine Leflaive, Les Pucelles 1er Cru, Puligny-Montrachet, Burgundy, France 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 3

Event Panel ranking: 10

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 9

WINE E

Peter Michael, Belle Côte, Knights Valley, Sonoma County, California, USA 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 7

Event Panel ranking: 10

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 5

WINE F

Gaja, Gaia & Rey Chardonnay, Langhe, Piedmont, Italy 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 8

Event Panel ranking: 8

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 10

WINE G

Leeuwin Estate, Art Series Chardonnay, Margaret River, Western Australia 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 1

Event Panel ranking: 1

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 4

WINE H Hudson, Seashell Chardonnay, Carneros, California, USA 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 6

Event Panel ranking: 5

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 3

WINE I

Domaine des Comtes Lafon, Charmes 1er Cru, Meursault, Burgundy, France 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 9

Event Panel ranking: 9

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 7 —

WINE J

Aubert Wines, CIX Chardonnay, Sonoma Coast, California, USA 2018

Expert Panel ranking: 5

Event Panel ranking: 4

Clare Tooley MW ranking: 1 —what did she love that the others didn’t? She says what she loved.

The Result of the Results

When wine was ranked by price in the 19th century and throughout all of human history before that, it made sense. The best wines were the ones you’d pay the most for. And, not everybody agreed on what any given wine was worth.

I will never understand why a winery would give away its own power to a bunch of people (those who rank and rate) who can’t even make wine. But, that’s the way it works today.

The winery has a totally different set of priorities—beginning with things like “What’s it going to taste like after we ship it 3000 miles through the Panama Canal in August, or “How does our price compare to the prices of our competitors after the import taxes in Botswana,” or “They’re going to what with it?”

Once I had a wine that had gained a big following with fishermen, who put it in fishnets and dragged it behind the boat to keep it cold.

I didn’t see that coming. People are much more creative than you think they are.

And, for a handful of winemakers, the question isn’t “Is this an 89 or an 88?” it’s “how can I make the very best wine ever made?”

God bless them.