Stuart Pigott and "five commandments on wine"

Hi,

I would imagine many of you already know about this, but I only just found out.

Wine critic Stuart Pigott has five "commandments" which he has composed to help people enjoy and appreciate wine. They run as follows:

1. A wine is as good or bad as it tastes and smells to you.
2. For wine, there is no connection between price and quality.
3. Wine is not nearly so complicated or delicate as generally assumed.
4. There are no wrong words to describe wine.
5. There is only one error that is possible to make in connection with wine: to ruin other people's pleasure.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Pigott

I was just curious as to what people thought of this? With the exception of point two, I would have thought all this was patently obvious - which rather questions the value of actually bothering to sit down and concoct these "commandments" in the first place. That point number two (which is partly true IMO, but certainly rather contentious) is also notable for seeming to run contradictory to some of the others, particularly point five.

Cheers,
Matt

Ok, I will throw in my 2 cents. First they are pretty good comments but like all commandments they are generalizations. I would have to expand on #2. You can pay a lot of money for bad wine but generally speaking a $75 '05 Pegau will taste much better than a $10 Rhone. There is a connection between price and quality, it just is not absolute. Also, related to #5 there should be an exception for people that ask an opinion. I will not speak poorly of your wine but in exchange do not ask my opinion. Just drink and enjoy.
Walt

[Robin Garr]

Wine critic Stuart Pigott has five "commandments" which he has composed to help people enjoy and appreciate wine. ... I was just curious as to what people thought of this?

This is a bit difficult to answer without coming off the snob, Matt, but I'll give it a try.

I think Piggot is essentially correct on much of this, but I'm not sure what audience he is addressing. Summed up, the uniting theme of the five is, "Wine is good, don't be a snob, don't make fun of other people for liking what you don't like, after all it's just grape juice and the only taste buds you have to please are your own."

But that said, by framing it a "commandments" and delivering it from the mountaintop, he comes off (to me at least) as preachy and a bit of a twit.

You have already highlighted No. 2 as arguable, and I would agree. Better to say that there's no real question that the world's greatest wines tend to be expensive, in part because of demand but in part, to be fair, because they are labor-intensive and made from unusually fine and justifiably expensive fruit; and that there are plenty of excellent cheap wines around, but you do have to kiss a few frogs in order to find a princess.

As for the rest, he's probably correct, at least insofar as the mass market is concerned, that no one should be ridiculed for enjoying modest, everyday wines.

But he is doing it in such a way, and perhaps addressing a specific audience in somewhat confrontative terms, as to demean those who consider wine a hobby and who have made it a particular interest to learn more about the stuff, how it is made, and who've acquired tastes that inspire us to seek out wines we consider more "interesting."

I have a hard time reading Pigott's commandments without feeling that he's undertaking a bit of a battle with no real opponents here, and doing it in such a way as to attract attention to himself.

1. A wine is as good or bad as it tastes and smells to you.
2. For wine, there is no connection between price and quality.
3. Wine is not nearly so complicated or delicate as generally assumed.
4. There are no wrong words to describe wine.
5. There is only one error that is possible to make in connection with wine: to ruin other people's pleasure.

It seems to me that all of these "commandments" attempt to demystify wine, with the underlying proposition that wine is something to be enjoyed, not overly intellectualized. I think, however, that these views, taken to an exteme, represent their own form of snobbery, resulting in derision for anyone who attempts to analyze a wine or who cares about wine/food pairing. For me, point 5 is paramount; all else is superfluous.

Mark Lipton

Well said Mark.

#5 actually seemed to me like the one that needed questioning. i mean short of saying nothing or never explaining your preferences; how do you abide by it? person A takes pleasure in the wine. i don't and say so. person A asks why. maybe what i say will make sense to person A and thereby ruin their pleasure. if person A takes pleasure in oxidized or bretty or volatile or maderized or corky wines; are we ruining their pleasure by pointing this out? or are we helping them have greater future pleasure?

and then there is the no wrong words commandment - which is related to the private language theories in philosophy. if a person says that a wine tastes sweet to them and it is analyzed as having 2gr/l of sugar, isn't it obvious that it can't taste sweet since it isn't. they are misusing language - are keying on something other than sweetness - softness, lack of tart or bitter aspects or ??? - or whatever; but describing the wine as tasting sweet is simply wrong. compare to 'it looks red' when the wavelengths record green. is the red description not wrong? do color blind people continue to claim that they are the only correct ones? why is taste different?

my commandment is NO COMMANDMENTS! ooops, just violated it.

I recently plotted price vs (subjective enjoyment) points for my tasting notes over the last 5 years - thousands of data points. I could see no correlation at all. Now, I would add a couple of caveats: 1) most of the time I would simply refuse to put cheap crap in my mouth, even to taste, but I do try it every now and then to recalibrate the lower end of my points scale and 2) at the cheaper end of what I do drink I buy very carefully. Even so, I was very surprised.

