How does one appreciate Bordeaux?
Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 6:35 am
Is suggesting that an adult try Bordeaux, when she hasn’t, more akin to letting a three-year-old try vanilla ice cream, to compare against chocolate, or taking an adolescent to an eclectic art gallery to see if he prefers Pollack to Norman Rockwell, or bringing your 93-year-old mother into the den to watch you compose a letter on a computer, versus what she remembers about a typewriter – or none of the above?
Almost everybody can appreciate ice cream, in many flavors, but only a few will relate to Mondrian or Monet strongly. And then fewer yet will like Mondrian’s attempt at an impressionistic landscape – I don’t really think there is one.
Lots of people can taste a 2000 du Tertre for the first time and like it. But most of those same people could gag on a 1994 Cantenac Brown. So I guess you wouldn’t say that those people like Bordeaux per se, they just liked 2000 du Tertre.
How would you then describe a Bordeaux appreciator? I think he or she would be more akin to appraisers on Antique Road Show who specialize in a particular genre. An American art appraiser can look at a picture that is completely out of character for a particular painter – say a portraiture by a famous Hudson River Painter, which isn’t very good to the average viewer – and gush on and on about it, loving the departure. And bring him a well-crafted picture in character, and he can be overcome by emotion.
Almost everybody can appreciate ice cream, in many flavors, but only a few will relate to Mondrian or Monet strongly. And then fewer yet will like Mondrian’s attempt at an impressionistic landscape – I don’t really think there is one.
Lots of people can taste a 2000 du Tertre for the first time and like it. But most of those same people could gag on a 1994 Cantenac Brown. So I guess you wouldn’t say that those people like Bordeaux per se, they just liked 2000 du Tertre.
How would you then describe a Bordeaux appreciator? I think he or she would be more akin to appraisers on Antique Road Show who specialize in a particular genre. An American art appraiser can look at a picture that is completely out of character for a particular painter – say a portraiture by a famous Hudson River Painter, which isn’t very good to the average viewer – and gush on and on about it, loving the departure. And bring him a well-crafted picture in character, and he can be overcome by emotion.