It's Not in the Numbers

It's Sunday afternoon. A 62-degree late January day in LA, a great day for a walk down to the newsstand for somthing to read in the evening. I grab my hoodie and jacket and I'm off faster than a prom dress. Upon my arrival, there's a plethora of automotive publications, female "I hate my body" magazines, and row after row of nudie magazines. It's a hard choice between cars and girls, but I happen to have nearly every car magazine ever printed, and just the thought of what my girlfriend would do to me if I brought home naked women makes my cring. What to do?

I scan the rows for something thats catches my fancy. At last I come across the food and beverage section and grab three big-name wine publications. I quickly head back home to my bottle of Termes Temernio (review forthcoming).

With a glass of wine in hand, I flop down on my favorite chair--which also happens to be the only chair in the apartment--and start reading. Blah, blah, blah, smug, smug, smug. After I read the Words from the Editor I move through the pages to the reviews, and I read. Rather than finding heartfelt, passionate reviews about the dance of the wine on the author's palate, or a nose of the spring day when he had his first kiss by the river, there is a number. This made me wonder. Who the hell is making these numbers up? Wine Spectator has their system, Robert Parker has his, and even BevMo has their own set of numbers. How does a guy who has no wine knowledge pick out a bottle with all of these inconsistent numbers? This reminds me of a blog entry I read at Malibu is Burning about this same phenomenon.

I ignore every number that comes my way. These scores can be bias on a particular taste, or relation$hip [sic] with a vineyard. First find out what your palate likes. This will take some trial and error of buying and trying wines you may not like. Through this process, you will find what you do like, or find out you don't like wine at all and stick with beer. Cheers.

When you do realize what kind of wines you like, you can explore other wines that are consistent with the flavors you like. This is when you get to pretend you're in high school again, because now it's time to research. Read tasting notes, find others that have similar palates and ask them questions. Get multiple opinions, though, because palates are biased and one person may confuse residual sugar with fruit.