Expertise in Wine Matters Now More Than Ever Before

Now is not the time to advocate for playing tennis without the net.

Once possessed, expertise can be deployed in just two ways: to aid others or to entertain ourselves. Expertise in the subject of wine or winemaking can be used in either way. Developing expertise in the world of wine and its traditions is a relatively popular hobby that delivers up great satisfaction for people around the world. That expertise can also be used in profitable ways such as winemaking, writing, reviewing wine, selling and marketing wine, and training others in the subject.

There has always been a line of argument around wine expertise that it is too often used as a weapon or cudgel against the non-expert class, which leads to exclusion; which harms the potential to attract people to wine by way of the arcane and the tradition that experts on wine seem to revel in when they discuss or sell the drink. Those with a mind to reform the wine industry and who agree with this critique of how wine expertise is used generally argue that wine is much less popular than it could be due to the experts’ practice of displaying their expertise in off-putting ways.

Much of this critique centers around the language of wine that experts use. It is too arcane. It uses metaphors that are unintelligible to most people. It centers difficult ideas like terroir and foists rules on the uninitiated that don’t contribute to the enjoyment of the beverage.

In moments like now, when the sale of wine is on the decline and the culture swirls with new ideas, and when younger generations appear to have turned away from wine, this criticism of wine expertise and how it is wielded becomes even more forceful.

Recently have been having a discussion over social media with a person who is very good at arguing that we need to “unlearn” how we understand and present wine. They want the industry to understand that change must come by de-emphasizing the traditions of wine. They argue that clinging to the way wine was taught and sold in the past is the cause of the current sales doldrums, and if the clinging continues, the wine industry will fail.

It is a distinct form of the anti-expert argument: Experts are so wed to their position and the assurance that the body of knowledge they possess is important that they recoil from the idea that they may be the problem.

As is often the case with those who attack the consensus of the experts, this person I’ve been in discussion with can confidently assure me and those reading our back and forth that the way things have been done is not working and must change. However, when pressed, they don’t have any solutions other than “things must change”.

This is convenient. It’s playing tennis without a net. They hit hard without worry that there may be nets over which their volley of critiques must travel: “I can’t say how things must change, only that they must.” It’s astrology instead of astronomy.

It must be acknowledged that wine expertise is not the same kind of expertise as aeronautics or anatomy or the manipulation of either. We care greatly about the level of expertise of the person in the cockpit about to take us up into the air or the person about to cut into our chest with a scalpel. There are dire consequences if these people’s level of expertise was obtained through self learning or from a TV show. However, the consequences of a person not liking the wine recommended by a wine expert are insignificant.

Recently, Sam Harris, with his extraordinary command of the language and his expertise in both neuroscience and religion, sat down with the journalist Douglas Murray to discuss the nature of expertise and its importance in drawing people to the truth. Harris had this point to make:

“The difference between knowing something or knowing nearly everything and knowing nothing is extraordinary and it matters….A consensus among experts is rather often meaningful. So if you have the lone person who is going against the consensus, against 99% of the specialists in the field, who believe X and you’ve got somebody believing Y who isn’t an expert in the field and doesn’t have the right credentials, it is more often than not the case that you are to in the presence of a lone genius who has just figured everything out on their own. Instead, you are very likely in the presence of someone who is mistaken or a crank or otherwise has some incentive that has gone undetected, and they are going against the mainstream for bad reasons.”

While wine expertise is not as important to our well-being as expertise in brain surgery, it is something. It is hard-earned. It is a necessary thing to possess if we believe the traditions, history, and facts of winemaking and grapegrowing are important not just to pass on but also to wield in the advancement and development of a wine marketplace. And I believe these things are important in that way.

In fact, what makes wine expertise different from expertise in brain surgery is that wine experts are tasked with using their expertise to educate far more people than brain surgeons use their expertise to educate people. Because of this, the wine experts who are said to use their knowledge in ways that “exclude” people, are actually far, far more competent at passing on their body of knowledge to lay people because in large part this is the point of becoming an expert in wine: passing on knowledge that will make the enjoyment of wine more interesting and more meaningful.

I contend that now more than ever, the history, tradition, facts, and details of wine and the experts who possess and understand these things are vital. These are the people who will, in various ways, capture the attention of wine and non-wine drinkers alike by demonstrating that wine is unlike any other alcoholic beverage in its complexity and potential to enlighten us in ways that few consumable products can.

Now is not the time to encourage the wine industry to give over the task of communicating about wine to those who argue tennis does not need a net or that astrology will connect us to the heavens with equal success as astronomy. Expertise matters.