The Wine Critic's Critic: Burghound and Allen Meadows: The wine industry’s CFO, Head of Compliance and Audit. 83/100 points.

'I am sure Allen means it when he says he is passionate about Burgundy but I can’t help feeling that he sounds like an accountant who says he is passionate about numbers. He is clearly very knowledgeable about Burgundy in particular, but I find this site a bit boring. I wish he would liven it up and reveal a bit of love and soul for the subject matter. You can tell this site has been created by a former CFO'.

He is everything you would expect from a former CFO - fastidious, serious, conscientious, thorough and detailed. He prepares his notes and journals like he would the annual report and accounts for a Fortune 100 company, knowing that he will be held to account if there is a serious error. Like every good CFO, he clearly manages the business meticulously and maximizes all subscriber led (not advertiser led, I stress) revenue opportunities.

‘Fastidious’ is my first impression of Alan Meadows as I read the ‘Promise to you’ section on the first page of his site and the ‘statement of principles’ on the front of every quarterly journal which lay out his impeccably correct approach to tasting and scoring.

Meadows protects his business with all the zeal that you would expect from an American former CFO. There are rules, terms and conditions, legal definitions, licensing fees, threats if rules are violated, copyrights and warnings about what is strictly prohibited (web crawlers, spiders, robots) and what is expressly forbidden. Al Capone would have been intimidated.

I always need a drink, smoke and lie down after reading all this, followed by 10 minutes watching a video by James Suckling extoling the beauty of a Monte Cristo No 2. Only then can I relax.

In this world of piracy and copyright infringement, I empathise with his feelings of insecurity and fear that people will rip him off and use his copyright. But I do find it depressing. Has the world of wine been reduced to all this legalise? Has it just become another boring business run by accountants and lawyers rendering it soulless, technical and dull? I’ll just throw that out there to you. Maybe it is one for another posting. Perhaps I am just suffering from Pangloassian syndrome, a romantic at heart who loves an old fashioned handshake as the basis for a deal as practised by so many growers and importers.

However, in terms of content, burghound is a stellar example of the online specialist site. I doubt there is anyone in the world who knows the wines of Burgundy and more generally Pinot Noir (he covers California, Oregon and some champagnes and sparkling wines) as well as him.

It is packed full of information – a considerable database, tasting notes, how the wine was made in the year, quotes from the producer, a glossary of terms, special reports on multiple vintages of rare wines and a travel guide (extra cost unless 2 or 3 year subscription is taken out). He also produces a pdf which you can download and print. Q3 2013’s issue (no 51), just out, is nearly 200 pages long and it covers 193 producers.

He provides audio and video, information on speaking engagements and wines of the week. He also writes books and travel guides.

Its look, feel and the functionality all work very well. Whilst his area of focus is small (confined to burgundy, a few other pinot noir growing areas and Champagne) his coverage within that specialist area is first rate. He covers every nook and cranny of Burgundy.

It is a very impressive source of information in its specialist areas but more suitable for the trade and expert amateur looking for depth of content and tasting notes rather than consumers looking for general information and updates.

If I were to reproach him on anything, it would be his delivery, as seen in his video clips. His delivery is, well, like an auditor delivering the final audit report to the PLC Board – dry, soulless, wooden, dull. I do recognize that he addressing detailed, technical and serious subjects such as dry extract, green meanies (come again?) and premature oxidation but he is no Jamie Goode when discussing these. Allen could take some tips from Jamie on how to communicate technical subjects like a great teacher and from James Suckling on how to bond with the audience in video and bring some of these subjects to life.

Returning to my point about his passion, I can see he is genuinely committed to the cause. He is a serious on-site taster, committed to spending 5 months a year in Burgundy. Looking at his list of appointments, he must have a considerable appetite and energy for the cause; in April 2013, he spent 9 consecutive nights at tastings and dinners in Asia. He must have needed a serious detox afterwards.

