Confidence = Consumption

Wine consumers are a curious lot and wine experts are even curiouser (?). What do people really want fer christsake? Why do they like the wines they like, and why don’t we all agree on what is, or isn’t, quality and value? Pretty simple, really – we are all different. The question seems to be, “how different are we, what are these differences and what does it matter?”

And it turns out it is our (the wine trade and experts) relative ignorance of taste sensitivity and basic human behavior that is making millions of potential wine consumers feel intimadated and lose confidence in their ability to enjoy "sophisticated" wines. After a year of survey development, collection and data crunching Dr. Virginia Utermohlen, MD and I are excited to announce we are one step closer to a solution!

One of the fascinating things that came out of the data we have been looking at from our just-concluded wine consumer research project, conducted in conjunction with the Consumer Wine Awards at Lodi is that “confident consumers are consuming consumer.” And the most confident consumers are a phenotype we categorize from our research as Tolerant tasters: they are physiologically predisposed to love red wines. They want red wines regardless of occasion or meal. They can tolerate lots of intensity, bitterness, tannin and high levels of alcohol. They know what they like and how to get at it.

The least confident segment? Those we categorize as Sweet and Hyper-sensitive who are physiologically predisposed to abhor the wines favored by the Tolerant crowd. And here is where this matters: the disenfranchised consumers of light wines, sweet or dry, are 6 times more likely to be embarrassed about the wines they drink and 10 times more likely to drink wine less than once a month than a Tolerant consumer. There is a clear-cut correlation between taste sensitivity, confidence and wine consumption. And don't you think for a second they are not drining - they are over at the bar slurping down the appletinis, cosmos and myriad other drinks where they are not punished and stigmatized for having more taste buds!

I propose that this is an amazing opportunity for the wine industry and we really need to address the issues that keep so many consumers, at all levels of interest and participation, so overwhelmed and confused. And with the enormous range of products and differing opinions from wine experts, is it any wonder?

With over 80,000 wines in the US market alone the vast majority of wine consumers are confused, intimidated and overwhelmed - even stigmatized for their wine preferences. And 'wine education' as it is presented today, only makes matters worse in many cases. Wine experts, writers and bloggers argue over wine characteristics that are clearly perceived differently and this is directly related to the range and intensity of sensations we are physiologically capable of experiencing.

The battle is raging once again in the blogosphere even as we speak – "what defines ‘balance’?" for a 'taste' of the argument go to my pal Joe Robert's site: 1WineDude. The answer lies in understanding your sensitivity quotient and how this affects your personal experience (range and intensity of sensations) of wine flavors. Your taste sensitivity combined with your unique, ever-changing neural programming over time as a result of culture, society, learning, experience and aspirations and voila! - YOUR personal preferences. Throw on top of this an understanding of OTHER people's sensitivities and holy moly - no more arguing, just get that it can be radiaclly different one person to the next.

A Sufi Parable Revisited (also see my post 3 Blind Men and a Wine )
Three blind bloggers were asked to taste a high-scoring Napa Cabernet and describe the balance of fruit, oak and alcohol of the wine to a universe of spectators. The first blind man was a hyper-sensitive taster with over ten thousand taste buds, the next a sensitive taster with 2,000 buds and the third a tolerant taster with somewhere around 500 taste papillae. All were wine lovers, passionate and oh so knowledgeable, but they were unaware of their physiological sensory equipment and radically differing perception. Each of them tasted the wine and spoke in turn:

“Yech, this wine is horrible – the jammy fruit, burning alcohol, excessive oak – how can anyone drink an unbalanced, over-the-top wine like this? It would ruin any meal,” said the first blind blogger.

The second blind blogger weighed in, “This wine is representative of the style I have grown tired of – have learned to seek wines of greater finesse and that is why I joined the Anything But Cabernet movement.”

“Ah, nirvana!” quote the third expert. “Full, rich and powerful; smooth and hedonistically satisfying with a sweet fruit core. 95 points!”

The spectators looked on in confusion. Bewildered, they silently wondered which of these mavens was right – what should they look for, how on earth should they make decisions and who could they turn to so they could make a smart buying decision? It was as if each of the blind bloggers were feeling up the same elephant and describing it as either a snake, a tree trunk and a rope.

FYI, for anyone in the wine trade (or interested in general) interested in the results of the study Dr. Virginia Utermohlen and I have been working on we are releasing our full report titled Wine Consumer Segmentation: Beverage preferences, Attitudes, and Behaviors for purchase. If you are in wine production, marketing and/or communications you can learn more about the study and place your order today at THIS LINK. We will be delivering the report electronically this Friday, December 10, 2010.

