Should we let the wine do the talking?

It’s quite fashionable to be dogmatic these days. I’m exceptionally guilty of it, whether for or against Natural wines; against the way Bordeaux is cynically marketed; against the idea that a high price should trigger a response in our brains that says ‘this wine must be good’; and so on.

A lot of the time, when arguments are hypothetical or based on ideas or notions in the world of wine, a good retort is to say this: ‘well, just taste it and then let’s talk’.

Don’t like Natural Wines? Just taste a few. Think Biodynamics is hocus-pocus? Just taste a few Biodynamic wines. Don’t like Robert Parker? Just taste some of the wines he rates highly. Don’t like the price of Lafite? Just taste the wine.

Not all of these cases will work. I, for one, know that I will love the Lafite but that I’ll still not like it’s price.

However, while there may well be a lot of Parker-loved wines that I don’t like, there are (admittedly) just as many again that I completely agree with him on.

And as for Natural or Biodynamic wines, I have tasted enough of both to be able to tell you that both practises make some quite fantastic bottles. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and, well, it generally tastes pretty damned nice.

So why don’t we just insist that everyone stop talking theory and start tasting in practice? Nothing, except that I have one reservation – namely that letting the wine do the talking can only work one way round: no one can be allowed to talk before it has its say.

Imagine, for instance, I am about to introduce a talk by Noam Chomsky. I can preface it by saying the man has some very dubious and quite ridiculous ideas that have done nothing but seek to confound the truth since the Vietnam War or I can say that he is the most astute and correct political commentator in the last 50 years. Or, more correctly, I can shut up and let him talk.

My reservations about Natural Wines or Biodynamics remain (bizarrely, I’m perhaps more enamoured of Biodynamics than Natural but that’s just a mental weakness of mine) and not least in the field of marketing – in other words, I was (and remain) dubious about labelling wines as ‘Natural’ when there is no consensus as to what that actually means. Calling a wine ‘Natural’ in this sense is basically speaking about it before it’s tasted. That is just as unfair as the anti-Natural wines people saying ‘all Natural wines are a con’. It’s just as bad as Natural wine proponents having a go at commercially made wines.

If you ever want to prove a point about such ‘fads’ (I use the term very lightly), simply arrange a blind tasting mixing up Natural, Biodynamic, ‘Commercial’ [whatever that means] and, I don’t know, holistic wines. Ask people to taste them and see which type of wine they prefer.

Of course, the Biodynamic crowd might complain that the tasting was on a root day, but I can pretty much guarantee a fair spread across preferences for all ‘types’ of wine. Why? Well probably because that’s just the way wine is. One person might not like the muddy-coloured oxidised Natural wine but might like the Natural Beaujolais several bottles down.

So to conclude: (1) never allow anyone to talk about a wine before you’ve put your lips to the glass and swirled it around your tongue, (2) always taste blind when tasting for assessment (people who say a label doesn’t affect them are as trustworthy as those who constantly tell you they can only fall in love with someone’s inner beauty) and (3) by all means, maintain dogmatic views on things (it would be so boring otherwise) just don’t bring them out until after the wine’s been tasted.

[If it is true that some wine critics can not be swayed by a label just as much as people can fall in love with someone's inner beauty, perhaps we should pay more attention to women tasters given that most men I know are about as deep as a two-day old puddle - and as attractive.]