I think Meadows is an outstanding taster and writer although some find his notes very repetitive. He uses evocative, accurate and clear language in his tasting notes and your mouth starts watering just reading them. He is also a tough marker so if he score highly, you really know the wine is good. Here is an example:

2011 Puligny-Montrachet “Les Folatières”: This is sufficiently ripe that the nose flirts with the exotic with its notes of tangerine, pear, white peach, acacia blossom and spice hints. There is flat out stunning intensity to the extract-rich medium weight flavors that seem to be directly extracted from liquid rock, in particular on the penetratingly saline-infused and forcefully explosive finish that seems to go on and on. This is textbook Folatières. 95/2021+.

I also like the way he identifies wines against other criteria such as ‘top value’, ‘drink now’, ‘sweet spot’ and ‘don’t miss’.

Here are my scores for Allen and Burghound:

Read on. The Wine Critic's Critic: My view on James Suckling.

The Wine Critic's Critic: Decanter and Andrew Jefford - The wine industry’s Professor of English. 86/100 points.

'I love re-reading the intro to Andrew's book, 'The New France'. It exudes genuine interest and passion, and reminds me of my own discovery of France and the French 30 years ago, and my continued love affair with the country. He is a great writer…..most of the time'.

Andrew is like your university professor – scholarly, reflective, personable. curious and wise. His emphasis is on quietly expanding the sum of wine knowledge rather than courting controversy and building his profile. He can write brilliantly but like many scholars, he can, very occasionally, veer into language which confuses rather than conveys. I can imagine him saying to himself: why use a simple phrase when an obscure one will do?

Andrew is a regular contributor to Decanter Magazine where he writes a weekly Monday blog as well as doing tastings and writing other articles notably on South of France (where he now lives) and South Australia (where he used to live). I write about both him and Decanter here, and score them as a combination.

I first came across Andrew Jefford when I read his book ‘The New France’ back in 2002. I thought it was outstanding. I didn’t agree with all his ratings (how could Trevallon only get 1 star?) but it did what the title promised. It was enlightening and revealed relatively unknown wine regions of France (Jura, Savoie and Corsica are examples) which are now in vogue. He also championed the small grower, the artisan who makes individual wines in the face of large corporates, and he wrote it at a time when New World wine was in its ascendancy. It was an innovative, reactionary piece of work which helped him win the 2002 Glenfiddich Award for Wine Writer of the Year.

Boy, Jefford can write. He is an excellent storyteller - rational, balanced, insightful and varied – and he brings to life the wines, places and characters involved. His prose is usually clipped and efficient, eliminating unnecessary words. His online style is generally well suited to all types of consumer groups because it is so varied, insightful and well written. There is always a juicy nugget of information or insight offered up by Jefford. He delivers most of his online information via the Decanter blog. His own site links through to his Decanter blog and twitter page.

The range subject matter he can analyse and digest is impressive. Just over the summer, he has covered a wide array of subjects: dépérissement, a maladie which affects only Syrah (July 22), useful tips to bloggers (July 29^th) and the downside for the wine market of electronic media (what he calls the information tsunami), Austria’s Danubian wine regions by air (Aug 5^th), the risk of contamination in food and wine (Aug 12^th) and a top wine tip (Aug 19^th).

But my (rather churlish) observation is that Andrew can occasionally write obscurely which perhaps belies his literary yearning and love of poetry (he uses his twitter account to write only Haiku, a short form of Japanese poetry). I think this can upset the fluency of his writing and obscure its meaning. Why bother using this technique? After all, this is fermented grape juice he is writing about.

Here are some recent examples of words and phrases he has used:

·       Wines which are fresh, limpid and juicy, their redcurrant and raspberry fruits shawled, …, in feathery tannins” (FT, Aug 10/11). Maybe it is the use of an avian adjective to describe wine which I don’t like, but what’s wrong with using the word light or fine which would be more comprehensible?

·       The Austrian wine, Gruner Vetliner, has few “allusive pegs, but their texture, pith and sappiness gives them unparalled food-friendliness…..” (FT, 17/18). Allusive pegs? I understand from my limited experience how elusive pegs can be when you want to hang the washing out, but allusive? And sappiness? Come again?