A copy of our free summary report can be downloaded at http://www.timhanni.com/. It is a comparison of the Sweet and Tolerant phenotype groups and chock full of great information. The summary provides a thumbnail look at the background and format of the information that is available in the full report. The full report covers all four segments we have identified and slices and dices the data in detail calling out opportunities for strategically marketing to ALL consumers who choose wine in a more powerful and targeted manner.

A Challenge to the Wine Industry

There are many positive factors that have parlayed wine into the adult beverage most associated with good taste, sophistication and style. Wine quality, at all price levels, has improved dramatically. The range of wine types and styles available today is complete enough to satisfy every possible consumer preference and pocketbook. Indeed one of the challenges consumers face is how to confidently drill into the overwhelming number of choices and find wines they will love.

An equally dizzying number of choices exists with wine classes, educational initiatives and the availability of wine evaluations and information. The birth and expansion of social media, blogs and on line wine communities ranging from eRobert Parker, Jancis Robinson and Snooth have provided and explosion of connectivity and the ability to share points of view. To top it all off there are new generations of wine heroes and evangelists like Gary Vaynerchuk, Joe Roberts, Jeff Lefevere, Alder Yarrow and many, many others that millions of consumers and professionals alike tune into every day. Yep, there is plenty of wine information and interaction available.

This being said I am struck by how often the same issues and obstacles to expanding wine consumption seem to arise over and over again. So let’s take a look at the progress that has been made over the past 10 years. The following quote appeared in Brand Week a decade ago and at the center of discussion in many wine industry circles as a call to action:
“The fragmented, historically insular (wine) industry generally seems resigned to accepting the wine consumer pool as is rather than aggressively pursuing new markets... the next decade could easily be referred to by future wine historians as the "years of missed opportunity.” Brand Week, May 1, 2000

10 Years After
So what does the wine landscape look like 10 years after Brand Week’s prediction that “the next decade could easily be referred to as the ‘years of missed 0pportunity’”?

“The wine industry is guilty of going out of its way to confuse the consumer, and must urgently come up with 'a new big idea', according to a British advertising heavyweight…'The wine industry is the most fragmented market I've seen. Fragmented, confusing, impenetrable.'” Sir John Hegarty, June 28, 2010, Masters of Wine International Symposium, Bordeaux, France

Hmmm. Sounds pretty familiar. What is it that keeps us stuck in this deeply etched rut carved into the path of wine enjoyment and appreciation? I am convinced that it is a combination of complacency, misinformation and stubbornness in the wine industry. It is an unwillingness to adapt and change that is preventing us from having a larger consumer base and compromising our long-term fiscal stability and health. Despite ample evidence that the wine industry would be well served by becoming more consumer-focused, simplifying our messages and improving OUR ability to communicate our mantra remains the same, “we must better educate consumers, move them up to better wine.”

This is nothing new about the wine industry mission to educate consumers and there is also nothing wrong with the idea. Ditto for the idea of moving them up to better wine. Perhaps what we really need is another strategy to run concurrently. We seem to be keeping something in place that is not working for a really large portion of the market and then we wonder why we are not making more sustainable progress in removing the overwhelm and intimidation as evidenced in every wine consumer study ever conducted.

This quote about the Project Genome consumer study taken from Wines & Vines in 2008, “With the highest percentage of consumers falling into the "Overwhelmed" category, Leslie Joseph, Constellation's vice president of consumer research affairs, commented: ‘We need to do a better job as an industry of helping these people understand what a wine's going to taste like.”

And the following is from the UK site WINEOPTIONS.COM illustrating this phenomenon is present on a global scale. “WineOption.org feels the wine trade has traditionally placed its focus on connoisseurs and wine snobs rather than the much greater number of unpretentious people who enjoy wine. Many producers, retailers and wine writers have traditionally taken much of the potential enjoyment out of wine drinking by shrouding the subject with myth, snobbery, and arcane or pretentious language. This facade has been, and in some quarters remains, a convenient means of confusing or even intimidating wine shoppers into making purchase decisions much less helpfully informed than is the case with most other foods and beverages. In fact, it is perfectly possible to provide in relatively simple day to day language the basic information which most wine drinkers need and want to select any given wine.”

I think that it is high time we look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “What are we missing that keeps a vast majority of consumers (and many of us professionals who are able to admit it) confused, mystified and intimidated?” The answer as I see it is to turn the tables and start newly educating ourselves and cleaning up a lot of the tired clichés and misinformation that is disseminated under the pretense of “wine education”. I am not implying that we stop wine education per se, just that we enforce a greater rigor in the information we dispense and come up with alternative solutions for the huge market segment that is further disenfranchised by our narrow, product-based and self-serving approach. The call to action is not to change anything about the many things we are doing right as an industry, it is a call to action so we can collectively discover what we may be missing that would add immeasurably to our continued growth and success.

