Liquid Memory

We are transforming ourselves from political citizens into predictable consumers of a single, transnational, unified non-ideological body politic. The global citizen is now the global consumer of sweet and easy things

We live the Huxleyan fantasy that we are happy and free: new oak, sweetness, round tannins; Prozac; unearned, unironic happy endings in films

Randall Grahm, a genial, renegade winemaker in Santa Cruz, is the rare successful Californian winemaker eager to decry the Napa power structure and the fraud of many Californian wines. He explained to me on a visit to his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory–style winery that “Man’s primitive instinct for sweetness and fat is reflected not just in a Big Mac but also in the rich, ripe, sweet, alcoholic wines that are easy to produce anywhere in the world and at any price category.

How free are we when we taste? How independent are our palates? What does it mean to taste? Do we all have abilities? Do people across the world really want all these alcoholized soda pop concoctions, or are they conned and bullied by marketing and the collusion of the market itself into submitting to them? And, then, do they gradually grow accustomed, and consider this a legitimate norm? Are our tastes shaped by free will and free market forces, or are we victims of the phenomenon of imposing the lowest common denominator and calling that democracy

In all these countries, there is still a profound journey that can take place with dignity and humility toward the gradual uncovering of their terroirs, as numerous current winemakers, from Mendocino’s Lazy Creek winery to Australia’s Jim Barry, already prove

Many years later Taber wrote an unapologetically jingoistic book about what he witnessed—and helped create—titled The Judgment of Paris: California Versus France . . . the Historic Tasting That Revolutionized Wine. Alas, in some ways, he’s right

But they are exceptions. There are many more carpetbaggers, arrivistes, and status-mongers like de la Serna who’ve understood the global game of standardized taste and insider networking to reap rewards of money and status. De la Serna’s case is profoundly expressive of the false claims to modernity, the free market, and universal democracy (ideological confusions mistakenly associated with conservatives) of the Rolland/Parker/Wine Spectator establishment. Because, of course, de la Serna has nothing to do with modernity, if by this we mean progress and ethical innovation. What he has newly created—a region, a winery, a taste in wine—has no substantial, communal future, since it’s unrooted in any gesture other than an individual’s grasp for power.

Wine is not a purely constructed product. It needs to respect an origin larger than itself.”

“To respect the culture, the history of the place,” Dominique emphasizes.

Especially as most of the world moves in the opposite direction. We need to continue to work to understand the individual identities of each parcel of vines, whether it’s at the village, premier cru, or grand cru level.”

Laure points out that monks arrogated that right for themselves in the Middle Ages, thereby extending the sacramental nature of wine, the blood of Christ. “We try today to humanize wine through our analytical powers, stripping it of its relation to the divine,” she says. “The danger of critical judgments, of course, is that we become suffused with arrogance. To criticize wine, in effect we criticize God. Or at least we place ourselves next to him as equals among the elite. Are we necessarily the chosen ones because we decide we have the right to speak about wine? We shouldn’t forget that wine is of the earth, historically a source of humility. According to the Burgundian monks, when we bend down to harvest the grapes, we turn toward the earth, not toward heaven.”