·    His Decanter blog on 19^th August mentioned all the following words: ‘least articulate wine’, ‘allusive triggers’, ‘sappy’, ‘adjectivally arid’.  “Qu’est-ce que ca veut dire?”, I can hear Eloi Durrbach (Trevallon) Alain Vaillé (La Grange des Peres) and Thierry Allemand (Cornas) asking themselves. I too have no idea.

Maybe he feels the need to adorn his clipped writing prose with obscure words to add style and colour? Please Andrew, if you need to be obscure, then be obscure clearly!

The words ‘sap’ and ‘sappiness’ (or ‘seve’ and ‘seveux’ in French) for describing wine intrigue me. I have seen these words used in both French and English tasting notes. I think they are odd and clumsy figures of speech.

They appear to be words which have crept into the French language quite recently to describe wines, but I have no idea where they came from. I lived in France for years from 1986, I have a first class degree in French, I played rugby there for years (including Chateauneuf-du-Pape where the growers would serve us wine, not lucozade, after training) and I have spent years mixing with growers and tasting their wines. But I had never heard it used, until recently, to describe a wine.

Do the grapes themselves really have sap? In fact, when critics say sappy (or seveux), I think they mean succulent or juicy or concentrated. So why not just say that? And since when did we think of sap as any of these things (think of a great Oak or Plane tree and is juicy what springs to mind?). It is one of the more bizarre examples of our languages’ evolution. Or maybe it is the circle of wine critics which have contorted its meaning? After all, why use a simple word when a more obscure one will do?

The word for sap, seve, can also be used in a slightly different context: “la seve nerveuse” (literal meaning: “nervous sap”). I asked Eloi Durbach of Domaine de Trevallon if he knew what this meant and he guessed that it meant trop d’acide (too much acid) or ‘tightly wound’ (another vinous metaphor). You see, even the great and the good don’t really know. Everything in wine, like love and art, is subjective and a matter of personal judgment.

Sap and sappiness are neologisms  - newly coined words which may be in the process of entering common use not yet accepted into mainstream language.

I just don’t like the terms. For me, sap is found in trees and global companies where it is a clunky IT system invented by Germans. It isn’t found in grapes.

Here are my scores for Andrew and Decanter:

Read on. The Wine Critic's Critic: Allen Meadows - The wine industry's CFO and Head of Compliance and Audit

My date with Domaine de la Grange des Pères, Aniane, France

This is real, authentic, love-infused wine-making.

My heart was racing as I turned off the dusty road near the town of Aniane in the south of France. A weathered sign pointed reluctantly in its direction suggesting that visitors were either unexpected, unwelcome or both. I was on a blind date, but my target wasn’t aware of my imminent arrival.

Ostensibly, I was en route to watch a game of rugby in Montauban, but I couldn’t resist the lure of dropping in on one of my favourite growers, the fabled Domaine de la Grange des Pères. I remember using the term ‘dropping in’ then as it made me feel more comfortable, like one ‘drops in’ on an old family friend, but deep down I felt uneasy although the feeling wasn’t strong enough to stop me. I admit it openly – I’m in love with this domaine and its region, and I convinced myself that all is fair in love and war.

Just say it out loud: Domaine de la Grange des Pères. It rolls off the tongue mellifluously like honey trickling from a spoon. Overlay the regional accent du midi and the sound becomes even easier on the ear. For me, these sounds personify the south of France and evoke powerful memories of a time when I lived in the Vaucluse, a neighbouring départment.

In a little over 20 years, la Grange des Pères has entered the pantheon of great French wine domaines, its small stock exhausted swiftly by thirsty and lucky buyers. I had enjoyed their wines over the years (if I could find them), read about Alain, Bernard and Laurent Vaillé, and knew they had a reputation for being reserved and unreceptive to impromptu visits, but this just raised the stakes and piqued my excitement. I knew this would be a test of my character, French language and people skills, but I thrived on situations like this. My elevator pitch was ready.