I love this quote: “To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” Tony Robbins

What would it look like if the wine industry and wine communities to on the mission to understand, embrace and cultivate ALL wine consumers, not just the over-saturated segment we narrowly define as ‘worthy’? What if our next educational initiative were internal and focused on learning more about consumers and discovering more about who likes what and why? I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!


For more info visit http://www.timhanni.com/

Perversion, Corruption and Wine?

The intention of this article is to explore one of the commonly held conventions about wine enjoyment and the notion of “sophisticated” wine consumers. The exploratory aspect of this piece includes looking at the meaning of the term ‘sophisticated’ and then asking the question, “is this the direction the wine industry really wants to go?” There seems to be a line drawn in the sand as to what is “good” wine versus “bad” wine and that this demarcation also carries over to defining what we consider “sophisticated” consumers versus “unsophisticated” consumers.

I love to look up words and drill down into their origins and deeper meaning. One word that I find particularly fascinating is the word ‘sophisticate’. In common usage, and especially when used in relationship with wine, the word sophisticated is associated with a worldly understanding or attainment of a superior status of knowledge.

A number of years ago I decided to look up the word and turned to my trusty American Heritage Dictionary and here is what I found:

Sophisticated – adj.
1. Having acquired worldly knowledge or refinement; lacking natural simplicity.

The first part of this definition seemed to align with my understanding of the word. But it was the second part that caught my attention, “lacking in natural simplicity.” It occurred to me that in the wine community there is an inherent discord between the promotion of wine as a simplistic, communal beverage and the expectation that people should become more sophisticated and drink ‘better’ wine. The definition gave me cause to wonder if you can have natural simplicity and sophistication simultaneously?

Of course one can argue there is the option that being naturally simplistic or sophisticated is a matter of choice. Some occasions call for natural simplicity while other occasions call for greater degree of sophistication. I would not necessarily disagree with this argument but I do wonder if a person becomes truly sophisticated, can they revert back to a natural simplicity, or is the worldly knowledge or refinement become neurologically hard-wired making it impossible to revert back to the naturally simplistic way of being?

This loss of natural simplicity also make me wonder if one of the reasons many people feel uncomfortable around formal wine events or in the presence of wine sophisticates. Is it due to this lack of natural simplicity and dare I say pretense? I can see how the worldly-knowing air of sophistication might be construed as self-righteousness and this in turn become an intimidating factor for the uninitiated. I can also see how much I contribute to this air of worldly knowing and faux refinement whenever I am around wine people. And pity the poor “unsophisticated” individuals that happen to stumble into this milieu.

Which brings me to the second definition in the dictionary which I found even more interesting than the first:

Sophisticate – v.
1. To cause to become less natural, esp. to make less naïve and cause to be worldly-wise. 2. To corrupt or pervert; adulterate.

Less natural? Corrupt, perverted; adulterated? Apparently when sophistry was being bandied about as a pre-Socratic school of philosophy in ancient Greece someone who set out to become worldly-wise long ago they came back with new ideas on religion, societal mores and sexual alternatives, thus becoming perverted and corrupted to the values and practices of their own culture. Sophists then used subtle, misleading and fallacious arguments to prove their points of view. The word ‘adulterate’ means ‘to make impure, spurious or inferior by adding extraneous or improper ingredients’ and I guess this applies to learning new values and ideas as filling our heads with extraneous or improper ingredients as well.

It finally struck me how this applies to the subject of expanding wine enjoyment and improving the dynamics of the wine community as a whole. Along with sophistication there is a loss of naturalness and simplicity, combined with an inherent self-righteousness and the use of misleading arguments to prove an opinion or point of view. This progression, gained by learning and exploring, is completely natural, nearly unavoidable and may provide insights into the loss of simplicity and understanding about wine and for other people’s points of view. The sophist is inclined to convince everyone else that their new-found knowledge and opinions is something that everyone should behold and adopt. Learning that this is how we learn can give us the ability to accept and understand the points of view of others rather than feeling the need to impose our will and values on others.

That gets us to the next two definitions:

Sophist – n.
2. A scholar or thinker, esp. one skillful in devious argumentation.

Sophistry – n.
1. A plausible but misleading or fallacious argument.

