Scenes from a world of lies:

A guy who works in a local, well-regarded wine shop tells me, “I have a vertical prestigious German Riesling producer’s wines, going back to the early 1990s.” (A “vertical” is one wine in an unbroken succession of vintages.)

Each week, one of the most widely read wine writers in the country picks a wine category and assembles a “tasting panel” of a few wine professionals. One of these is the “tasting coordinator,” who chooses the 20 or so wines from that region that the panel will sample. Through a consensus framed by the writer, the wines are ranked; that is, they are awarded a certain number of stars and accompanied by short descriptive terms.

I get invited to dinner with a visiting wine maker. At a nice restaurant with my bill covered, I get to taste expensive wines, some of them good, and expensive food, some of it good. The assumption, cultivated by me as well as by the people promoting their wines and comping my meal, is that I will write favorably about the wines.

The next day, someone offers me a trip to a big wine show in New York, expenses covered. Again, the assumption is that this will benefit the guys paying my bill, because they sell some of the wines that will be sampled at the show.

The great physicist Erwin Schrodinger said, “We exclude the subject of cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavor to understand … into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world.” The observer creates “a moderately satisfying picture of the world (which) has only been reached at the high price of taking ourselves out of the picture.”

Can the onlooker get back into the picture?

I don’t know the guy with the Rieslings too well, although he seems nice enough, but I thought: What is this about for you? What sweat have you, personally, shed to acquire those wines? Do you hope the selling of these wines by your store enhances your own personal prestige? What is your highest aim for those wines? To buy for yourself so you can share them with someone? To sell them for lots of money? To tell as many people as possible that “you” have them so folks will be suitably impressed?

I own wines I’m “proud” to possess, which I look forward to drinking. There are a bunch of them whose time is now, and yet most evenings I drink other wines: Wines that might make for a good column; wines I’m supposed to know about because of my job selling wines; wines that lack prestige but are better suited to my not overly ambitious and not overly wild-boar-laden meals, to my family responsibilities and desire to not be a drunken fool.

I’m supposed to be a wine drinker, but I’ve become a wine sampler. I’ve taken my actual self out of the picture.

Wine critics who line up, say, 20 North Coast Chardonnays and rank them in some sort of order — each with 10 to 12 words of generic descriptors (“crisp,” “zesty,” “white flowers”) – are lying. Usually, they’re not consciously bamboozling us, but they leave unacknowledged the perceptual framework that underlies the rankings.

When you encounter a critic’s wine recommendations based on some performance of sciencifity – the fiction of objectivity – what can you be sure of?

To what extent are the people “in the trade” I taste wine with helpful guides, and to what extent are they using me so that I can use you? So that I can tell a story that benefits my ego, that gets people to say, “Hey, that guy can write: he’s charming and smart; he should get paid more; let’s take him out to dinner and send him on cool trips.” None of us is as vigilant as we claim against ego-boosting opportunities.

When you ask the clerk in the shop to recommend a wine, how do you know she’s not just pushing the latest thing she got in on a special deal and has to move 40 cases by the end of the month in order get a free trip on the next junket? How can you be sure you’re not just playing your role in the theater of product movement?

I recently read (reviews of) “The Journals of Spalding Gray,” a (supposedly) tremendously moving book that offers all sorts of insight into the process of telling the truth.

Gray, a monologuist, actor and writer who died in 2004, was best known for “Swimming to Cambodia” and other works that professed to lay bare the telling of the tale. He wanted it to be as raw and intimate as possible, yet in his journals, he continually wondered whether he was “telling the truth” or putting on a “performance of truth-telling.”

I swear to you, I try, as I write about wine, to be honest. It’s your money at stake, and also, I argue, the fate of beauty in the world and even the sustainability of the world itself. It’s all important. But I’m not quite self-aware enough, and you don’t know me well enough, to be certain I’m not sometimes putting on a Truth-Telling Show.

I hope this doesn’t come off as depressing or self-indulgent. (Or maybe there’s something in me that stands to gain by coming off as depressing or self-indulgent!) I just want to talk about some things that don’t get talked about.

If you talk about them too, maybe then we can find more ways to trust each other. Anyway, I’ll wait until next week to recommend some good wines!

 

Joe Appel works at Rosemont Market. His blog, soulofwine.com, continues the conversation, and he can be reached at: soulofwine.appel@gmail.com

 

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