The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture by Michael Steinberger Read Free Book Online Page A

processed through a variety of filters unrelated to our biological dispositions. Our preferences are formed mostly by experience, expectations, culture, and other intangibles.

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    How to Buy Wine
    T HERE ARE few things that get oenophiles more jazzed than finding a seriously good wine shop, with an extensive, interesting selection and a passionate staff. An attractively designed, well-curated brick-and-mortar wine shop is bliss—a place to taste, to buy, and otherwise to indulge one’s wine fanaticism. Although wine shops are nothing if not ubiquitous, really good ones are rare. The vast majority of stores have uninspired selections and personnel to match. And even shops with commendable offerings often lack spirited salesmanship. One of the biggest, and I think more unfortunate, stories of the past twenty-five years has been the effect that “professional” wine ratings have had on the retail sector. Many stores stopped selling wine and essentially just started selling scores given by Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator . Many people contend that these ratings are more reliable than anything merchants might have to say—that merchants can’t be trusted to give good advice because they are chiefly interested in making the sale. I’ve never quite understood this argument. To begin with, a good retailer will not fill his store with wines that he doesn’t like; if he tells you a wine is terrific, it’s usually because he really feels that way. Also, most retailers depend on repeat business; foisting bad wines on customers is therefore not a particularly shrewd strategy. In any case, ratings and shelf talkers have become a crutch for the retail sector, and too many stores have taken the easy way out and relied on Parker and Spectator points to make the sales for them.
    But that is changing now, and I think a golden age of wine retailing may be on the horizon. For one thing, fewer and fewer wine enthusiasts are paying attention to the critics. They know what they like, or they are getting recommendations from other sources, or they no longer regard Parker and the Spectator as particularly reliable. Whatever the reason or combination of reasons, ratings seem to matter a lot less than they did a decade ago. Also, competition is forcing smaller retailers to up their game. Big-box stores, supermarkets, and even drugstores are peddling wine these days, and while they sell a lot of plonk, they also sell some good wines. To survive, small retailers increasingly need to differentiate themselves, and creating a store with a well-defined point of view and an enthusiastic, knowledgeable staff is not only a smart survival strategy; in some markets, it may be the only survival strategy. A lot of really interesting wine stores are popping up in cities across America, and I expect that trend to continue.
    Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can buy from them. To regulate liquor sales more effectively after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, most states put in place laws requiring an intermediary, the wholesaler, between the producer of an alcoholic beverage and the retailer. These regulations were enacted at a time when the U.S. wine industry was moribund and few Americans had an interest in wine. It is a very different story now: the country has several thousand wineries and millions of wine enthusiasts, and with the advent of online shopping and the ease and affordability of long-distance shipping, the three-tier distribution system has become an absurdly outdated barrier to free trade and consumer choice. Most states now permit some form of direct-to-consumer shipping from wineries, but the wholesalers are a well-financed interest group and have used their political muscle to limit the scope of many direct-shipping bills and to keep the existing regulatory framework intact. And direct-to-consumer shipping from wineries is just one part of this battle. At present, only around a dozen states