Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018 - 6

Drink
Different
When it comes to taste,
you are your own best critic.

Number One's
Number Two
Dow's Late Bottled Vintage Port
shares vineyards and winemaking with
Wine Spectator's Number One wine
of 2014, Dow's 2011 Vintage Port.
It is only produced in the best years
and bottled ready to drink.
WWW.DOWS-PORT.COM

You know what you like, even if you can't say exactly why. The challenge to being a reliable
critic is to be able to say why.
If we can't explain why we like a wine, we are at the mercy of others, who might push wines
at us that they find similar. This is, in fact, how a lot of the commerce in commodity wine takes
place: People manufacture wine to some imagined taste.
Being able to describe exactly what we like or don't like about a wine is the first step to disrupting the commodity wine industry. It allows us to ask for what we want rather than accepting what others want to give us.
It also allows us to expand our wine worlds, as we can taste our way to places we might not
have imagined going. We can taste past the preconceived notions of a type of wine, and figure
out for ourselves if we like it. We can taste changes in a region's wines that might bring them
in line with what we like to drink.
In this issue, we invite you to explore your own tastes in wine, to clarify what you like in a
wine and to find ways to articulate it. We challenged our team to write about the breakthrough
wines and the game changers that forced them to reconsider an entire category of wine. We
set out to learn what had changed, or to figure out what we'd been missing.
You'll not only find a lot of great wine in the pages that follow, but you may also gain some
insight into how we think about wine in general. If that helps you to better articulate what you
like, you may well be closer to your own breakthrough wine, from a variety or a place you've
always thought you didn't like, and suddenly, you do.
It's a simple matter of how our senses work, and how our brains process that work. We
taste and smell in patterns, and we recognize those patterns in our memories. When we taste
enough of one thing to recognize a pattern, we assign a preference to it and remember that
preference, as well. If it's dislike, we will tend to dismiss or to put aside anything that seems
to match that pattern.
It may be enough for you to stick with the wines you know and love. But we think it's worth
keeping an open mind, and taking time to reflect on some of the wines you don't like...or didn't
like in the past. Because when you say you don't like a variety or a style of wine, you are saying
that your past experience with it was unfortunate. If you can say why, someone who knows
about that kind of wine might say, "Oh, what about this one?" You may have just opened a
door to a world of great new opportunities to drink something delicious.
Our editors reconsider some of their own personal biases in this issue, and call out the wines
that helped us understand a region or a variety in a different way. We've also included some
collections of wines from recent articles on regions in transition, where substantive changes
have led to new wines that might change your mind about a region. This issue has been an
opportunity for us to explore new ground in places we thought we knew well, and to enjoy
the taste of wines from that ground, even as it's shifting under our feet.

https://www.dows-port.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Fall 2018