I eventually found the domaine. The grange or barn itself was on the left, signaled by a garnet-coloured sign on an impressive limestone rock. I drove past it and turned left along a narrow track to their house which was a large but unassuming villa fronted by an imposing set of iron gates. The rusty doorbell was next to a small, hand-made, yellow sign confirming that the house was indeed part of la Grange des Pères. I felt nervous, as if I were gauchely intruding and would be rebuffed with a volley of French patois.

I didn’t even have time to ring their doorbell before Alain, the father, appeared. He was small with pointed features and was dressed in cool denim under the searing heat of the midday sun. He was chewing food. It suddenly dawned on me that I had committed one of France’s gravest sins and interrupted his lunch. Life, I thought, was about to get even harder.

“Bonjour monsieur, excusez-moi de vous déranger”, I stuttered. “Est-ce que vous faites des dégustations?” “Non”, he deadpanned, “nous ne les faisons pas”.

I had blown it. In a moment of excitement and nerves, I had forgotten to show empathy or willingness to engage him first. I had reduced the occasion to the merely functional and rather bluntly requested ‘a tasting’. As though my very existence depended on it, the adrenaline kicked in. I suddenly remembered my elevator pitch which consisted of telling him, in my best midi-accented French, how I used to live in Avignon, play rugby for Chateauneuf-du-Pape, date a French girl from Marseille and drink copious amounts of French wine. Now, I knew his wine, bought it, evangelised about it, drank it and loved it. I spoke passionately about la Grange des Pères - to its maker for goodness’ sake! My eyes implored him to let me in. It worked.

“Revenez après le déjeuner et je vous ferai une dégustation”, he said smiling.

I was ecstatic. I remember that feeling as I made the short drive to Aniane for lunch. The lunch wasn’t memorable for its quality or quantity, but the anticipation had suppressed my appetite. Afterwards, Alain met me at the grange and we spent over two hours tasting his 2006 red in barrique, the cabernet sauvignon, syrah and mourvèdre wines all separated.

I drooled over their quality and the setting. They were all rich, powerful and magnificent even if they were unfinished. His wines, like those of le Domaine de Trevallon (where Laurent, Alain’s youngest son, had trained under the tutelage of the great Eloi Dürrbach), have a distinct flavour and perfume which I rarely taste anywhere else.

La Grange des Pères is a combination of wild garrigue herbs, black fruits, freshness and meatiness. That day, each cépage brought something to the wine: the cabernet brought tautness and freshness; the syrah black fruits, meatiness and garrigue herbs; the mourvèdre some cherry, spice, earth and gaminess. Typically, the final blend also contains small quantities of counoise and petit verdot which enhance the freshness, fragrance and complexity.

We must have been tasting for an hour when Laurent came by, shook my hand and exchanged a few pleasantries, but he wasn’t one for making small talk. He was a shy man in a hurry as he sped past the grange and into the house. Alain, on the other hand, was very talkative and I had to drag myself away, very reluctantly, to get to that rugby match.

All this had happened in 2008 so in early July this year, I dropped in again. There was no point in calling or emailing or tweeting ahead because I knew that wasn’t the way they worked.

This time I tracked Alain down at the grange and he gave me the same generous welcome he had done five years before. He was again denim-clad, obviously older, but looking slim and very fit for a septuagenarian. Under the high sun, I could feel the sun prickling my head as we walked into the cool grange where we chatted for another two hours.

Rather than walk me through the wines this time, he told me all about his family. Bernard, his eldest son, had struggled at school due to poor teaching and become the family’s mechanical genius, able to resurrect old second hand farm machinery. Alain’s father was a marksman able to kill a wild boar at a hundred metres without sights. Laurent is the winemaking genius, constantly searching for improvement. They would like to buy more land to grow more roussanne and marsanne so they can increase production of their legendary white wine, but another local family owns the ideal site. They have stopped adding chardonnay to their whites because the wild boars eat the grapes before they can harvest them.

