Wine Ratings

A recent piece by San Francisco Chronicle Wine Editor, Jon Bonné, on wine ratings prompted me to re-think the subject of wine criticism. My thoughts are pretty simple and short.

I find top wine critics' reviews a form of voyeurism. More often than not the tasting notes convey little, if any, factual information or insights that make a reader smarter and more skilled in discerning the quality of wine. Instead, their notes and ratings seduce and titillate, doing nothing more than create a dependency on their ratings.

Artichokes and Wine

Artichokes are like the Great Satan of wine pairings. They should be shunned according to any food and wine pairing manual like this recent Food & Wine blog.

I'm not really sure why, but as in many things we follow like sheep anyway, though I confess to a few transgressions, when I innocently forget and a a devilish artichoke or two slips in a dish, while washing it down with my Chablis or Riesling. I would realize the grave error only too late as I'd be on the next course.

Rules are too much work for me, and so I'm really all for discarding rules of food and wine pairings, not for iconoclastic reasons, but because when I'm eating I just don't want to be bothered.

Imagine my liberation, when a godsend, as far as drinking wine with artichokes is concerned, materialized in the form of Garçon chef Arthur Wall's preparation of baby artichokes in his grilled sardines plate. He revealed to me that marinading the artichokes in wine for several hours purifies them, so to speak, forcing them to be wine converts whether they like it or not.

Indeed, Chef Wall's plate of grilled sardines with baby artichokes was perfect with a 2010 Muscadet from Jo Landron of Domaine de la Louvetrie and a 1997 Meursault from Michel Lafarge. And best of all, my dinner didn't have to be disturbed by any food and wine pairing rule.