You are simply incapable of understanding greatness

Quality in an aesthetically pleasing object is Platonic, it has a concrete existence. All too often, this concrete existence is vastly mis-represented. Let us take cheese as an example.

The quality of cheese can be modelled as a cloud of clouds on a polydimensional set of axes. Those axes are things like ‘hardness’, ‘acidity’, ‘richness’, ‘creaminess’ and so on, and so on.

Each of these characteristics of a particular cheese does not exist as a single point on these axes. ‘creaminess’ can be ‘sweet’, ‘mouthcoating’, ‘sloppy’, and so on. So, in this model, a cheese’s characteristics on an axis also exists as a sub-cloud of different expressions of that property.

This is clearly a very complex model for the quality of cheese. It may be a model, but cheese is a very complex thing! This is, presumably, why most people are terrified of cheese and, when they visit cheesemongers, dither hopelessly between the two cheeses they tasted and only end up buying 40g of one of them.

Now some cheeses are bad, some ordinary, some good, and some excellent. Recognising what polydimensional pattern of polydimensional patterns fits these descriptors takes education, training and skill. Any old neophyte or beginner cannot be expected to or even be capable of judging what makes a cheese good and explaining why. I would trust Bronwen Percival to judge whether a cheese was good, I would not trust someone who had only ever eaten ‘mild cheddar’.

Now, if you walk into my local Marks and Spencer, the descriptions of Feta, Mozzarella and Emmental all read “Strength 2”. This is, of course, purest bullshit.

The idea that those polydimensional patterns can be reduced to a single number is reductio ad absurdum.

Think of the differences between those three cheeses. Feta is considerably saltier than the other two; Mozzarella is far creamier; Emmental has a character that can cause physical pain on your palate when you eat it. These differences are just the beginning of a vast multiplicity of variance between the cheeses. Manifestly, they are not all ‘2’.

Indeed, reducing the characteristics of these cheeses does not illuminate anything about the cheese nor help one decide which one to choose and how to serve or use it. Absolutely, it makes no sense to describe them all as ‘2’.

So, shall we apply this to wine? Let us.

It is clear to see that there are properties like ‘acidity’, ‘tannin’, ‘sweetness’ and a vast array more to every wine. Some of those properties are extremely evanescent, not only ‘excitement’ or ‘complexity’, but even more the likes of ‘sense of place’ or ‘typicity’.

Moreover, these properties display in many different manifestations. Acidity can be ‘bright’, ‘energetic’, ‘screeching’, ‘subtle’, etc. They certainly display more than the CellarTracker scale that seems to stretch from ‘Medium(+)’ to ‘Medium(+)’.

There are clear conclusions one can draw from this.

Firstly, if most of your experience of wine is, say, von Kesselstatt and Max Ferd. Richter, your ability to assess a quality German wine, say, Katarina Prum’s wonderful produce, is highly dubious, and your opinions on Ridge Zinfandel are worse than pointless.

Secondly, no amount of statistical data-reduction can reduce a multitude of polydimensional properties to a single dimension. It is obvious that describing a wine with a single number between 50 and 100 (or 89.5 and 92.5 on CellarTracker) is total bollocks.

My exposition of this model of aesthetic analysis is a plea to recognise and celebrate the complexity of pleasure, and a suggestion that beginners should practice their inexpert fumblings somewhere outside the gaze of the public.

The title of this essay paraphrases Jean-Michel Deiss, who said to Pierre Antoine Rovani, “You are simply incapable of understanding the greatness of my wines”. Rovani was clearly highly capable, he gave the wines shitty reviews.