I bought one of the last cases of their 2010 red for cash which is now maturing in a generous friend’s cellar in the Pyrenees, but they had already exhausted their whites. Inside each case, they place a bay leaf and sprig of thyme, redolent of the warm, garrigue perfume. Laurent thinks his reds are best after a decade of cellaring, but says people who like them young should drink them earlier as there are no set rules for personal taste. Whatever the critics say, taste is in the mouth of the beholder and essentially subjective. It will be some time before I drink mine, assuming my friend doesn’t beat me to it which is entirely possible.

After a couple of very pleasant and memorable hours, I thanked Alain for his time, promised to return in the near future and drove to a restaurant he had recommended near Pic Saint Loup. Surrounded by the chattering cigales and seated under a glorious micocoulier tree which protected me from the high afternoon sun, I enjoyed a slow, late lunch of prawns à la japonaise (yes, even in the deep south of France), beef from the Aubrac region and local cheeses, washed down with a bottle of Mas Julien white (only because the restaurant didn’t have the very rare la Grange des Pères). Life doesn’t get much better than this, I thought.

Like Thierry Allemand of Cornas or Eloi Dürrbach of Trevallon, la Grange des Pères encapsulates everything I love about this type of wine making – artistry, passion, longevity, simplicity, humility, hard work and determination. The Vaillés represent the very antithesis of the quick-fix, blingy and ‘look-at-me’ culture. They cultivate wines not publicity. They just want to make great wines with an enduring sense of terroir.

If you are passionate about this wine and your French is up to it (complete fluency essential) and you don’t mind knocking on strangers’ doors, you could drop in to see them. On the off chance you track them down, you will have an unforgettable experience.

How to hide wine purchases from your wife/husband/partner. And just what is the point of a professional wine critic? (Part 1)

'I think my wine purchases are like capital spending. This is ‘good’ expenditure, like HS2 or a third runway at Heathrow, and we are investing for our future, strengthening (or shoring up) our families’ balance sheets and inheritances'.

It is autumn in post-modern Austerity Britain, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (to borrow from Keats), and time for me to succumb reluctantly to some spouse-imposed financial control on my wine purchases. My reluctance and apathy are clear by my choice of easy, low-hanging fruit – low-cost subscriptions to wine magazines and web sites – rather than making the really difficult choice to cut deep into my wine stock and planned ‘capital’ expenditure.

My wife believes her challenge to my alleged profligacy is reasonable and I agree to ‘think about’ it. After all, why do I pay to read all these wine critics? Haven’t I got better things to do like reading John Grisham or (when critics write banal, colourless, obliging dreariness) sitting on a spike eating cold porridge?

In an attempt to deflect my wife’s awkward questions (her new reading glasses are so intimidating) about any of my wine-related purchases, I use my tried and trusted line, so effective during our youthful, halcyon days of largesse and late and long nights. “But darling, I don’t ‘do’ drugs or cars or hookers. I ‘do’ wine. And you and wine are my only indulgences”. It falls on deaf ears and is greeted with a contemptuous roll of the eyes. My clichés are wearing thin, although I still elicit a re-assuring laugh from my friends and teenage sons.

Like all CEOs (self-appointed in this case), I meet this cost control challenge by filibustering and I will hang on by my fingernails until the danger passes or I am ‘fired’ by my bride of 16 years and walk away with a (highly improbable) fat cheque. I will do anything to continue investing and avoid cutting.

All my vinous friends are co-conspirators in this game of delay and obfuscation, subject to same rightsizing pressures from their wives. We have devised (rather pathetically, I admit) several ‘systems’ to throw our wives off the scent so we can all continue to buy wine and undertake the planned ‘capital’ expenditure. After all, this is ‘good’ expenditure, like HS2 or a third runway at Heathrow, and we are investing for our future, strengthening (or shoring up) our families’ balance sheets and inheritances.

My three key protagonists in this contrivance are:

• The Wine Merchant and Legal Counsel, Will Bentley of Bentley’s of Ludlow Wine Merchants. Cambridge Law graduate and ex fund manager who had the knack of buying low and selling high.

• The Banker and Head of Security, Julian Rimmer, Cambridge English graduate, child of Thatcher, slave to post-modern Austerity Britain (his phrase), born scuffler and City trader who buys low and sells lower, but who is nevertheless a very quick-witted, fluent and humourous raconteur. I worry about revealing his identity for fear of our wives torturing him, sequestrating his/our assets or freezing his/our bank accounts.

• The Master of Wine and Elder Statesman, Alun Griffiths MW. Aberystwyth French graduate (if that's not an oxymoron), a man of great experience in the world of wine. He keeps us on the straight and narrow, and his smooth talking, calmness and professionalism can always be relied upon to get us out of a difficult spot.

I am The Businessman. Loughborough Economics and French graduate, top sportsman (in my dreams), linguist, master strategist, diplomat, consultant, spreadsheet jockey and bon viveur. It is the perfect team which could pull off any mini-heist.

Our ‘systems’ facilitate ‘off-balance sheet’ wine purchases using nicknames, email aliases, bogus accounts and secret credit cards unknown to our better halves. And when Señor Bentley delivers wine, he uses such an elaborate trail of drops, locations, stop-offs and car routes that even the FBI couldn’t bust it. He is so convincing that he must secretly fantasize about sporting a large handlebar moustache, calling himself Guillermo ‘Vinoso’ Bentos and running a Mexican money laundering business.

Will has a Blairite way of fending off difficult questions about who bought what wine, much to our wives’ amusement or, more probably, irritation. It is like a scene from Fawlty Towers, only more farcical.

I am not profligate, other than on wining and dining, but I just can’t do rightsizing. I hate that management euphemism more than the soul-destroying condition itself. I am genetically engineered to buy and drink good wine, not to cut costs and drink Chateau de Coq-Rot.

But it is when I am asked to wire more post-tax income to renew a subscription for a wine critic’s website in order to fund their next personal/exotic/business*  trip/holiday/party*  to Bordeaux/Burgundy/Tuscany/London/ Hong Kong/New York* (*delete as appropriate), that I react to my wife’s challenge, not by cutting but by asking myself a set of questions which I need to work methodically though before making a decision.

As you can see, I am The World Heavyweight Champion of Filibuster, Procrastination and Delay. Here are my questions:

a.     What insight and extra value do these subscriber sites bring me, the consumer, that wine merchants, brokers and the plethora of free Internet information don’t?

b.     What is the point of a professional wine critic? In fact, what is the point of any wine critic, whether you pay for them or not, whether they are professional or just another blogger?

c.     Are wine critics so important in upholding the interests of us, the gullible consumer, in the face of those rapacious merchants and other charlatans ‘on the take’ who will flog us any old ‘belly wash’ if they get half a chance? Are they still that important that we feel we need to pay for their expertise?

There are so many questions swirling around my frazzled brain, under sustained bombardment from Mrs Beresford. Let’s focus on the professional critics for the purposes of answering the main question at the top of this posting: what is the point of a professional wine critic?

By professional wine critics, I mean those who operate independently, spend a lot of their time and make a living by writing tasting notes and scoring wines. They may charge the reader for this privilege in the form of a subscription (examples would be Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson, James Suckling, Stephen Tanzer, John Livingstone-Learmonth, Allen Meadows and publications like Decanter and Wine Spectator) or provide it free (like Jamie Goode) or have a halfway house model where some content is free and some is charged for (e.g. Tim Atkin).

Therefore, I exclude wine writers such as Alice Feiring and Eric Asimov. They too are professional, independent and critical but I don’t think they see themselves as wine critics, and certainly the last two abhor the whole notion of extravagant tasting notes and scores.

I also exclude the merchants, who comment and score wines too but whose business it is to sell the wines.

Compared to the merchants and FOC (free of charge) amateur critics and bloggers, are professional wine critics’ palates better? Are they cleverer people? Is it because they are truly ‘independent’, countering the force of the mercenary merchants who can’t be trusted? No, I don’t think any of these reasons apply. But I think there are four reasons why I read them.

To find out what they are, read my next posting: What is the point of a professional wine critic? (Part 2)

What is the point of a professional wine critic? (Part 2)

Dear critics, please oh please give me interesting insight…..

I think there are four reasons why I read professional wine critics, but you let me know what you think:

1.     Interesting insight

I admit that I have a very low boredom threshold so interesting insight is vital. I am not interested in a critic if all he or she does is write another set of boring tasting notes and scores, conducted in an office thousands of miles from the grower. I don’t care about boring ones. They are just another person’s tedious opinion about a wine, typically drunk in isolation.

No, in my book it is not interesting insight, unless:

• It is unexpected, e.g. “Chateau Lafite was crap in 2010; I give it 70 points. It was more like Chateau de Coq-Rot”; or

• It is contrarian, e.g. “2009 Bordeaux was not the great vintage every other Tristram, Dickweed and Horatio said it was”; or

• It is controversial, e.g. “Neal Martin’s book on Pomerol is the most boring book in the History of Boredom and if he writes another article called ‘After the book, blah, blah, blah’ I will have to stick needles in my genitals to distract me from the pain”; or

• It is written with some love and passion, e.g. Parker and Molesworth, for example, are good at this. They reveal their passion for wine when they write about it which makes me want to drink it; or

• It is about some new discoveries, e.g. small, little-known wineries which produce wonderful wine. I find wine merchants are generally better at this than critics; or

• It is about a technical subject which requires some in depth research but which a critic can summarise quickly, e.g. Jamie Goode (the best teacher in the world of wine by a country mile) on something like wine faults; or

• It is accompanied with additional content and knowledge, e.g. stories about the producer or village and based on some primary research at the vineyard. If you’ve been there you can tell the story far better; or

• The notes and scores are recounted in an interesting way, e.g. the wines you drank with friends over Sunday lunch, or tasting wines off the cuff, like Jamie Goode did recently, whilst making supper. Unshaven, using a simple recorder and standing in his kitchen, Jamie sniffed, tasted and described Gosset’s Polish Hill and Springvale Rieslings. It was fantastic – real life, no pretentiousness, just a bloke in jogging bottoms having a drink, but it was still a video of good quality, with Jamie talking sense and educating the viewer. These less formal tasting are interesting and real. We, the consumers, can relate to them.

Critics have ample opportunity to write interesting notes. There are eight ways you can achieve this, according to my list.

What I want is real insight and discovery. Critics, please don’t bore me with knowledge alone, like a dull teacher on a wet Friday afternoon. Tell me something I don’t know or can’t get anywhere else. Inform, educate and inspire me, and do it in a way which makes it interesting and accessible, and at times funny. I want you to transport me into your world of wine and to experience, for a moment, what you, the critic, experience most days.

2.     Breadth of coverage

Critics should be good at this. Reading, studying, tasting and writing about wine, producers and their lives on a professional basis is what they do. Their breadth of knowledge should be vast. They don’t have to bother themselves with a proper job like sourcing wine, negotiating with producers and selling it to consumers, like the merchants do.

Therefore, the extent of their coverage and opinions of certain topics (e.g. vineyard science, wine faults, closures, the science or otherwise behind tastings) or of regions (e.g. the Rhone valley and Burgundy, the latter in particular being complex and difficult to understand or new wine discoveries) or their capacity to keep up with week-to-week news should be greater than merchants’. Some critics do this outstandingly well.

If critics achieve 1 and 2, then they can be a very effective force in educating the public and therefore driving interest and demand for wines, especially the lesser known wines or regions.

3.     Entertainment

I wouldn’t say that many critics are specialists in these fields but some are quite good at it, especially those who use new media effectively such as James Suckling. Watching James puff on a monte cristo cigar or drinking a fine Brunello, delirious with pleasure, is quite entertaining. His use of video makes his content and insight more digestible.