These definitions see to imply that being a sophisticated wine drinker being devious, misleading and fallacious. How the heck does that fit in? My take on this is that it is not necessarily by intention but rather the completely human capacity to believe that what we know and things we experience are more real for ourselves than for others. It provides us with a sense of superiority and being in the know, wanting to hsare our experiences with others and a genuine feeling that others will benefit from seeing things our way. People also tend to gravitate to others who seem to share a common perspective and points of view. The point of view might be inclusive and people are bound by shared agreement or the connection may be made by an exclusive agreement such as the anything-but-chardonnay crowd and the feeling of strength in numbers that comes from collective agreement that this is the way it is and should be.

In my mind the devious, misleading or fallacious arguments are intentional. They are points of view that come from an individual rationale for value and preferences held to be inherently better that another’s either as an individual or collective. Then arguments ensue that one way is right, or better in some way, than another’s is where the fallacy lies. This behavior can be seen in how people connect and congregate around wine, food, politics, religion, fashion, cars – you name it. It is completely human. Whether it is the 100 point rating system, groups formed around an agreement for the superiority of wines from certain locales or the antithesis of inclusive agreement; the shared opinion for the exclusion of wine types or styles. It is misleading to think that one way is superior to another. Self-righteousness is part of being human, can take many forms and is widely practiced – even in the devious guise of the anti-geek.

Consider the possibility that sophistication inevitable and it is a natural human progression as we seek to learn about and understanding our universe. The new discoveries we make can excite us and bring more enjoyment to our lives and it is also only natural to want to share these discoveries with others. It is when we try to convince others that this new found knowledge is some how superior or are compelled to attack others for not agreeing with our philosophies or values that they their lives would be improved if only they would adopt another set of values, opinions or points of view. Yes – natural simplicity can so-exist with sophistication. It requires us to be sophisticated enough to understand the difference, and the differences in our individual opinions, perspectives and points of view.

Hmmmm. Perverted and corrupt. Anyone besides me feeling a little more like a ‘sophisticate’ today?

Consumer Friendly Wine Events

"Welcome to our event - would you like to learn about your taste sensitivity and how it affects your wine preferences?"

Imagine showing up at a wine event and you are met by someone who asks you a simple set of questions that helps you discover your Taste Sensitivity Quotient (TasteSQ) to determine if you are a Sweet, Hyper-sensitive, Sensitive or Tolerant taster. The wines are then set up in the room grouped by flavor categories: Sweet, Delicate, Smooth and Intense providing a means for the guests to zero in on the wines you are most likely to adore.

A similar format is used to add a new dimension to a wine dinner: a minimum of four wines are offered simultaneously across the range of flavor categories: sweet, delicate, smooth and intense. The wines are poured at the beginning of the meal and served with every course. This allows the guest to try them all and determine which they like best, not fearing the one they love will be whisked away at the end of a course. Tolerant tasters who love intense red wine are free to dive right in, sweet wine lovers get to enjoy their sweet wine throughout the meal and everyone gets to explore any or all of the wines with every dish.

Here are a few things we have discovered over the past 3 years of adding the TasteSQ dimension to different tastings and dinners:

1. Many attendees immediately gain a sense of confidence and spirit to explore new wines.
2. Couples and friends often discover that different taste sensitivities are the source of their disagreements (or agreements) over wine styles.
3. What we categorize as 'disenfranchised' consumers (mostly Sweet and Hyper-sensitive tasters) learn that their inherent wine preferences come from having more taste buds and their attitude is positively and immediately transformed. Young wine drinkers feel especially empowered.
4. Having the wines grouped into flavor categories ensures a better mix of wine styles for an event. This helps to avoid the 'big red' syndrome and balances out the offerings so that there is more variety.
5. Vintners who are pouring their wines get the gist of this really quickly and get to frame their talking points in a personalized fashion while learning how their wines are received by the different TasteSQ groups. We get wonderful feedback about the insights this provides for them.

At the Lodi Spring Wine Show we train members of the Lodi Tokay Rotary to conduct the TasteSQ interview (you can try it at www.yumyuk.com) and assess hundreds of attendees who then get a sticker that declares their Taste Sensitivity group. This new process is now part and parcel of every event and wine dinner I organize.

Discovering something about yourself, and others, is always a great way to engage people and to generate conversations and camaraderie. The dynamics at a dinner table when everyone is wearing their TasteSQ badge is lively, inclusive and provides a fun topic for lively discussion. For more information on this type of event and background on Taste Sensitivity Quotient you can also visit www.timhanni.com.

Expand the wine market...but not THAT way!?

It is common knowledge that perception varies from one person to the next. So why then do so many people get so hysterical when research is conducted to quantify what the differences are, and how to use the findings of the research to expand consumption?

One of the problems is mistatements, especially in news headlines. Dr. Utermohlen and I assert sweet wine drinkers are more sensitive tasters, and that this is not necessarily a good thing at all! The headlines for Wine Business and other postings of the press release declare: Study Shows Sweet Wine Drinkers Better Tasters. No, not BETTER - just different and more sensitive.

Here are links to two of the most active blogs:
Rants: http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2010/10/25/white-zin-has-its-place-but-its-not-great-wine/
Raves: http://www.1winedude.com/

Background and research at www.timhanni.com
NEW: check out the new www.yumyuk.com site! Still under development bu coming right along and there are great wine recommendations now in each flavor category, along with recommended sites and expert mavens to consult for Sweet, Hyper-sensitive, Sensitive and Tolerant tasters.

Why the hostility, me wonders?

Jancis Robinson, who broke the news on the consumer survey summary report that Dr. Utermohlen and I released, reported to me, "There was some hostile reaction on the forum of my purple pages but I quelled it, I think."

It is amazing to me how intolerant many people in the wine community have become. Some (many) people love sweet wine, and history shows it is not a US (we grew up on Coca Cola) phenomenon. It is actually a big opportunity! I guess more fuel for the fire to change things...NOW.

Sweet Wine Drinkers Unite!

A summary of the results of the Wine Consumer Preferences study I conducted via the Consumer Wine Awards at Lodi, www.consumerwineawards.com , are now posted and can be downloaded that web site and at www.timhanni.com . The report compares differences in preferences, attitudes and behaviors between SWEET and TOLERANT (love big red wines) consumers. Dr. Utermohlen, my research partner, and I also issued a press release that is sure to draw the ire of the dry-wine-is-good-wine crowd. I will be posting some of the comments, pro and con, as they are received. Please send me YOUR story! tim@timhanni.com

The first one is from Jeff Quackenbush who lives in Sonoma:

Tim,
Thank you for sending this. I’ve been ridiculed by black coffee–drinking big cab lovers as not having a “sophisticated” palate for preferring sweet wines — fruit-far-forward rieslings and icewines, preferably — to pucker-producing titans of tannin. I like icewines, because they don’t have the bite of high-alcohol ports or the like. A Napa Valley chef recently tried to convince me that learning to savor bitterness was part of “growing up” as a cosmopolitan connoisseur.
Jeff

The next from a very cool mini-consortium of Sauterne producers called Boredeaux Gold (and this is covered in detail in the revision of the wine and food section of the WSET materials I was asked to rewrite):

"We are working with the Sauternais to 'Liberez les Sauternes' or free Sauternes from it's labelling as a dessert wine and I instinctively feel that you might be able to help us. The Sauternais drink their wines with fish, roast meats and spicy foods as well as with dessert - they can't understand why the world insists on drinking it only with sweet dishes, cheese or foie gras... The 'anti-sweet' phenomenon is frustrating and confusing to them. They sense that, if left alone to choose, most people would prefer to drink sweet wines much more frequently and your research suggests that this might be the case."

When the Lafite and Hermitage came out in a formal, French haute cuisine meal sweet wines were served right along side as DINNER wines, not dessert wines. As stated in Larousse Gastonomique in 1938, "if the guest prefers." Kinda shoots down 'traditional' wine and food matching.

Finally for now is this embarrassing (for our industry) recount from a meal at a very famous restaurant last year:

Lissa Doumani is representative of the millions of hyper-sensitive wine drinkers in the world and does not fit the stereotype of a "wimpy" consumer in any way, shape or form. Lissa, daughter of iconic vintner Carl Doumani, grew up in the heart of the Napa Valley surrounded by vines at a winery that was famous for intense red wines. Lissa became a pastry chef by trade (not unusual for a highly sensitive taster) and now she and her husband Hiro are proprietors of two Michelin-starred California restaurants; Terra in St. Helena and Ame in San Francisco. Also at the table were Dr. Harold McGee, food scientist and guru to the culinary world and Chef Kukuoka from Kyoto.

During a dinner at a world famous high-end restaurant she turned to her table mate Tim Hanni MW, co-author of this study and a recognized authority on wine and food, and asked him to order a wine that she might like better than the ones pre-selected by the restaurant. The highly rated, high-alcohol wines that had been chosen by the wine experts to accompany the meal tasted unpleasantly overpowering and even burned her hyper-sensitive palate.

What ensued is the bane of the vast majority of consumers who prefer light intensity and even sweet wines. Hanni's request for a recommendation of a "light, delicate wine" was met with the embarrassing retort, "if you knew anything about wine and food you would know that these are the appropriate wine for each dish."

