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What Jancis Robinson Didn’t Know May Have Helped Her

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A wine’s first duty is to be good. Beyond that, terroir is bullshit.

—Paul Draper, wine grower

Abstract

A position has been advanced by a number of philosophers, notably by Burnham and Skilleås, that certain knowledge is required to aesthetically appreciate a fine wine. They further argue that pleasure is not an integral part of aesthetically appreciating wine. Their position implies that a novice cannot aesthetically appreciate a fine wine. This paper draws on research into tasting and psychology to rebut these claims. I argue that there is strong evidence from both the average consumer and from wine experts that they are unable to separate enjoyment from aesthetic evaluation; secondly, I argue that wine knowledge may actually preclude tasting of the wine as it exists in the glass due to perceptual bias. I conclude by arguing that it is unclear how exactly knowledge of things like terroir is supposed to affect the taste, as well as question what role conforming to a certain style plays in aesthetic success, as arguments that require knowledge for appreciation typically emphasize knowledge of styles of wine.

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Notes

  1. Bach (2007) calls this ‘practical’ wine knowledge, and he makes a similar distinction.

  2. Burnham and Skilleås refer to the views of Robinson repeatedly in their (2012) and their (2014). They view her as a wine tasting expert.

  3. For an argument that there is a tension between the theory that aesthetic appreciation requires certain knowledge and the existence of aesthetic epiphanies, see Sackris (2013).

  4. When Bach asks “What good is wine knowledge when it comes to enjoying the experience of drinking wine?” he is not asking how the question applies to absolute beginners; he says “I am asking about people who have a basic liking for wine….” (2007, p. 22). I am asking about the same people.

  5. What exactly constitutes ‘terroir’ may vary depending on who is defining it to you. Most simply, ‘terroir’ refers to the conditions under which a wine is grown: soil conditions, micro-climate, rainfall, etc. However, it can take on much more for other writers. See for example Randall Graham (2008) or Matt Kramer (2008).

  6. They make a similar point in their (2012); see chapter 4.

  7. A completely blind, or ‘double blind’ tasting is one in which the taster knows nothing about the wine s/he is to drink, usually save for the ability to inspect its color; the person providing the samples also does not know what kind of wine is being tasted, or have any knowledge that might allow them to influence the study, like the purpose of it.

  8. Cohen (2013) makes a similar point regarding the need to taste a wine as a wine in a certain style in order to properly appreciate it, but his view is likely weaker than the Burnham and Skilleås position, as he does not appear to hold that wine has emergent properties.

  9. But this is far from a settled issue. See Silvers (1972) and Herzog (2007) for discussion of this issue.

  10. I owe this point to Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen. Korsmeyer (2011) makes a similar point.

  11. An anonymous reviewer enquired as to whether I take my argument to extend to food. My tentative answer is ‘yes’: it may be that a trained chef is more likely to know which flavors will go well together, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily has a more complete taste experience than the diner. Further, I do think that in the case of food liking is a key part of appreciating. I doubt that even chefs order courses which prominently feature ingredients that they don’t care for because they can somehow appreciate (b) the dish nonetheless. However, the case of food is complicated by factors such as strong emotional attachment and cultural considerations that may not apply to wine: presumably most people did not have a favorite childhood wine! Burnham and Skilleås (2012) do not take their argument to generalize to food, and to delve into this issue would likely take us too far afield. Briefly: Schaffer (2007) rejects the position that specialized knowledge plays a role in literally tasting what is on the plate; Iggers (2007) argues that the emotional power of brands has the ability to overpower the actual taste of the food product; Sweeney (2007) concludes that food can have aesthetic properties, but not that we need any training to appreciate them; Perulla (2016) argues that the taste of a meal may be heavily influenced by context, but does not think any special training is required to appreciate the meal—at the very least, the aesthetic properties of the food are not emergent for Perulla; Korsmeyer (1999) believes that food may have a meaning that depends on certain cultural knowledge which does in fact impact how the taster may experience the food, yet she maintains that the food could have this deep significance even if it is not well prepared; in some cases cultural context could be overriding the taste of the food (e.g., Americans’ love of over-cooked turkey).

  12. See Parker (2018). He states that no wine under $25 dollars is tasted blindly. Further he engages in many barrel tastings at estates, which cannot be done blindly.

  13. St. Helena Star, 7/6/2006, as cited in Burnham and Skilleås (2008).

  14. For additional evidence that one cannot properly appreciate, or evaluate, a wine that one dislikes, see Styles (2004). Styles reports on a famous dispute between Robinson and Parker over the 2003 Chateau Pavie: Robinson disliked the wine because it was not made in the typical St. Emilion/Bordeaux style and gave it a very low score; however, Parker loved the wine.

  15. And presumably, if you falsely tell them that one of the glasses before them is a white wine dyed red, they will (falsely) apply white wine descriptors.

