Chris Williams, winemaker of Meerlust and The Foundry, considers the values that should be applied when addressing the idea of quality in wine. 

This is the time of year when competitions and wine assessment tastings take place, the results and procedures followed usually eliciting copious discussion and controversy after the fact. Putting aside the topical debate of blind versus sighted tastings, judges in wine competitions are usually issued with an “aesthetic brief” before the judging begins, where the chairperson of the show suggests to the various judges certain criteria which should be rewarded and others which should be considered less desirable within the confines of the specific competition and particular class of wines under review. Whether or not a coherent consensus can be arrived at, the question of what are considered desirable qualities in wine remains a vexed one.

Moving beyond the basic tenet that preference in wine is a wholly personal and subjective opinion, is it possible to have a consensus on what constitutes a “good” wine? If this is possible, can that supposition be extended to ask “if wine A is a good wine, and wine B is a good wine, which is a better wine? The question moves from a qualitative to a quantitative one. This question has plagued wine lovers for centuries, and has become even more controversial in recent times as the production, consumption and commentary on wine have become ubiquitous and globalised. More importantly, the wine business and associated industries have become big business with financial legacies and reputations at stake.

Initially, wine neophytes apply a simple yet affective paradigm to a wine – “does it taste nice?” Beyond that, discernable fruit and oak flavours, and the intensity thereof, constitute wine quality to the novice drinker. The more intense the aromas and flavours of a wine, with preference given to fruit sweetness and richness, the “better” the wine. The “quality” is quantified by increasing concentration, be it fruit flavour, oak flavour , palate weight or structure .There is nothing wrong with this particular model of wine assessment and it has served many consumers very well over the years. But at some point, curious wine drinkers begin to tire of sheer intensity and “bigness”. When wine becomes a part of the daily ritual of existence, concepts such as balance, finesse, tension, refreshment and finally, most controversially, provenance, become sought-after attributes, and become more and more difficult to quantify.

Terry Theise on value

For these reasons, I was fascinated to read an article called “Values in Wine: An attempt to Codify” in Issue 23, 2009 of The World of Fine Wine (surely the “best” print publication on wine in English). The article is by Terry Theise, an American wine importer.

Theise has managed to elucidate what he calls “a kind of charter of values by which wine is enjoyed, understood, appreciated and placed in a matrix of principle and judgment”, something I have been struggling (and failing) to do for years. Theise admits that it is something he has done wholly for himself, but he has struck a chord of resonance with my own perceptions of wine and I submit the essence of his discovery in the hope that it is helpful to other wine lovers.

Theise starts off with what he considers the first principles of wine, the aspects of flavour, beginning with those that matter most:

• Clarity (not lack of turbidity by sight, but “clear, defined flavours”).
• Distinctiveness
• Grace
• Balance
• Deliciousness
• Complexity
• Modesty
• Persistence
• Paradox

(I would add vivacity here, where a wine crackles with energy and vigour rather than is dull and ponderous).

Theise calls clarity the “first of first principles”, it does not refer to the lack of cloudiness in appearance, but rather a wine’s character should be clear, candid and with nothing to hide.

Distinctiveness is a taste of place, “somewhereness”, and Theise laments the impact of the international consultant, formulaic winegrowing and varietal monoculture. He says that it is not enough for great wines to have a passport, they must have a birth certificate as well and prefers to drink wines that taste of “something” and not “everything”. (What I would call a “kitchen sink” wine, not because it smells of drains, but because it has had everything thrown at it!)

So far so good, what about “grace”? Theise says that grace can apply to various degrees of strength, body, or ripeness and can found in both polished and rustic wines. He allies it to modesty, and says “it is a form of tact, a kindness, a rejection of coarseness and power for its own sake”. I would add that a graceful wine is at ease with itself, it is not quantifiable and it is a quality that, like charm, a wine either possesses, or not.

Balance has, as its sibling, harmony and proportion. Theise says that “balance should not be confused with symmetry, there are asymmetrical yet balanced wines”. He deftly describes balance as a quality of flavour that draws one away from the parts to the whole, a chord of flavour in which no single note is out of tune”. (This description is timely for me at the moment as I am busy assembling the Meerlust Rubicon 2009 blend and with 4 varieties, 21 plots of vineyard and 37 barrel lots – balance is the key quality that I seek in this wine.) He ascribes an almost natural beauty to balance in wine, akin to the value of pi or fractal geometry and possessing a counter-intuitive, non-linear yet harmonious form.

