Wine Writing and the Problem of Objectivity, or Is There Room for a Nigella Lawson of Wine Writing?

Imagine you are reading a recipe. Or a food column. Or a cookbook. This is what it says: "This spaghetti sauce is the color of crushed tomatoes with a hint of brown from the meat. Aromas of basil, tomato, and garlic are followed by pronounced flavors of tomato, browned meat, and herbs with a spicy finish. I give it 97 points." Would you make this? I wouldn't. Sounds too clinically observant, too detached, like it's trying to be objective about spaghetti sauce, which is not something to be objective about! It's devoid of passion, and barely engages the senses. It is, sadly, remarkably like the wine reviews I post here, which fit the cookie-cutter image of what a wine review is supposed to be.

Instead I'd make something like this, copied from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat: "This is my favorite--along with all my other favorites. I love the buttery, eggy, creaminess of the sauce, saltily-spiked with hot-cubed pancetta: it's comforting, but not in a sofa-bound kind of way. It feels like a proper dinner, only it takes hardly any time to cook." Somehow, in just a few lines she manages to convey the mood of this spaghetti, the complexity of it, and most importantly the taste. She tells you how you're going to feel when you eat it. And she admits straight off the bat that she loves it, and loves other food just as much.

Why am I copying recipes on my wine blog? Lately I've been struck by how very different food writing and wine writing really are. Food writing is expected to be subjective; wine writing is supposed to be done under the illusion of objectivity. Which is odd, because for many of us wine is very closely related to food. We think of wine as an ideal accompaniment to a meal, obsess about how to pair wine with a food that will bring out its best characteristics, and often cook with wine as well.

There have been a few posts in the blogosphere lately by Ryan Fujiu and Tom Wark on subjectivity and wine tasting. There have also been some about the perils and possibilities of the 100-point system for wine reviews by Ryan Opaz and Dr. Vino. Just yesterday, guest blogger Steve Bjerklie wrote a piece for Catie on Through the Walla Walla Grape Vine on points, too. Points and objectivity (or the lack thereof) in wine writing seem to be the perennial debates of the wine blogosphere, as far as I can tell. Don't believe me? Go back and look at a thought-provoking article from last March by Laura Ness of Appellation America about women, men and wine points that was posted on the Women Wine Critics Board.

Here's what I think: wine points and the illusion of objectivity are related problems. The leading culprit for giving folks the idea that wine reviews are objective is, alas, the 100-point scale. This is not an entirely novel perspective, but I think it bears repeating.

So I began to wonder, is there room for wine writing that is unabashedly opinionated about wine, for a prose style that is flagrantly personal and marvelously evocative? Is there room for a wine writer who would do for wine writing what Nigella Lawson has done for food writing?

I don't think so. For reasons that I cannot understand, writing about wine like Ms. Lawson writes about food would be cringe-inducing and irritating for most folks. Of course, some people find Lawson's food writing equally annoying. But she is, perhaps, an extreme example of the general trend in food writing in which passion and competence rather than objectivity and expertise is what drives the medium. I think the reverse is true of wine writing: it's driven by objectivity and expertise. Is this because food writing is a genre largely pioneered by women, while wine writing was (and continues to be) a genre dominated by men? Sure there are exceptions--great women wine writers like Jancis Robinson, for example, and great male food writers like James Beard--but I think statistics would support my sense that wine writers and even wine bloggers are largely male. Is this in turn because wine media and marketing are driven by a points mentality and most women, as Steve Bjerklie argues in the column above, are not?

So I wonder, is there some reason why it's ok for a woman to rhapsodize about scrambled eggs but not sauternes? If so, what is it? Does it scream "undisciplined"? Does it smack of amateurism when we are striving for professionalism? Why do we put numbers on wine, but we don't grade other food products? Most important, can you help me figure out why we are ok with impassioned and highly-opinionated accounts of hamburgers but shy away from emphasizing the mysterious, subjective, glorious, and even alchemical properties of this elixir called wine?