Me he metido en el berenjenal de criticar TWA en un foro en el que no sólo hay

Me he metido en el berenjenal de criticar TWA en un foro en el que no sólo hay un gran "culto" al "chavalín" sino donde el propio William Kelley escribe con frecuencia. Ya sabía que me iban a saltar al cuello pero no me pude reprimir.

Os cuelgo los mensajes en inglés, como se escribieron originalmente, para que cada uno los podáis traducir con Google sin que sea yo quien subconscientemente pueda hacer una traducción poco objetiva.

Este es mi mensaje original que titulo "Inconsistency of Wine Ratings at TWA?":

My issue here is: shouldn’t a wine magazine be capable of providing a rating, a valuation of the quality of a wine independently from the personal taste of the reviewer?

I may prefer Priorat or Bordeaux to Rioja, but if I review a good wine from Rioja I will try to provide as objective a review as possible, beyond my personal preferences.

I have seen a massive change in ratings and appreciation of Bordeaux wines with the change in coverage that took place at TWA one or two years ago. Some (many) wines that were highly appreciated and highly rated were suddenly downgraded and replaced by the newly favored Chateaux.

And now it is Rhone. Yesterday night I had a bottle of Le Clos du Pic 2016, from Chateau Puech-Haut. An XXL wine which I very much liked in its style (certainly not for the faint of heart). So I went today to TWA to check the rating and I see that it got 94 points at the time and that this particular wine has received normally between 94 and 96 points from Joe Czerwinski. The 2018 vintage (which was a hot complicated vintage in the area) got 92-94.

But wait! Then I see no review for 2019 and a new reviewer for 2020 rating it 88 points and with a footnote saying that this Chateau’s wines “sometimes lack elegance and finesse”.

Is there anything like an objective valuation of the quality in a wine or must we be 100% subject to the preference and subjectivity (bias) of the wine critic?

I know I am implicitly referring to some critics who are very popular in this forum, but my question is an honest one. Will now wines in the US be re-rated because Joe is reviewing there? Will wine ratings in Portugal be turned around now Luis Gutiérrez has taken over? Which ratings were correct: the old ones or the new ones?

Mind you: Joe and Luis are not the ones I am criticising here; I love them!

Luego sorprendentemente hay alguien que me da la razón poniendo este ejemplo:

For me personally any rating and any report is worth as much as the taste of the taster - what’ s the value of a rating of a vegetarian about a steak? Or of the chef in a steak house about falafel with tofu?

A quien yo a su vez respondo:

Good example, Paul. If you replace “vegetarian” for “Burgundian” and “steak” for “Bordeaux” you get perfectly what I mean.

Y entonces ya sí que entran los foreros habituales y me dan hasta en el carnet hasta que finalmente entra el propio William Kelley y me contesta:

Your post raises a lot of very interesting questions that go to the heart of wine criticism, and some important transitions happening at TWA—though I can’t help forming the impression that you’ve already made up your mind about the answers (and if you really do consider contemporary Burgundy to be the wine world’s answer to vegetarian cuisine, our capacity for agreement may be limited). I’d prefer to answer many of those questions in our own time, but know that at TWA we are certainly thinking about them very keenly. So I’ll confine myself to some more general remarks.

As Chanel said, “fashions change, but style endures”, and the reality is that the wine world has (by her definition) plenty of fashion along with plenty of style. We don’t, for the most part, listen to the same popular music as our parents, or seek out the same cuisine; we don’t decorate our homes the same way, or take the same vacations. Wine isn’t any different, and I make no apology for championing what I think is a contemporary vision of wine. It would be very unhealthy, to my mind, to try to freeze tastes in the year 2000 and judge wines by the criteria of another era. Many great producers have evolved immeasurably since then, whether it’s Peter Sisseck at Pingus, the team at Harlan Estate, Troplong-Mondot in Saint-Émilion, or Christophe Roumier in Chambolle. That’s natural, and to me, laudable.

Similarly—and this has been discussed before—the notion that there is no legitimate role for taste in wine criticism is quite simply nonsense. Do architectural critics admire a building because the roof doesn’t leak? Do film critics praise a film because the cameras are in focus? Is a musical performance great as long as the instruments are in tune? Or is a béarnaise profound simply because the egg yolk hasn’t curdled? No other domain of aesthetic criticism has fallen for this canard. So the idea that wines are entitled to praise simply for being “well made” (and at that, by your definition, not mine) doesn’t hold much water.

I think if you’re trying to reduce this evolution to some simplistic polarity between “big wines” and “weedy wines” you’re not going to enjoy much success. My own cellar contains plenty of old Quintarelli, Henri Bonneau Grange des Pères and Graeme MacDonald’s Cabernets, and Emmanuel Reynaud’s wines are in the top-five by volume. Last night, I opened a 2007 Prüm WS Spaëtlese, a 2008 Pignan and a 1969 Ponsot Clos de la Roche—so my tastes aren’t so susceptible to being pigeonholed. Some of the highly-rated Bordeaux in TWA today are too powerful for some of the Berserkers reading this. What I hope is that the wines I rate highly express a strong identity, delivered with harmony, purity, integration and structural seamlessness/finesse. The flip side is that I have indeed downgraded wines that to me seem to be dominated by their élevage; which display overtly overripe characteristics; and/or which are marred by elevated levels of brettanomyces-derived off-aromas. My arguments are given, I think, quite clearly in my reviews, as I think it’s important to give my reasoning—precisely so people can identify which step of my argumentation they agree or disagree with. I’m always happy to discuss them 

Y a esto le he respondido yo a mi vez:

Thanks for your reply, William. I appreciate you taking up the gauntlet.

I still believe that there can be some degree of objectivity on what a good wine is (not just well made) even if its élevage is more marked that what one’s personal taste errs towards as long as it is made “with harmony, purity, integration and structural seamlessness/finesse” as you say. I believe it is compatible.

Because one can always wonder who’s taste has been frozen in the wrong era: Joe’s, Yohann’s, Lisa’s or yours? Call me a romantic but I would love to believe there is some degree of objectivity amongst the tastes of the four of you. Or Jeff’s or Jebb’s or Neal’s, to agree on what a good wine is. Not just well made. Even if each of you prefers a different style.

I have absolutely nothing against Burgundy nor against vegetarian cuisine, God forbid! I love a good French Pinot! But I do have a daughter who went through a vegan phase and at the time I would not dare to ask her for the best meat restaurants in town. Nor would I have asked her to become the steakhouse specialist at Time Out.

Having said all that, I have to admit that by reading your wine reviews I have progressively come fairly close to understanding which wines I will/will not like beyond the specific rating (“number”) that you give.

I just wish you would sometimes be able to use a more prudent, less disdainful tone when writing the reviews of these objectively good wines that you dislike because you (in your own right) disagree with their style. I guess it is something one achieves in due course with age, like a good wine does.

No sé si lo siguiente es que me baneen del foro o qué... :))

La verdad es que lo voy a dejar ahí, aunque sé que  la foto de mi carnet de identidad va a volver a sufrir. Pero yo ya he dicho lo que tenía que decir...

Perdonad el rollo, sobre todo por lo del texto en inglés, pero me ha parecido que podría ser interesante dado que hemos discutido sobre este asunto repetidas veces.