Admonishment aside, I DID read the book. And I am better off for it – more knowledgeable (as a sommelier and avid wine buff for over 30 years I am already well-versed on the subject of wine), and more appreciative of the whole canvas of wine as art.

Nossiter urges us to embrace and be informed about stylistic differences, to break from the stranglehold of a globalized new world-heavy opinion about what good wine is supposed to be about. Indeed, he demands we appreciate a wine’s unique terroir as place, people, climate, and culture, et un je ne sais quoi.

I enjoyed Liquid Memories. A lot. So much so that Nossiter is the person with whom I would most like to sit down and imbibe.

Relax, have a glass of red….

Tizzylish,
Paris, France

I also read both reviews. All three went to the same school, were in the same englishh and history classes, and heard three different lectures all semester, in each class.

Funny how that happens !!!

Jonathon is stating one man’s opinion.

Funny though, how his discussion about terroir, which he suggests can be extended to may facets of life, somehow illicit the very response he anticipates.

People are diversified, wines are aplenty, but history and tradition matter, and what is deleterious when one form supplants another under the guise of superiority, proven by metrics. Your metrics.

Just think about that for a minute.

Funny how that happens !!

ciao !!

http://www.slate.com/id/2234013/

http://reignofterroir.com/2009/10/19/why-we-are-not-dogs-jonathan-nossiters-liquid-memory/

The one thing I can conclude about these reviews is that wine is HIGHLY political. And Steinberger and Payton are from different parties.

Yes, if you read the paragraph that sentence in the review comes from it’s clear that Steinberger is talking about partisan politics. There definitely is a politics of wine, as you point out, and I wrote whole book about it. But in my book, although some of the battles are heated, there’s rarely a party-political overlay to them. (One exception would be the Prohibition Party in the late 19th/early 20th century but we’re over that political cleavage now, pace Earl Dodge.) When Nossiter adds partisan overtones, it further detracts from any serious points he might be making.

However, wine IS political, in the larger sense of the word. Your own exchanges with Parker and Squires, and the stupid statements made by Parker about the “blobbers” were highly political, and had to do with a form of power struggle – one that Steinberger alludes to, when he talks about the democratisation of wine.

There is, as well, a political struggle surrounding the vision of what wine should be, and how it should be made. The spoofulating of wine through high-tech manipulation is ideological, not just technical. A certain form of politics does make its way into the glass, whether we want it or not.