Last night my lovely wife and I had a bottle of 2006 Michel-Schlumberger ‘Le Fou’ pinot noir. Wow — what an experience! Right off the bat the wine was showing luscious fruit, fine structure and acid for age-ability, and a hint of that nearly indescribable “forest floor” aroma that typically characterizes a fine Burgundy. After about 20 more minutes of swirling and sniffing, the finer complexities began to show – ripe pomegranate, red cherry and Christmas spices melding perfectly with silky smooth tannins. A half an hour later the wine had reached it’s full virtually indescribable glory. And later on when the pizza 
arrived (yes, we paired the pinot with a beautiful NY style pizza) we were quite happy with how the spice and fruit in the wine harmonized so well with each slice.
And now I’d like to compare last night’s wine tasting experience with a quick summary of what goes down at a wine competition. A “professional taster” sits at a table with a scorecard and a pencil. An 
assistant opens maybe 15 bottles of wine or more and pours the wine into a whole buncha glasses. The taster sniffs and sips and ponders for a moment and gives the wine a score or a medal (or not). That’s it. Done deal. And then the believers flock to the store to snap up the 94 point cabernet and the Gold Medal pinot.
O.K., I guess I’m being a bit snarky. But, at this point, I need to make a horrible confession. I used to be a Spectator believer. Young and naïve, I would dutifully take my monthly buying guide to the wine shop and snap up all the Best Buys and Cellar Selections I could afford (which wasn’t much, actually). But eventually I saw the light and realized what wine writer Dan Berger recently commented on – wines with subtle finesse and character don’t win medals, the monster oak and alcohol wines do. And monster wines don’t pair well with food and they don’t age well. These wines are like a bad pop
song, designed to smack you in the face with immediate gratification but little else. Sure you may be tapping your toe the first time you hear “Achy Breaky Heart” but after two or three more listens you realize that you’ve been had.
These days I look at wine tasting not as a singular event but as an entire experience. It’s about the people you’re with, the food you’re serving, the occasion, the ambience, the weather, the music, the mood. It’s about a taster’s relationship with the winery and Winemaker. And it’s especially about the mystical way a wine opens up and evolves over time, to be sipped and savored over the course of an hour or two. It’s really that simple.
But even if one ignores the whole “experience” argument and really, really wants an expert to pave the way then who, exactly, can one turn to? A recent study looked at the results of several thousand wines entered in 13 major U.S. wine competitions and found little consistency in which wines won gold medals. Another study found judges often rated the same quite differently when they tasted it twice in the same blind flight of wines. Hmmm….
So the moral of this story is simple — learn for yourself. Discover your own palate, not Parker’s. Eat, drink, chat with friends, rock out and enjoy the experience. And leave the medals to Michael Phelps.
Happy Sipping,
Tony
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Um, pretty sure wine goes perfect with pizza!
Big oaky wines do go good with food and they age well. Your fancy Pinot has plenty of oak and alcohol. Sorry to be snarky but you started it. Achy Breaky was only bad because it got played way way way tooo much. You can;t drink big ass cabs over and over but when you get a big ass smooth one it’s hard to beat.
That’s cool — I love feedback (in agreement or not). Everyone has a different palate and opinion. Yin and Yang, and all that. Regarding oak, anyway, it certainly can add balance and complexity to a wine. My main gripe is with wines that reek of char and vanilla and taste the same. We spend a heck of a lot of time and energy growing grapes that will (hopefully) yield balanced and complex juice. Slamming that juice with too much new oak simply covers up any character and subtlety in the perfume and flavors of a wine and defeats the whole notion of terroir — all wine starts to taste the same (like oak).