Says Hanni, "This is not an indictment for well-intentioned wine professionals. It is indicative of our lack of understanding how vastly different our sensory physiology can be from one person to the next."

Bull S*%t, Breakfast of Champignons

I took this picture many, many years ago and made this poster. Thought it would be fun to share!

A new article just came out in the Guardian (U.K.) written by a really nice guy named Oliver Thring. He attended a dinner I did in Wimbledon as part of my 'Bibendum Tour' in London a couple of weeks age. We spent the evening in Wimbledon with about 16 wine and food writers/bloggers discussing my ideas about individual taste sensitivity and the role it plays in shaping our wine preferences.

After that we attacked Wine and Food Matching conventional wisdoms with gusto! Lots of fun. Ollie was inspired, as were most of the guests, by the step-by-step dismantling of each wine and food myth, demonstrations that provide dramatic evidence that something is amiss with even our most closely held beliefs and then demonstrations incorporating Flavor Balancing that make both wine and food wonderfully delicious even in bizarre and unimaginable combinations.

What I find so challenging in this age of communications is that full and complete concepts cannot be presented very well in the scope of a news article. In this case the entire psychological/neuroscience component of my work was omitted and I have no probelem with that. What cracks me up is how so many people,k who have no clue about the complete scope of my work or the many wonderful chefs, scientists and wine experts I interact and work with on a regular basis.

Oliver had a blast as did I. He and the rest of the crew were really engaged in the demonstrations of taste illusions and in-depth critical re-thinking of wine and food traditions and I applaud him for this great article! Missed a bit of a point - I think wine critics are great, we just need new ideas for millions of other consumers. An alternative, not a threat or replacment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/feb/04/wine-criticism-tasting-flavour-matching?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

AND THEN - it hits the blogosphere!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/feb/04/wine-criticism-tasting-flavour-matching

Here are some links to go see the real action that develops!! Love to all - come have lunch with me when you can.

http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2010/02/04/demystify-this/comment-page-1/#comment-30480

http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/village/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=30104

The Great Cabernet Debate: Hypersensitive vs. Tolerant Tasters

I got so involved responding to a blog by Steve Heimoff today I thought I would tweak it a bit and make my own blog out of it! Lazy bastard that I am. And save your breath on the "this dumbs down wine" and these ideas are "stoopid and moronic." I know, I know. come have lunch with me.

Two radically different perspectives on the "state of the art of Cabernet Sauvignon" have surfaced the information superhighway over the course of about 2 weeks time. Just to be clear, I seriously LOVE both of the guys I will cite below who seem to be so diametrically opposed to each other on this topic. Both are brilliant, passionate men who very probably have VERY different sensory sensitivities that directly affect their experience of Cabernet Sauvignon. But I, on the other hand, give them something to agree on - ME! They both have really passionate, strong and generally negative views on a new initiative I have undertaken to create a process and new event with consumers formally evaluating wine and generating peer-to-peer recommendations. This is being done with my partners Pooch Pucilowski and Aaron Kidder (sorry to drag you guys into this! :-) ).

Steve recently posted a sarcastic (more like a thinly-veiled attack, but maybe I am being hyper-sensitive?) on the Consumer Wine Awards at Lodi event that is one of my pet projects. I take it all in stride (sniff). Conversations I have had with Dan Berger have demonstrated he agrees with Steve in principle that consumers are not generally fit to evaluate wines in a formal tasting situation. Says Steve, "With this breathless hyperventilation, the producers of the latest get-rich-quick “wine awards” gimmick announce yet another effort to 'democratize' wine assessment by taking it away from — gasp! — evil experts like me and handing it over to that ever-popular bastion of populism — the Consumer! We’re seeing these 'consumer-judged wine competitions' multiply like e coli in a petrie (sic) dish..."

The intention is not to take anything away from "evil experts" - just seeing if we can find a way to bring more people into the wine community fold and have them feel welcome. For the whole enchilada go to on this conversation at Steve’s blog go to http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2010/01/20/announcing-the-new-voice-of-the-people-worldwide-wine-awards-competition-exclusively-on-steveheimoff-com/#comments .

Below are links to the Berger article and Heiman blog that set this up "great Cabernet debate" so nicely. I have also provided some snippets taken from each.

