Over the last two years, I have been interviewing wine writers. I have asked them about their views on the field and to reflect on their own writing. Initially, I wanted to interview about 20 writers but because I have enjoyed myself very much, I ended up speaking to about 150. In this article, I want to tell you about one of the lessons to be learnt from my conversations.

One of the issues I explored in the interviews was objectivity of describing wine. Two related views dominated. One, shared by a significant minority, was that taste is subjective; there is no objectivity in what they write about wine. The other view was more nuanced. Yes, taste is subjective but there are some elements of wine (e.g. levels of acidity or tannins) which can be intersubjectively agreed upon.

Such views led some of my interviewees to say that wine lovers would be wise to choose a critic whose palate is similar to theirs. If the critic likes the wine, the wine lover is likely to like it too, and vice versa; advice which can be heard quite commonly in wine media.

And here is a problem for me. When you read the thousands and thousands of wine descriptions, in tasting notes or otherwise, you cannot help thinking they are objective accounts of wine. Sentences without a hint of qualification, sometimes even without a verb, let alone subjectivity, make wine tasting a mechanistic endeavour done by scientists trained in recognising aromas and flavours.

But perhaps this is what readers/wine lovers want, one might argue. Perhaps the gap between what wine writers say and how they write is useful after all. Alas, I do not think so.

In October and November 2024, Jan Andrzejewski, a researcher and wine merchant, and I convened focus groups with tastings as part of a project on wine communication. 50 participants attended, all self-declared non-professional wine consumers drinking wine with different frequencies.

One of the most interesting things we heard was that wine was never described on its own. Rather, consistently, it was liked or disliked, it was cheap or expensive, purchased or not, drunk somewhere and with someone. The participants talked about what wine gave them, what it meant, or how they experienced it – rather than about the wine itself. It was never merely an object of remote appreciation. They never cared about medium acidity, pronounced aromas of one fruit or another, complexity or the length of finish. Indeed, paradoxically, the way our research participants spoke was much more reminiscent of how wine writers talked to me than of how they write.

And here I would like to suggest a lesson that can be learnt from my research. Consider inserting the following three messages into your wine accounts.

The first message is: did you like the wine? Was it delicious? Given that you seem to think wine lovers should look for writers with similar palates, do stop pretending that it is important to distance yourself from the wine you taste. In fact, it seems it is precisely the opposite which is key. If I follow you for your palate and your (vast) experience, do give me the benefit of them.

The second message is: would you go back to the wine? Would you put it on your dinner table? Wine, after all, is to be drunk not tasted. So, would you offer the wine to your friends, family, or simply drink it in front of the TV. Wine is not an intellectual puzzle – it is to be drunk and, for many of us, shared with others at home.

And finally, the third and perhaps the most controversial message: would you buy the wine? The message is controversial as, obviously, our ability to buy wine depends on our disposable income and views on what is a sensible price for a bottle of wine. But it is worth reminding ourselves that by and large people need to buy the wine they drink.

I was recently offered a couple of glasses of an iconic wine. The current value of the bottle we drank is about €3,500. I am very happy to have drunk the wine but I asked myself whether I would buy it? The answer was a resounding no, even assuming that I could afford such an expense. The wine is drastically overrated and overpriced. Indeed, while I agree with Jamie Goode there is no point in assessing iconic wines, one assessment which ought to be done over and over again. Is the wine good value?

What of objectivity, you ask, of a calm, unemotional assessment? Do we not rely on the wine writer’s ability tell us what wine is like? Not at all. In fact, I think, objectivity is no more than a way of writing, a requirement of the genre, rather than a reflection of what happens at the tasting. And such writing can be changed and, in my view, the sooner the better.

In a recent article, Liz Thach reported on a piece of research into purchase factors among wine lovers in Australia, Italy and the USA. There was one factor all wine lovers in all three countries agreed. They purchased wine because they liked it before. The more you, wine writers, write about your subjectivity, your likes and dislikes, the more you help people to buy what they like. Indeed, Dr Thach’s research also suggests people value others’ recommendations.

When I read tasting notes, I quickly realise that I cannot smell most aromas mentioned in them, so I tend not to read them anymore. I am much more interested to learn about how a person with a vast experience in wine liked it. Would they take it home, would they buy it? Objectivity in wine is so overrated.

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash