When the Experts Say a Wine is Better

What makes you like a wine better than another wine? I don't know. It could be that it tastes like a Hawaiian pizza, that's it's overly oaky, or that it's so tannic that you're still puckered up from last night's glass. While I've exaggerated a bit, I have heard descriptions that approached each of those from various people describing wines they love.

On the other hand, if you are reading a description of wine from people who are experts in the field or at least purport to be, you'll likely see descriptors a bit different from those. What are their keys and if you understood them, would they make a difference to you?

It might be easier to start with what they are not. I've never heard a real wine geek describe what they really like in a wine with a particularly simple description. And, if you read a review of a great wine, it might go on and on ... and on. It's that last "and on" after the ellipsis that should be telltale.

Experienced wine drinkers who get passionate about a wine can go on and on and on in describing what it tastes like, how it feels to them, and what it makes them feel like. They might say that a wine starts with, for example, floral aromas, followed by some sort of fruit, and then get into mouth feel and finish. Each of them is very different. 

That means that a wine is layered and complex. The changes in flavors and aromas come at you almost like a series of waves, starting small, rolling in, rising to a peak and then tapering off just as the next one comes in. It's cool when that happens. And, while wines like that are more enjoyable tasting alone than more mundane single-noted wines, they are also more food friendly. 

Imagine a wine that can be described in a long series of those waves I just talked about. Perhaps five or six of them. That's a lot. That likely means that such a wine can be paired with roughly that number of styles of dishes. So, if you are a food glutton and are having a multi-dish feast, those wines have a decent chance of running the gamut and pairing with everything you are tasting.

But, those are the better wines. How about the very best?

The very best wines are like the better wines except they have more of the better than the better ones do. Confused yet?

The very best wines can be life-altering. Don't believe me? Then your passion for wine is less than mine. That's okay.

But, some of the very best wines I have ever tasted are so good that it is difficult to imagine food enhancing them unless the food is also that good. Remember the series of waves coming in from a couple of paragraphs ago? Well, in these wines, the waves never seem to stop. If you're really a wine geek and you taste one of these wines, the descriptors just won't stop coming because after a taste, often for a good 60-90 seconds, the flavors and aromas just keep rolling in and combining and rolling out. It's a visceral and mind-bending experience that excites the senses.

And, when the experts say a wine is better than the better, although that's not exactly what they say, that is what they are talking about. If they are giving that level of rating to a wine they just happen to like, they're not an expert.