In one corner we have the Steve Heimoff opinion, “Well, these certainly are wines that have become spectacular in recent years. You really do have to wonder where their evolution will take them. I know some people who don’t like the Napa cult style, which is based on super-mature grapes (with consequent low acidity) and generous dollops of new oak. They’re entitled to their opinion; I happen to like it.” http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2010/01/19/napa-cabernet-as-good-as-it-can-get/

In the other corner we have this just in from Dan Berger's recent article, "For more than a decade, I have hoped for a miracle. Then last week I realized the worst: Cabernet Sauvignon has changed so appreciably that I fear we’ll never see it in the way we once did... A long book could be devoted to this sad tale of decline."
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking/wine/columnists/dan-berger/article_704bc688-0712-11df-a231-001cc4c002e0.html

Consider for a moment that on one end of the spectrum we have, Dan Berger, a hypersensitive taster whose tongue, general taste sensitivity and wine preferences I have personally analyzed, is writing about his very real and very passionate views on what Cabernet should or should not be. His hypersensitivity provides an experience such that high alcohol burns and that modern Cabernets and many other wines are over-blown, over-oaked and not nice with food. For Dan, and anyone else with his sensitivity and values, this point of view is dead-on correct: “There are complicated reasons for this turnabout, but the bottom line is that we may have lost cabernet for all time. I can’t drink them young; I can’t imagine they will age well, and I cannot figure out why so many people are still buying them.” Spoken like a true hypersensitive taster! And perfect advice for other hypersensitive and many more-sensitive tasters.

People at the less-sensitive to tolerant end of the spectrum will more predictably LOVE the high-alcohol, oak and intensity that have come to define great Cabernet for the Parker/Laube crowd. And with food as well! The alcohol tastes ’sweet’, the oak and tannin are not at all overbearing and in fact the very same wines are perceived as smooth, rich and balanced. This level of extract and intensity is the source of ‘great’ for many tolerant tasters.

I can pretty much surmise that the getting to the source of these differences in opinion lies in better understanding the vastly different experiences from people at different ends of taste sensitivity continuum. I have not had the pleasure of personally assessing Steve H.’s taste sensitivity profile but will when/if he comes to lunch. I have personally tested thousands of people. I know that people like Tim Mondavi and Jancis Robinson, along with Dan, are both at the hypersensitive end of the spectrum and very predictably in the same camp with Dan Berger on the unpleasant direction things have gone with ‘too much’ oak, ‘too much’ alcohol and their experience that the food and Cabernet affinity is lost in all of this extreme flavor.

Steve responded to my on of my comments on his own blog, "But is a hypersensitive palate necessarily a good thing in a wine critic? I don’t think so." My response - it is not good, not bad. Just different sensory physiology and the source of a lot of unpleasant disagreement between wine critics and experts.

The first thing to understand about what we are looking at is there is not a 'good, bad, better' to taste sensitivity. It just 'is what it is.' Some people have as few as 300 taste buds, others over 10,000 and this plays a very significant role in establishing our individual perception of wine and everything else. All of our senses come into play and taste sensitivity correlates to our sensitivities to smell, sight, touch and hearing as well. A person with way less taste buds has many advantages and the people with the very most taste buds often have preferences that make the wine industry howl in horror! Just ask Dr. Virginia Utermohlen at Cornell University, one of our key research partners who studies this phenomenon in the context of personality development and behavioral traits and is a super/uber/hypersensitive taster. She is one of our 'poster children' for the most sensitive tasters of all - what we call SWEET tasters. If it is over 10% alcohol and less than 3% sugar, count her out. Just like MILLIONS of consumers in the US and BILLIONS around the world.

To Steve H.'s point "But is a hypersensitive palate necessarily a good thing in a wine critic? I don’t think so." Not a good thing, not a bad thing - just a very important thing to understand so that the differences in our opinions, so brilliantly lit up by the 'Great Cabernet Debate', can be better understood in a very cool and valid new way. Also PLEASE keep in mind we are simultaneously studying the psychological phenomena that have us move about with our preferences and passions.

Dan Berger goes on to note rhetorically, “P.S. Is there any connection to the decline in Cabernet style and the dramatically increased sales of pinot noir?”

This actually points to our studies of the migration of more sensitive tasters (NOTE: not inferring “better tasters” or anything of the sort!!!) to lower phenolic wines which they have a more natural tendency to enjoy. Then you can see the Hypersensitive vs. Tolerant division erupt in the same way over Pinot Noir style between the people who love and savor delicacy and finesse vs. the high extract, high alcohol and heavy oak camp (read more tolerant tasters).

Steve then commented on my observations, “As for Tim’s observation that the “decline in Cabernet style” is connected to the rise of Pinot Noir, I don’t agree. Over the course of my career, many experienced collectors told me they started off with Bordeaux/Cabernet, and then, when they got older, found themselves preferring Burgundy/Pinot Noir. I think that’s a natural progression, and not due to any modern style of Cabernet.”

