Ours is a competitive society, and it seems that to varying degrees, all human beings are hard-wired to pursue “better” and “best”. That competitiveness is alive and well in the wine world. Wines are scored by critics and each additional point from an influential writer can mean incremental sales for a winery. Wine competitions are routinely held and medals received are proudly displayed on wine bottle labels. This competitiveness has greatly benefitted the wine consumer. The pursuit of better and best by the wine-making community has lead to numerous innovations that have made wine better: gravity-fed wineries, organic and sustainable farming practices, screw caps, cold soaking, phylloxera-resistant root stocks, to name only a few. These are the positives that result from our competitive quest for better and best. Unfortunately, there is a bad side to this competitiveness as well.

Pursuing a better quality of wine is surely a good thing. But when competition leaves the arena of quality and enters the arena of taste, it is surely a bad thing. The trending topic in the wine world today seems to be the debate about wine style, resulting in a polarization of opinions pitting the new upstarts against the wine establishment.

The new upstarts advocate a leaner, fresher style of wine, one that embraces higher acidity and lower alcohol and less oak than the recent norm. Wine writer Jon Bonne and Sommelier Rajat Parr would be two of the leading lights in this movement. Bonne had written a highly successful wine column for the San Francisco Chronicle for eight years and has recently published his first book: The New California Wine. He has also published an essay titled “The Return of California Cabernet” which suggests that after two decades of stunning wines in the 60s and 70s, California got recognized on the world stage and then suddenly lost its way. “The resulting fruit was plusher, with sugar at unheard-of levels. Harvests moved later. In the cellar, oak became a flavor on its own. Tannins were polished away” Bonne wrote of the stylisitic shift that he observed during the 80s and 90s. Bonne lamented this trend, referring to it as “overkill” and the “era of de-cabernetification”. In Bonne’s view, ego created excess, and excess masked essence, essence being the savoury side of Cabernet that became overwhelmed by excessively high alcohols, oak and extraction.

Michael Mina restaurant group sommelier Rajat Parr (recently turned winemaker) has turned up the dials in the new upstart movement. He helped found “In Pursuit of Balance”, also known as IPOB, “a non-profit organization seeking to promote dialogue around the meaning and relevance of balance in California pinot noir and chardonnay”. Their manifesto reads: “Balance is the foundation of all fine wine. Loosely speaking, a wine is in balance when its diverse components — fruit, acidity, structure and alcohol — coexist in a manner such that should any one aspect overwhelm or be diminished, then the fundamental nature of the wine would be changed.” It is a good definition of balance, which all sides would find difficulty in disagreeing with, but where it goes wrong, and where the debate gets silly, is the subjectivity each side brings to the argument.

The bickering between the two sides was recently documented in the New Yorker article “The Wrath of Grapes” by Bruce Schoenfield. The article opens with a revelation about two adjacent California Central Coast vineyards, Sea Smoke and Wenzlau, which, despite their similarities produce vastly different wines, a function of different winemaking styles that form the crux of this article. Schoenfield says of Sea Smoke that “He (Parr) believes that the grapes are picked far too late, when they’re far too ripe, and that the resulting wine is devoid of both subtlety and freshness.” Yet Robert Parker, founder of the highly influential “The Wine Advocate” wine review, has written of the Foxen Pinot Noir from the Sea Smoke Vineyard “Rich dark cherries, smoke, mocha, savory herbs and spices come to life in this multi-dimensional, stunning Pinot. There is a level of depth in the Sea Smoke that is flat-out breathtaking.” Two acknowledged experts with vastly different takes on the merits of a style of winemaking. And their differences are not friendly. Schoenfield writes of the IPOB followers “In my conversations with them, no phrase elicited more derision than “Parker wines.” It was shorthand, fair or not, for wines they deem generically obvious and overblown.” Parker has referred to the new upstarts as the “anti-flavor wine elite”.

Bonne, to his credit, took a more reasoned approach at the Wine Writer’s Symposium held earlier this year. Bonne asked panelist Parker, after quoting some of Parker’s more vitriolic comments, “Under the notion of live and let live, why not allow more diversity? Why not allow California to explore the full potential of what it can do that might show nuance in addition to that?”

Parker was equally reasoned in his response. “I actually agree with what you’re saying. Even though that passage you just read is, you know, a call-to-arms so to speak, I’m not saying that these wines shouldn’t be made. I am saying I think it’s a mistake to have a formula where your objective is to have low alcohol and you’re going to pick the grapes at a lower brix just so you can have low alcohol and then somehow slam the word elegant on it. You’re not getting an elegant wine; you’re just getting a wine that’s lower in alcohol.”

Where the whole balance debate goes off the rails and becomes silly is when someone claims their preferred style is the standard for balance. Both Parker and Parr would agree on the definition of balance: no one aspect of the wine excessively accentuated or diminished relative to another. But they clearly hold two different opinions as to where the fulcrum rests. Bonne’s call for diversity is the correct one. Consumers benefit from having a choice and access to leaner, lower alcohol wines that showcase savoury flavors and herbal aromas, as well as access to a style that offers big bold flavours, full body and powerful fruit driven aromas. To claim superiority of one style over another is foolish and meaningless. It is like trying to establish the objective superiority of Thai cuisine over French cuisine. In all matters of taste, not just wine and cuisine, but in art, music and all others, there has to be room to allow for differences in style. You may like Brahms, I may like the Grateful Dead, you may like Monet, I may like Picasso. In the art and music worlds, diversities of styles are generally accepted, and superiority of style is seldom debated. The wine world needs to follow suit. Wine is all about bringing people together, about sharing a glass, about conviviality.  The last thing it needs is another wine-bully to tell you your tastes are somehow inferior.