German Catalog 2006 USE THIS ONE.qxp - Michael Skurnik Wines

36
Plusses and The Quest For Perfection
You’ll see one, two or three plusses next to certain
wines in the following text. They are how I formalize the
answer to your oft-asked question “What must I not miss
under any circumstances?” That is, they are my short-list
of “musts”.
Every wine in this offering gets in because I like it a
lot. Certain ones are especially striking; firsts among
equals, if you will. To these I give a plus.
Less frequently, a wine really stops me in my tracks.
It announces its greatness; it is aristocracy. It gets two
plusses.
And on very rare occasions a wine is utterly transporting.
It stops conversation, it seems to slow time
down, it conveys a nearly divine spirit of beauty. To
these one or two wines per vintage, I write three plusses.
This “scoring” scale is deliberately vague because I
think any attempt at greater definition is misled, misleading
and even pernicious. I barely think about it at all;
it registers immediately, and if I find myself thinking
about it I grow very irritated.
Any evaluative scale presumes upon some notion of
perfection. For years Gault-Millau refused to award any
restaurant more than 19.5 on its 20-point scale, saying,
correctly, that perfection was unattainable. Then they
relented and gave the full 20 to Marc Veyrat, causing him
plenty of indigestion I’m sure, and compelling the question
of what they’ll do when, inevitably, they find some
restaurant they think is even better.
But I understand the feeling, the sense of sublimity
and the ache it creates, and the desire to convey such an
exaltation of emotion in a way equal to its intensity. It is
very natural and human, but it doesn’t always do good.
David Schildknecht has found a way out; he defines
perfection as “better than which cannot, at that moment,
be imagined.” Because in the essence of the Moment Of
Beauty one is quite certain that all such moments are fundamentally
equal, and one sees how fatuous it is to catalogue
or quantify them.
I’m wearing two hats when I taste for this portfolio.
I’m just a guy who loves wine and I’m also a merchant
with a network of obligations to fulfill. When I tasted
Spreitzer’s “303” this year I was mindful I wrote three
plusses for the `04. If I didn’t do so again, readers (and
buyers) might think the wine had “slipped” — there are
meta-messages in all things — but in fact I wrote one plus
because that was the truth of that wine on my palate at
that moment.
Sometimes I wonder how I receive beauty. I’ve been
corresponding with Jacqueline Friedrich as she prepares
her new book, and the notion of “perfection” came up.
Here’s some of what we wrote:
JF: Re Deiss and ZH: I wonder if you agree with me on
the following proposition: maybe, just maybe, there are
other wines this inspired and heartstopping in the world.
But I can’t imagine wine being “better” than this. I
mean, how much can you demand of a wine? How much
can you demand of Bach? Deiss and ZH are making the
vinous equivalents of the Mass in B Minor.
TT: I’d love to see you answer your own rhetorical
question “How much can you demand of a wine?”
That’s the kind of wine-writing I just can’t read
enough of. I’d also find it fascinating if you identified
your own tipping-point, i.e. what exactly is it
that finally convinces you a wine is “perfect”? For
me, a wine enters my palate and the first thing I
notice is its gestalt, followed by its innate flavor — or
Flavor — followed by any intricacy it unfolds, followed
by a sense of the harmonies of those elements,
followed by a sense of their length. And all of
these things can amount to a sort of hypothetical
“perfection”, but my own tipping point is a feeling
of sadness. This is an aspect of my own response to
beauty — or, again, Beauty — to which I’m especially
sensitive. When I feel the wine has sent me somewhere,
or perhaps taken me somewhere, larger,
older and deeper than itself, then I feel the presence
of the sublime. And that is my marker for perfection.
It’s no accident your analogy was to religious
(i.e. divine) music. Or so I suppose.
JF: One of the problems — as we all well know — is finding
the words to describe intensely sensual and subjective
experiences. I use the word subjective in a restricted
sense. I do believe that there are objective standards -- for
painting, music, wine, etc. but once we agree on those,
then the value or reaction or whatever becomes subjective.
[So] let’s ditch the word ‘perfect.’ it’s too loaded and
reminds me too much of numbers.
TT: In a sense I don’t care what we call it, and I agree
with your wariness about “perfect”. But maybe we
have to find SOMETHING to call it, I think. And we
have to describe it somehow, so that people have a
chance to see what we mean. For me it is a quality of
incandescence. And you’re absolutely right, it isn’t
like comparing a 100-watt with a 60-watt bulb and
saying the 100-watt is X-percent “better” or closer to
some notion of perfection. It is something that suddenly
blazes into light.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +