wrcstl wrote:
Keith,
I wish you were correct but maybe in St. Louis there is a higher percent of lemmings. Obviously nobody drinks a wine they do not like but many convince themselves they like a wine with high point ratings. Marketing drives preference and in the wine world a high score, from whomever, is marketing and defines the wine as "good". People bought these wines because of the rating and I doubt they would have bought it, opened it and then said "try this wine, I think it is great." I turned 61 two days ago so maybe I am becoming too much of a curmudgeon but don't think so. This is a dead horse that I am probably beating to it's 8th death so I will move and try to figure out what "outlier" means.
Walt
Walt,
The wines we "like" is, to some degree, a learned response. Why do we like the smell of a rose?? Because, way back in our youth (which was not
that long ago), we saw our Mother pick up a rose, take a strong smell, and have a very pleasurable look on her face. So that learned experience is why you like the smell of a rose. However, if that same Mother cut off a branch of that rose bush and gave you a severe lashing across a bare hiney with that branch...I suspect your response to the smell of a rose would be a whole lot different.
I think our response to wines is a learned experience much along these lines, to a certain extent. When we first taste a steely/minerally/chalky/austere Chablis, as a novice, with an experienced taster, and he goes ape-$hit over the wine, we "learn" that this is what a great Chablis is supposed to be about. When I taste a K-J'd modern Chablis, with RS, it makes me wretch.
I think it much the same way w/ many novice wine lovers. You taste a wine, for the first time, that Arpy scored a 96, you tend to abandon your critical facilities. "So this is what a 96 pt Priorat wine is like? Then I must like it, too." And then when you taste a traditional Priorat Rancio....it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll
not like it...because it doesn't taste like Arpy's 96 pt wine.
Just my random phylosophically thoughts, anyway.
Tom