I like the commandments. Yes, most of them may be self-obvious, but that does not stop them being broken on a regular basis.

I recently plotted price vs (subjective enjoyment) points for my tasting notes over the last 5 years - thousands of data points. I could see no correlation at all. Now, I would add a couple of caveats: 1) most of the time I would simply refuse to put cheap crap, even to taste, but I do try it every now and then to recalibrate the lower end of my points scale and 2) at the cheaper end of what I do drink I buy very carefully. Even so, I was very surprised.

I like the commandments. Yes, most of them may be self-obvious, but that does not stop them being broken on a regular basis.

Steve,
Hate to tell you this but don't think your study matches the broader world. Now if you went out and bought every bottle with a stupid name and equally goofy label the study would be appropriate but probably different in result. But wait, maybe then people would question your palate.
Walt

Perhaps caveat number 3) is that maybe the expensive stuff lacks the lower tail in the points distrubution that shows at the cheaper end, but I have not drunk enough expensive wines to determine if that lower tail exists for them. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I don't know

1. A wine is as good or bad as it tastes and smells to you.

Agree

2. For wine, there is no connection between price and quality.

If one accepts the first commandment than I think one has to accept second. If one can accept that there are people that do not like DRC or who do like Two-Buck Chuck and that quality is define personally than one has to accept that price and quality have no connection .

3. Wine is not nearly so complicated or delicate as generally assumed.

Depends upon perspective. At its simplist it is grapes, yeast and time and then you have a yummy beverage. However, if one wants to talk about influence of southern exposure, soil chemistry or clones and its impact to the final product and our perception of its quality than it is much more complicated than anything but the biggest of us geeks believes.

4. There are no wrong words to describe wine.

Agree

5. There is only one error that is possible to make in connection with wine: to ruin other people's pleasure.

Agree.

#5 actually seemed to me like the one that needed questioning. i mean short of saying nothing or never explaining your preferences; how do you abide by it? person A takes pleasure in the wine. i don't and say so. person A asks why. maybe what i say will make sense to person A and thereby ruin their pleasure. if person A takes pleasure in oxidized or bretty or volatile or maderized or corky wines; are we ruining their pleasure by pointing this out? or are we helping them have greater future pleasure?

It seems to me that you're overly intellectualizing it, David In my eyes, #5 is just saying "play well with others," something that we'd all hope would be self-evident. There is evidence in certain other fora that such is not the case, though...

Mark Lipton

I heard somewhere that Pigott had declared that he would no longer publish reviews of a wine unless he had had a chance to follow the evolution of an entire bottle of it [i.e. no more 1.5 oz pours sampled over the course of 60 seconds in groups of 100 or more spread out over tables in hotel ballrooms].

Personally, I'm a big fan of following a bottle over the course of several days to try to learn what the wine is made of.

BTW, in case anyone here has never heard of Pigott, he wrote up the "Tasting of the Century" for Marvin Shanken, back in 1994.

It was called Patience and Perfection: Germany's Prüm family makes Rieslings that stand the test of time, in Cigar Aficianado [of all places], and these were the wines which Pigott was fortunate [blessed?] to be able to taste:

1992 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr (Cask Sample) / 86-89

1991 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 88

1990 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 93

1990 RIESLING AUSLESE LONG GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 98

1989 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 90

1989 RIESLING AUSLESE LONG GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 96

1989 RIESLING BEERENAUSLESE Wehlener Son

1988 RIESLING AUSLESE LONG GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 97

1987 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 87

1986 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 91

1985 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 88

1985 RIESLING AUSLESE LONG GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 93

1983 RIESLING SPATLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 92

1983 RIESLING AUSLESE LONG GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 95

1982 RIESLING BEERENAUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 95

1979 RIESLING AUSLESE GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 90

1976 RIESLING AUSLESE LONG GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 97

1975 RIESLING AUSLESE LONG GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 90

1971 RIESLING AUSLESE GOLD CAP Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 95

1971 RIESLING TROCKENBEERENAUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 99

1970 RIESLING BEERENAUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 98

1969 RIESLING FEINSTE AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 92

1969 RIESLING HOCHFEINE AUSLESE EISWEIN Graacher Himmelreich / 95

1966 RIESLING FEINE AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 87

1964 RIESLING FEINSTE AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 94

1961 RIESLING AUSLESE EISWEIN Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 88

1959 RIESLING FEINSTE AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 95

1959 RIESLING TROCKENBEERENAUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 100

1953 RIESLING FEINE AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 92

1949 RIESLING FEINE AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 99

1943 RIESLING AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 85

1938 RIESLING TROCKENBEERENAUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 100

1921 RIESLING AUSLESE Wehlener Sonnenuhr / 88