4.     Benchmarks

The world loves benchmarks, comparators, performance metrics and league tables, and we expect to see them in all walks of life - business, restaurants, schools, sport, music charts, Strictly Come Dancing (oh, bon dieu). In the global race to the top, they are used as a way of measuring performance. These days, we are measured against anything which others think is relevant (note the use of the passive and unattributable 3rd person), subjugating ourselves to others who, apparently, know better.

In the world of wine, they help the consumer identify the so-called best (a totally subjective descriptor) wines and place them in a pecking order which helps them make choices. Some tasting notes may be meaningless, some scores highly subjective and combined they may be pernicious, creating uniform wines and brands which crowd out the smaller producers and outliers, but I accept there is a practical value to them whether some like it or not.

I don’t especially like them or find them useful, and I would never buy a wine solely on the basis of what a critic says or scores. But, in my experience, the consumer likes and wants an opinion which can be measured. This direction of travel is also encouraged for the big investment grade wines as investment managers need benchmarks to justify investment and pricing decisions. Scores are here to stay.

However, caveat emptor. All is not what it seems with the critics. Think about these points before you subscribe:

1.     Opinions are very subjective and can tell you little about good and bad, truth and falsehood, light and dark.

On tasting notes and scores, readers of wine critics should take them with a pinch of salt because they are so influenced by the taster’s style preferences, context and experiences. Who says they are right and others are wrong? You need to read a few of them to get a more ‘averaged-out’ view, and then form your own opinion. Some magazines such as Decanter often use three tasters when reviewing wine and then average out the scores to achieve a consensus. This lends credibility to their results. I am highly suspicious of one critic’s scores as an indication of what the wine might taste like to me.

I recognize that good tasters can isolate some of their subjective style preferences to facilitate objective wine assessments and that they can generally agree on broad categorizations of wine by quality. However, I think personal preferences trump objective assessment in scores. I write about this in a later posting “What the wine critics don’t tell you”.

2.     Challenge conventional wisdom

Don’t timidly accept what the ‘Great Worshipful Committee of Wine Critics’ tells you. For the best-known critics, scoring tends to conform to a standard set of style preferences and definition of quality which leads to a uniformity of opinions and scores and correctness. If a wine’s aroma or taste is outside the boundary of what is deemed conventional, as it may be for some natural wines and other vins de terroirs, then some critics would regard it as imperfect, inconsistent, even faulty, rather than being the product of what the vineyard has given.

The best of these wines should be enjoyed in their unadulterated, unblemished form. Let the writer’s description reflect the essence of the wine, but don’t crucify it with a low score just because it doesn’t conform. (BTW, I know some natural wines and vin de terroirs, like any other wine, can be crap and taste like Chateau de Coq-Rot so I am not making a sweeping statement about their 100% success rate).

3.     Some wine merchants provide wonderful insight too, sometimes better than critic

When it comes to certain topics and communicating about them, especially those requiring evangelical effort, some merchants are better than critics. For example, Les Caves de Pyrenes probably have more experience and expertise on natural wines (i.e. those with minimal intervention - what some critics might call unconventional or even faulty but supporters would call real) than any critic.

Led by the highly articulate and passionate Doug Wregg, their views may be controversial and sometimes deliberately provocative in their support for natural wines (and criticism of manipulated wines), but they do know their stuff and write with great wit and insight. As a merchant and with interests in restaurants too, they also have a lot of supporters and customers. They must be doing something right.

Their posts and opinions always provoke reactions from other in the wine business and these are a good read.

Natural wines are a relatively new phenomenon for me and Les Caves have taught me a lot of what I know. If you want to drink natural wines and other great vins de terroir, eat real food and love personable bars à vins, then visit any of the following London restaurants: Terroirs, Duck Soup, 40 Maltby Street, Sager and Wilde, 10 Cases, French Man Green Horn, 10 Greek Street, 28-50, Brawn and Soif.

Read my next posting: What is the point of a professional wine critic? (Part 3)