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;BERGERAC AND DORDOGNE VALLEYContinued…ANTHOLOGIA AND THE NATURE OF WINE TASTING continued…The Walrus and the Carpenter deconstruct a Chardonnay…Ah yes, the furrowing of the brows denoting concentration, the sepulchral hush, the lips curled in contumely, the business of being seriousabout wine – the calculated response based on a blend of native prejudice and scientific scepticism. But all wines are different and there isa story behind each one. Good humour, good company, good food and open-mindedness are the best recipe for imaginative appreciation.Leaving aside that dross is dross for a’ that, the mindset of the critic is often to anatomize for the sake of it. Too oaky, commented onesommelier about one particular Chardonnay that we were tasting. Too acidic, rejoined another. Too shoes and ships and sealing wax, saidone. Too cabbages and kings, said another. Criticism like this becomes an end in itself, a stylized response uncoupling pleasure from theexperience, as if registering subjective pleasure should be invalid.In conventional, reductive wine criticism you will not find any words like magic, joy, passion, spontaneity or creativity – the language oftranscendence, where structures dissolve and new meaning is found through emotion and reaction. The more I taste wine, the more Ibelieve that that each response is one of many truths and that if I purely use a narrow critical approach then I exclude my imaginationand intuition. If we can bring an open mind to tasting wine – as Coleridge wrote, “There is in genius an unconscious activity” - we mayallow the wine itself to breathe and fulfil its living destiny.I say there’s only one thing better with oysters than a good Chablis and that’s a bad Chablis- 22 -