Tasting thousands of wines each year – most times at the winery’s cellar, otherwise during important international cities where trade events are held – might sound like an ideal way to go through life. In many ways it is, otherwise I doubt I’d invest so many resources in pursuit of such an endeavor. But, like all things that ‘work’ related, there are certain requirements, certain responsibilities that can’t be defined as ‘play’, and are therefore, well, work.

I mention this because some might be tempted to rely on previous impressions (or worse, labels in general) to form a foundation, of sorts, prior to tasting the new releases. This is beyond a slippery slope. It’s my feeling that some, certainly not all, critics/journalists at these events may/do rely on a basic set of assumptions – e.g. modern vs. traditional, the blend of prior years, etc. – when evaluating a (pre-new release) wine for the first time.

And then there are the critics that receive samples, most of which are delivered to the States, and make their proclamations a few (and always earlier than last year!) months before the wines are even legally (per regional rules) available to the public. It’s important to be the first to shout the news, and it’s even more important that the news is accompanied by the highest possible score; critics that always have the lowest score are easily forgotten; retailers love to quote the highest score, the lowest score really matters not. If one critic exclaims 96 points!, and another says 90 points, who’s going to get published/quoted? And the more times someone gets published, the more credible they seem. Yeah. No.

But this isn’t another story about the evils of points, it’s about what’s missing. Most critics are on tight schedules – visits, writing notes that then go to editors, etc. – and no doubt most have very full plates. In other words, most don’t have the luxury of time. Time to evaluate a wine for more than a few seconds, or time to visit the vineyards/cellars they’re writing about more than a few times (if ever) in a career.

In the instant case, the two wines I’m writing about today are the result of the ‘passing of the baton’, so to speak. Both winemakers are now ‘in charge’ whereas in the past one was a successful attorney, and the other an early 20s son of a winemaker with only a couple of vintages that were based entirely on ‘his (or her) idea’. Which means the person before them, who may well have been there for decades, is gone, and so is their ‘idea’. This last part is critical, and certainly worth exploring and understanding because new ‘ideas’ can be missed in the (generalizing) 15 seconds the average ‘authority’ spends tasting a wine before points are anointed.

But it’s not just the critics/authorities that render a judgment, or perhaps the majority of their opinion, in the first 15 seconds, it’s most of us, too. Well, that can’t do, and here’s why: because you need to think of (artisan, not commercial) wines as dark matter.

Look, we live in a world where we evaluate based on on what’s in front of us, and what’s not in front of us, well, we usually just turn to the Great Oz, erm, the internets. But it’s not that easy, is it, I mean it’s who we are, as a species, all we can see is all we can measure, and in our busy lives, who has the time to consider the clues to the universe and the 90% of everything that exists, but which we are perfectly clueless. Really though, if we look at the other side of that coin, it’s simple, too, in that most people just want to know what time it is, they’re not looking to understand how the watch works.

So let’s get back to what this has to do with wine tasting; again, I’m focused upon many/most of the biases that we/critics/etc. bring with them as they sit down to taste a wine. Maybe the first thing I can suggest is that we properly revisit that invisible but nonetheless all too real concept we call time. Begin by asking yourself if you’ve given enough time to the wine. For starters, it would be more than the average journalist/critic/us does.

To help better explain, consider the en primeur, contrade, Anteprima, etc. events that are organized for the benefit of the world’s journalists/critics/etc., and sometimes these events also permit the public’s attendance, if only for a fraction