I am saying that the ‘decline in Cabernet style’ is a point of view largely held by hypersensitive, and more sensitive tasters in general, and that the migration to Pinot Noir is more predictable for this sensitivity group. Our research on the subject points to traits which are very typical of a hypersensitive taster's view of things and their often predictable migration to less intense, less bitter and astringent wines. It is not a universal or uniform progression to Burgundy or Pinot Noir, more like the 'March of the More Sensitive Tasters' with a lot of passion and intellectual elements involved! Many people are absolutely satisfied to stay with their intense, extracted and oaky favorites.

Understand the examples I am providing here are greatly generalized insights from the nearly 20 years of observation, research and learning with the participation of really great researchers and scientists around the world. There are variations and mitigating factors that abound in all of this. It is a wonderfully complex and fascinating area of science and learning we are exploring and I invite any and all of you to jump in with us to continue learning more.

My usual response when people get really upset about my point of view is to invite them to lunch. I will reiterate my invitation to Steve H. in his blog: Hell – everyone is invited to my place for lunch to learn what we have discovered and argue and attack all of the premises for my outrages claims. I will cook, and I am serious.

Terroir continued

Happy new year, y'all! I have been participating in another 'terroir' discussion and thought this would be useful to post here:

Let me see if this makes sense - there is something that drives me to want to find completion for explaining things like terroir - not leaving it open ended and undefined. Please excuse my obstinance and let me try an analogy that occured to me.

Terroir is the combination of everything and anything that shapes the characteristics of a wine. A 'gout de terroir' is a distinctive characteristic in a wine that enables someone with experience to connect a wine back to its' origin.

Here is an important definition to help explain things:
Flavor: definition #4, American Heritage DictionaryA distinctive yet intangible quality felt to be characteristic of a given thing: "What matters in literature . . . is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or color of a particular human suffering" (Harold Bloom).
New York, as a city, has a certain 'flavor' to it. Meaning there are certain things that distinguish the locale. The people, the taxis, the buildings. If you see a picture of the skyline or Times Square you can say, "oh, that's New York." London has a different flavor. Or LA, or San Francisco, or Miami, or Peoria. Every town, village or city has a 'flavor' to it.

If you have never been to the town, or seen pictures of it or a movie set in it you may not be able to recognize the 'flavor' of a place. If you see a movie set in parts of Miami you may not be able to distinguish it from Cuba. The more experienced you become with the places the more adept you become at recognizing the 'flavors' and identifying the locality. Skylines, neighborhoods, villages, towns and cities change over time. The 'flavor' of a neighborhood may become transformed and unrecognizable to someone who grew up there. They will lament that something was lost - it is not like it was in the 'good old days.'

The smell of a certain section of a place may be viewed by one person negatively as a stench (flaw) or by another as a distinguishing attribute that evokes positive memories. Low tide will do this, as well as a run around Pike's Place in Seattle!
The 'flavor' of New York changed on 9/11. The twin towers went down and the 'distinctive characteristics' of the skyline were forever changed. Phylloxera devastated the vineyards of France in the late 19th century and millions of vines had to be replanted but only after being grafted onto (gasp) Americian rootstock. The terroir, the local flavor of the wines and even the people, changed as a result.

THIS is terroir: the FLAVOR of a wine in the context of "a distinctive yet intangible quality felt to be characteristic of a given thing." It ma be any combination of the people, the customs, the the traditions, the soil, climate, yeasts and barrels - anything and everything that plays a role in shaping the 'flavor' of a wine from a given place. A 'gout de terroir' are the elements of true flavor (in a sensory context) that enables a person with an intimate knowledge and memory of wine 'places' to say, "that is a Pinot Grigio from Northern Italy," or "that is a Lodi Zinfancel," or "that is a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc," "this is Harlan Estate," ad nauseum.

People can do that! A wine may exhibit great qualities yet have no context of terroir. When Sassacaia came along in the region where Sangiovese was sacred it was greeted with skepticism. It became so overwhelmingly successful the entire region of Chianti was changed! The 'alien' Cabernet was now desireable, even legalized to replace the tradtional white grapes that were required in Chianti. The gout te terroir of Chianti morphed.

Good and bad experiences shape your memories and attitutudes. You can go to LA and find yourself in a bad neighborhood. That may forever change your memories and the mere thought of LA will elicit an "I HATE LA" response. Conversely you could hate New York but go there and discover a neighborhood that is filled with friendly, loving people that bowl you over with their charm and grace. Then people get together on a New York or LA of Paris or London or Peoria discussion on line and we all get to argue over who is right or wrong! we are, of course, human.

Love to you all for the New Year!