Theise argues that a wine “can meet every other criterion by which we judge it successful and not taste good”. He says such a wine lacks “deliciousness”. As a pure sensory flavour, deliciousness has been likened to “umami”, the savoury, brothy flavour of meat, mushrooms or cheese. It is more than the flavour of soy sauce, it is the sensation which is a combination of flavours, smells, textures and consistency combine in the sensory organs giving an impression of deliciousness. Theise claims it to be a basic sensation, appealing to something primal within us. Food producers know this and have synthesized monosodium glutamate for addition to a whole range of foods, simply to accentuate the “deliciousness” of those foods.

The next aspect of flavour is complexity, with corollaries of ambiguity and evanescence and says “there is explicit complexity wherein all the components of a wine can be discerned and we are delighted by how many there are and how they interact”, and “implicit complexity which we sense there is something present but oblique to our view”. How he reconciles this with the previous attribute of clarity is not clear, but he does say that in very few wines “there is a haunting sense of something being shown to you that has nothing to do with discrete flavour”. By the same token, I have had phenomenally complex wines that were simply bad because the constituents did not hang together as a cohesive whole, they lacked the harmony and resonance and can be described as the aforementioned “kitchen sink” wines. Theise argues that complexity is the noblest of a wine’s attributes but “the one most impossible to bring about by design” and that some wines embody the complexity of life and our perception of them is similar to “the view from the sky”. I have heard UK-based wine journalist Andrew Jefford use the more eloquent term of “intricacy”, in the manner of the inner workings of an antique pocket watch to describe the complexity in a more precise, utilitarian sense.

Modesty is an odd quality to admire in a wine, but on reflection, it does make sense and Theise identifies a modest wine as “a wine that seeks to be a companion”… “as opposed to a wine that needs to dominate your entire field of attention”. That is a criticism I have of so many competition winners and “icon” wines: they demand your attention, command your submission as a rather loud, intoxicated dinner guest might do. There is no doubt they are impressive, but does one want to stand in awe of the wine one drinks, or rather be accompanied by it, like on a pleasant stroll or a quiet dinner? I have found that wines which clearly and confidently whisper their charms are far more agreeable and compelling than those that brashly shout about their strengths. Theise says it more eloquently: “some wines deserve your entire field of vision, but these are almost never the ones that scream in order to get it. Modest wines are endangered in these times, when power is overvalued. Just because your text is written in bold, it doesn’t mean you have anything to say”.

Persistence, and its siblings of depth and intensity, properly come after those cited above, says Theise as a “persistent, unpleasant wine is no one’s idea of fun. A good wine is elevated by persistence, a bad wine diminished”… “intensity arises not from the will to express but from the thing that is being expressed”. Persistence need not be found in good wines, but it always is found in great ones.

Finally, of the aspects of flavour that matter most, Theise agrees that paradox is “in the hands of the angels and doesn’t appear to susceptible to human contrivance” and that paradox is a reliable proof mark of greatness in which seemingly disparate elements not only coexist but spur each other on: power with grace, depth with brilliance…”. It is paradox which initially seems to be at odds with balance and harmony, but then becomes the exception which proves the rule.

Less important aspects

Next, Theise discusses the aspects of flavour that matter least, namely:

• Power
• Sweetness
• Ripeness
• Concentration

Theise says that it is not that these aspects don’t matter at all, but that too many think they matter too much and it is through the elucidation of these concepts that Theise gives clearer definition to those aspects he values more highly.

Theise says that power is neither desirable nor undesirable, but it needs to justify its existence by its relationship with grace, distinctiveness and deliciousness and that “too often it stops at mere incoherent assertiveness”.

While I have nothing against sweetness per se, it is “sachariness” that I personally dislike, where sweetness exists for its own sake and not as part of the coherent whole of the wine, but Theise says “no single component of flavour is subject to more obsessiveness, dogma and doctrine”, and it matters only where there is too much or too little of it. Sweetness of fruit is an attractive and valid characteristic of some wines; it is certainly not the defining characteristic of great wine.

Similarly, Theise accuses the “singular pursuit of ripeness – and especially physiological ripeness – as an absolute” that “has wrecked many wines by damning them to a power they can’t support and it has removed the nuance possible when wines are made from grapes of variegated ripeness”. This assertion flies in the face of almost all currently accepted viticultural wisdom, where uniform ripeness from mono-clonal vineyards are sought-after and tracked, micro-managed and plotted using the latest, most expensive techniques. The rationale behind this is that it removes the complexity of blending from nature and places it in the hands of the oenologist. It straddles the divide of the argument that nature knows best, rather than science, and that the variables found in great vineyards and great wines cannot be comprehended, and therefore manipulated, by humans.

Theise disposes of the aspect of “concentration” quickly, and simply, thus: “concentration only matters after this question is answered: What are we concentrating? In itself, “concentrated” is merely an adjective, not a virtue”. Quite.

In part 2, I will consider what Theise thinks is not important in the production of wine, as well as what he believes is essential, and see whether these production values are finding expression in our own, South African wine industry.