by Tim York » Thu Mar 07, 2013 11:09 am
Thanks for posting that provocative link, Bob.
The writers are undoubtedly clever men but the report strikes me as superficial. It contains a number of truisms and partial truisms which don't IMO support the headlined conclusion.
Let me give some examples.
Gergaud and Ginsburgh (2008) show that the differences between natural endowments – region, type of soil and its chemical composition, exposure of vineyards – in the Pauillac, Margaux, Saint-Estèphe, Saint-Julien, and Haut-Médoc regions have no effect on the quality of wines.
When I have more time, I'll search for some rebuttals of this startling conclusion.
In fact, Gergaud and Ginsburgh show that the differences in quality ...... are the result of a well-understood choice of grapes that are adapted to soil qualities and weather conditions, as well as the age of the vine and the technologies used to produce the wine, manual operation such as picking and selecting grapes, de-stemming and crushing, and other production processes that follow the harvest.
Surely the words which I highlight are a good example of the importance of terroir as well as of its optimisation?
“a good wine comes from a good grape, good vats, a good cellar and a gentleman who is able to coordinate the various ingredients”
There is an important terroir component in good grapes.
‘Judgment of Paris’2 changed the traditional view shared by experts that only French wines could be of high quality.
Indeed! It trapped a panel of French "experts" into acknowledging the existence of world class terroirs in California.
This implies that Château Mouton-Rothschild and Château Haut-Brion, two French superstars, cannot be distinguished from New Jersey reds, which cost only 5% of their French counterparts.
It could mean that we have some previously undiscovered quality in New Jersey, that the Princeton panel was not very competent, that the methodology was flawed or a bit of all three. I seem to recall that a recent similar panel tasting resulted in some Chinese Cabs being "beating" some top Bordeaux.
This is not much different from professional musicians who are unable to distinguish by listening between a violin built by Stradivari – which would cost up to $4 million – and a new US-made instrument worth a couple of thousand dollars.
I have read some well reasoned criticism of this Strad study and IIRC someone on this board (was it Dale?) had some hard things to say about it.
As has often been shown, the neural representation of experienced pleasantness is determined by the knowledge of the price of a wine (Plassmann et al. 2007). That is, if we think a wine is expensive we perceive its quality as being superior, all other things being equal. This suggests that, on many occasions, quality is not an objective trait of a commodity, it rather seems to be what we want it to be.
To some extent this is a valid point. We have all met label drinkers. And many of us benefit from the fact that fashion gives high prices to certain wine types, like white Burgundy and Bordeaux grands crus, and lower prices to wines which we often actually prefer, e.g. top Riesling, Loire chenin and Northern Rhône (Guigal's super cuvées excepted). The same exists in other spheres, e.g. in music where, for example, Maria Callas used still to get rapturous applause at performances when her voice was in severe decline.
Nevertheless it is a stretch to conclude that this is a universal truth and in particular that it debunks terroir.
Tim York