Reading between the Wines, With a New Preface. Terry Theise
Power
Sweetness
Ripeness
Concentration
It's not that these aspects don't matter at all, but too many think they matter too much. They appear near the bottom of my scale of values, but they do appear.
Power: Power matters only when you're planning a menu and selecting the wines. You want to align the power of the dish with that of the wine, so one doesn't subdue the other. But power inherently is a quality neither desirable nor undesirable; it needs to justify its existence by combining with grace, distinctiveness, and deliciousness. Too often it stops at mere incoherent assertiveness: I'm putting my fist through this wall because I can!
Sweetness: In the wine world there's no single component of flavor subjected to more obsessive dogma and doctrine. The prevailing (and I'd say pathological) aversion to sweetness has diminished many wines. Sweetness figures in menu planning and in forecasting the way a wine might age. It is sometimes helpful. Like acidity, tannin, or any other single facet of flavor, sweetness matters only when there is too much or too little of it. Yet we focus on it in isolation, insisting that it be reduced or removed at all cost, unaware that we are misguided and have taken balance, length, and charm away from our wines. Sweetness should be present when it is called for and absent when it is not, as determined by the flavors of individual wines and not by any theory we have promulgated a priori.
And a lot of us are confused about sweetness. I'm here to help. There's the sweetness of an apple, and there's the sweetness of a Twinkie. They're not the same!
Ripeness: I refer especially to physiological ripeness, sometimes called phenolic ripeness, which is seen when a grape's skins and seeds are ripe. It would seem to be desirable, but the singular pursuit of physiological ripeness as an absolute has wrecked many wines by condemning them to a power they can't support, and it has removed the nuance possible when wines are made from grapes of different degrees of ripeness. When ripeness is sufficient, how do we assume overripeness will be preferable? It only brings more alcohol and an infantile swaddle of fruit.
Concentration: Concentration matters only after this question is answered: What are we concentrating? Tannin, viscosity, alcohol? Are these things we want even more of? In itself, concentration is merely an adjective, not a virtue.
Taking a Stand: What Is Not Important
Why begin by discussing the unimportant? you might ask. Because these ephemera take up far too much of wine discourse, deflecting us from more important matters. I remember Gore Vidal's famous answer to the question of why academic quarrels were so fierce: because the stakes were so low.
You might expect the wine world to be a gentle and civilized place, but you'd be wrong. You'd think habitual wine drinkers would be less querulous than other folks. Wrong again. Then you'd get tired of always being wrong, and realize that wine can be a lightning rod for many other debates—or arguments—that are conducted with humanity's usual standards of skill, intellect, civility, and tolerance. In other words, it's Mailer versus Vidal, minus the erudition.
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