  16. Jancis Robinson admits to falling victim to this old ‘trick’; see her (1997).

  17. Hughson and Boakes are citing R. Pangborn, H. Berg and B. Hansen (1963).

  18. See also the entry on Penfolds in Halliday and Hook (2015) for a testament to its quality and world renown.

  19. This event seems to have taken place in 1983 or 1984, but the timeline is not totally clear to me.

  20. An anonymous reviewer suggested that it could be the case that nationalism stopped the TV show participants from giving a fair report and that, for all we know, the three Frenchman actually enjoyed the Australian wine but wanted to save the French wine industry some face by giving it a bad review. What actually went on in their minds and on their taste-buds cannot be proven by me, at least. Even if the scenario the anonymous reviewer describes did in fact occur, we should still be troubled by that—the actual taste of the wine was not causing the reaction they gave.

  21. See also Hughson and Boakes (2002). There they report the results of an experiment in which, if novices are provided with a short list of tasting terms, they can compose a description of a wine that they could later use to re-identify that wine at a success rate better than chance. This supports Robinson’s claim that experienced taster’s use “trigger words” to help them identify flavor notes and wines.

  22. At least at this time. There are MRI scans of novices and experts drinking wines, and different areas of the brain light up. But this may simply be because the experts are trying to identify the wine style and region it hails from, and the novice is not bothering to. This tells us little about their level of enjoyment, or if they are having different aesthetic experiences. See Good (2007).

  23. Chateau Lafite is a premiere cru in the French classification system of 1855. See Penning-Roswell and Robinson (2015). Further, a quick internet search shows that a bottle is currently selling for an average price of about $3400.

  24. A bottle of Chianti Classico currently goes for around $15.

  25. Bach also expresses amazement at how certain tasting practices could play a role in constituting the taste of the wine: “These practices and traditions may very well play a key epistemic role, but that does not give them metaphysical powers” (2013, p. 389).

  26. Here they are talking about what is possible now, not 2030.

  27. A change in one’s preferences need not be the result of a ‘maturing’ palette—our preferences can change for what seem like unexplained reasons. Our palette changes in ways that are out of our control because taste and smell receptors become less sensitive as we age, starting around year forty. See Cowart (1989).

  28. To return to Penfolds: it is considered one of Australia’s finest wines, yet it uses grapes grown from all over the country—it is not from any place in particular, except Australia, and we can hardly say that all of Australia constitutes a unique terroir if we also want to hold that very different wines are made in plots that are side by side in Burgundy.

  29. http://www.winepros.org/consumerism/ava.htm.

  30. I’ve had New Jersey Chambourcin as well--not as pickle-y but still not that good.

  31. Bach raises a similar concern: “Burnham and Skilleås also describe aesthetic properties as ‘relational,’ as ‘second-order attributes’ (p. 111), and this means, it seems to me, that they are instantiated by relations among a wine’s first-order sensory qualities. A wine is balanced, for example, only if no one quality dominates the others.

  32. The winemaker from southern Illinois who applied for the AVA designation said “[T]he AVA stamp confirms the Shawnee Hills region's capability for producing unique wines that are distinctly Illinois.” See Shawnee Hills American Viticultural Area (2015).

  33. An anonymous reviewer pointed out that I seem to take a wine’s not containing any faults as an objective mark of its success or ‘goodness’. I can see how this would strike the reviewer as contrary to my thesis. However, it seems that, overall, both the modern market and the ancients have rejected wines with technical faults, such as wines that have been exposed to air and begun to turn to vinegar, or wines with cork taint. I take this as a sign that not many people appreciate such wines, but I don’t take that to mean that they are not appreciable in theory. I suppose I could imagine some aficionado claiming that he appreciates the smell of wet dog that results from cork taint in certain varietals. Nonetheless, human beings have disliked wine that has been over-exposed to air for quite some time—this is why the ancients put so much effort into doctoring their wine with other food products. See Paul Lukacs (2013). For these reasons, I think it is fair to treat wines with these properties as defective for all drinkers.

  34. This helpful way of putting things, as well as the suggestion to consider this larger issue, was given to me by an anonymous reviewer. My thanks to that person.

  35. See Korsmeyer’s (1999) for a useful overview of the ‘hierarchy’ of the senses. Historically, it was because taste and smell were viewed as ‘lesser’ that philosophers concluded that they could not offer aesthetic experience. This position can be traced all the way back to Plato. See the Phaedo, for example. See also Sackris (2013).

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Acknowledgements

My thanks to Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen for reading and commenting on several versions of this paper. Thanks also to the editors and reviewers at Erkenntnis for their helpful comments.

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  1. Arapahoe Community College, 5900 S. Santa Fe Drive, Littleton, CO, 80120, USA

    David C. Sackris

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Sackris, D.C. What Jancis Robinson Didn’t Know May Have Helped Her. Erkenn 84, 805–822 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-9981-z

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