What these experiments neatly demonstrate is that the taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of our inputs, and cannot be solved in a bottom-up fashion. It cannot be deduced by beginning with our simplest sensations and extrapolating upwards. When we taste a wine, we aren’t simply tasting the wine. This is because what we experience is not what we sense. Rather, experience is what happens when our senses are interpreted by our subjective brain, which brings to the moment its entire library of personal memories and idiosyncratic desires. As the philosopher Donald Davidson argued, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish between a subjective contribution to knowledge that comes from our selves (what he calls our “scheme”) and an objective contribution that comes from the outside world (”the content”). Instead, in Davidson’s influential epistemology, the “organizing system and something waiting to be organized” are hopelessly interdependent. Without our subjectivity we could never decipher our sensations, and without our sensations we would have nothing to be subjective about. In other words, we shouldn’t be surprised that different people like different bottles of cheap wine.

Unfortunately, while we will often dislike a very expensive wine and occasionally really enjoy a cheap one, my wife and I tend to be drawn to expensive-ish pinot noirs costing upwards of $30 a bottle. You’d think that if wine tastes were completely random that this wouldn’t happen.

via Radley Balko

Petite sirah is not syrah or shiraz, although it is a direct descendant straight from the Rhone. Nor is it petite. Petite sirah is big, really big, from the juiciest of grapes, like a water balloon filled to bursting with grape and cherry jam.

It has spice and pepper, plenty of guts. So much that wine writers and fans, I plead guilty, have apologized for its frivolous name and introduced it as a John Wayne of wines. That makes it sound like too much of a tough guy when one of its trademarks is charm, even silky smoothness. Let’s recast with Clint Eastwood or Steve McQueen.

“It has intense tannins, deep color and a lot of acid, but is so well balanced with all this fruit, that it doesn’t comes out hot (with too much alcohol) or “furrish’ (with tannin),” explained Phil Regan, the winemaker at Foppiano. The Foppianos have bottled petite as a varietal for 30 years, and now have it in a third of their Healdsburg vineyards, which produce 10,000 to 20,000 cases a year.

Make its acquaintance now, because this petite sirah is bred for chilly evenings, thick pork chops, legs of lamb, beef stews, grilled sausage and stout cheeses. (Florida has plenty of months for salmon and pinot noir.)

Sideways Wine Club selection June 2005.

One online reviewer remarked of this wine, “I love wines like this -very giving, but a little unrefined. Like bringing a stripper to the library.” I’m not sure what the hell that means but it’s funny.

One of four different pinots made by Waltzing Bear that year.