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MARCILLAC & AVEYRONContinued…L’homme est le vin – Jean-Luc Matha“GET” MARCILLACIs there a point in getting the wine? Understanding something is necessarily constrained by the very limited linguistic frameworks withinwhich we operate. I do a lot of tutored tastings and I realise that although we may all use the same words in describing a wine we maymean quite different things by them. Language is an impure form of description: in tasting notes we use ten words where one will do andwe never get close to the heart of the wine. Oh yes, we can anatomise every single detail and pile up the adjectives, but the words are justcold echoes of the emotions we feel when we taste the wine. If you listen to classical music do you appreciate it more by pulling it apartintellectually or do you allow yourself to be swept up in the flow and feel it on the pulses? The time I get the wine (or the picture, or thepoem, or the music) is when I am least critical, least straining after meaning, then I don’t “get the wine” – it “gets me”. I also think,whilst we are in philosophic mode, that the wine in the glass is only one stage in a complex transformative process. The so-calledobjective transformations are the result of what happens to the grapes in the vineyard and in the winery. But the final transformation isthe response to tasting the wine itself and where that experience takes the individual taster. It is difficult to share these responses, as I’vementioned, because language is an insufficiently sensitive instrument. I admire Parker, for example, in one major respect. When he reallyloves a wine his descriptive powers completely desert him and the tasting note collapses in on itself; he’ll start gibbering and sayingWow! Tasting doesn’t just involve the usual “perceptive” senses; our sense of excitement, our sense of pleasure and our sense ofimagination brings the wine ineluctably to life. And that’s something worth getting.Back on terra firma points are the means whereby we codify “getting the wine”. The usual register is 100, although it effectively operatesat 80 and above according to some, or 50 and above according to others. Who establishes the criteria for marking and is the scaleremotely meaningful? Is there a received wisdom concerning wine that we can deconstruct the various components that make it up andassess clearly and conscientiously the real value of what we are drinking?Critical approbation tends to focus on the lavishly made up wines: primped, pumped, souped up models. I don’t “get” these wines anymore than I get an expensive fake fur coat. My experience of wine competitions is that in a line-up of multiple wines of various styles thenuances are discarded in favour of the broad brush strokes.Disagreement is an important part of debate. The way I taste is who I and what I like. Consequently, there are wines that I find faultybecause I dislike them. For example, any wine which tastes acidified or alcoholic or sweetly toasted, wherein I can taste the interventionsat the expense of the fruit and essential flavour is, to my palate, faulty. I can’t imagine the winemaker admitting the fault – whichbecomes a neat paradox: the desire to avoid faults in the wine is so great that it drives the winemaker into making meretricious, overelaboratedwines. The desire to improve on nature and keeping on adding layers of flavour is the desire to conform to a perceivedarchetype of what is good. The winemakers themselves are guilty in coaxing the wine fit the recipe.The sanguine wines of Marcillac remind us that less is more. As Eric is wont to ask: “Which is the wine that you would take home anddrink”? The delicious gutsy-savoury wines of the Aveyron and Gaillac are a million miles away from the ramped up international cuvéeslying inertly in their oak coffins surrounded by their trove of competition medals. The former get the juices flowing; the others clog ourarteries. Wine does not have to be pretentious to be interesting; when we drink Marcillac we believe that simplicity is an under-ratedvirtue.- 30 -