The Unforgiven Wine
An examination of virtue among wine lovers
What are we to do about wines that disappoint us with flaws? This is a particularly urgent question when the disappointing wine has long been a favorite and provided bottles and bottles of joy and delight. With so many wines available in the world, do we have any obligation to forgive the offending wine? Or should we simply condemn the wine, move on, and explore the larger world leaving the offensive bottle and its brand in the dust?
Recently I opened the twelfth and last bottle from a case of wine I purchased many years ago. Over those years I’ve enjoyed occasionally opening the next bottle to not just enjoy this great wine, but also to observe its development. Over the past decade, bottle after bottle of this wine has proven its greatness. And watching it develop and change over that time has been a source of intellectual delight.
But the last bottle, the twelfth, was seriously flawed. it was bad. Not only was it corked but it was also a microbial stew. It could not be drunk for enjoyment. I can’t fully express the level of disappointment this final bottle provoked. For so long, this wine has been a touchstone in my cellar. For that matter, it is a wine that has been for many wine lovers a reference of greatness.
This wine has in fact been such an important part of my wine education that I’ve saved each and every bottle to remind me of the joy the wine has brought me as well as the occasions upon which it was opened and shared with others. Now, every time I look up at that shelf with its lineup of empty bottles of this wine, all I can think of is the desperately flawed, disappointing last wine. I’m forced to remove ALL 12 bottles from my view so as to not be reminded of the flaw. I can’t help but wonder if I have a responsibility to communicate to the wider wine world the way this bottle has disappointed me.
This dilemma has played out in other ways throughout my career. I knew one wine critic who for many years religiously reviewed next after next rendition of a particular wine. It was a wine the critic always liked to one degree or another, praising it for its myriad qualities over the years. Then they encountered in a new vintage what they believed was not a flaw, microbial or otherwise, but rather the ultimate sin: the wine was poorly made; or at least it was not produced in a style they believed best showcased the fruit from which the wine made. This was, for the critic, an unforgiveable sin. Subsequent vintages were never reviewed again. The wine was banished from the critic’s lens.
This particular critic not only stopped reviewing subsequent vintages of the odious wine, but they also told their rather large audience the details of the winemaker’s sin. Moreover, they advised that the entire lineup of the winery’s production should be ignored until the winemaker either renounced their winemaking approach or were replaced.
Isn’t this the job of an honest and virtuous wine critic? Isn’t it the job of a wine critic to provide their audience with a full recounting of the problem and to offer advice concerning future purchases?
And isn’t the predictabale pile on by the critic’s followers a further proper warning to wine lovers? It’s a dilemma.
It’s true that some wine is simply odious from the get-go and can’t be forgiven for whatever redeeming value some say it may possess. We know bad wine when we smell it. In some cases, it’s the nature of the variety of grape that is so generally unsuited for wine that any attempt to convert it results in offense. Sometimes it’s the environment the wine’s material is grown in, it’s terroir, that imparts a fairly wicked character unsuited to be consummed, let alone lauded. Whatever the cause of the disdain for a wine, it simply can’t be saved or forgiven and anybody who tries to defend it should themselves be identified as a broken palate. This much we know.
But what of my circumstance and the wine that for so long gave me great pleasure and now shows itself to be fallible? That I work in the wine industry and interact with critics and others with outstanding palates is not inconsequential to my dilemma. Surely I too have some responsibiltiy to warn my colleagues; to let them know I’m watching out for them. And surely I can’t ever recommend this wine again. And maybe I have a responsibiltiy to warn them off EVER interacting with this brand themselves.
When you get down to it, regardless of its passed successes and no matter the beauty of previous renditions, when a wine finally disappoints don’t we have a responsibility to dismiss it from the conversation now and forever? Don’t we? Can we ever define our virtue if we are willing to forgive the wine?
In a word, no. If this is simply one bad bottle among 12, this can happen to anyone. In your other example, yes, you should warn your readers if a winery's style has drifted away from its former greatness, as so many Napa Cabs have done, Caymus chief among them. These are completely different circumstances.
Have to agree with what others have said: one bad bottle doesn’t cancel the winery. That you enjoyed the other 11 is to be celebrated. I was once gifted about a dozen high-end Bordeaux wines from the 70s & 80s. Some were fantastic; some had gone bad. I was grateful for the great ones but harbored no ill will towards the ones that were gone.