During a visit last weekend by our longtime Viennese friends, Rutbert and Caroline Reisch, the subject of wine as an art form arose over Sunday dinner.

Now in his second career, Rutbert is president of the Birgit Nilsson Foundation, which awards $1,000,000 every year or so to a deserving musician or conductor in the classical music and opera world; Ricardo Muti is the most recent recipient of this Nobel-like prize.  If you’re into these things, see http://www.birgitnilssonprize.org/ for more.

Anyway, Rutbert’s comments about artistic passion resonated all this week, prompting me to re-read the intro of an art book in our library that answers the question, “What makes a great painting?”

By substituting the word “wine” for “painting”, I discovered an almost perfect answer to, “What Makes a Great Wine?” (my apologies to Steve Allrich, who wrote the original).

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WHAT MAKES A GREAT WINE?  In response to that question, one of my teachers answered, “Taste a million wines, and make a million wines, and then you’ll know.” 

I groaned, thinking he was being evasive.  I wanted a much more instructive answer.  Now I understand the wisdom of his reply.

There is no concrete way to define what precisely constitutes a great wine or how a winemaker creates one.  In the presence of great wine, we can certainly identify those qualities we admire in them, but that doesn’t get to the heart of the question:  Why does it affect us the way it does?

The intangibles in fine wine can only be grasped by continuous exposure to wonderful wines.  Study and compare them.  And as a winemaker, you’ll find the more you make wine, the more insight you gain into what constitutes good winemaking.

Because only a relative few of us actually pursue the path of winemaking, the art of it is somewhat a mystery to people.  But despite its intangibles, there are certain criteria by which you can judge wine, differences in style and taste notwithstanding.

First:  Is the wine technically sound, does it have a well-planned design, is the concept strong, are the color, aroma and flavor good?

Second, and more important:  is the wine evocative, does it provoke a strong response, grab you in some inexplicable, even spiritual, way and hold your interest?  Do you feel compelled to go back and taste it again?

If the answers to these two questions are yes, then chances are you are beholding a great wine.

(Adapted from “Oil Painting for the Serious Beginner”, Steve Allrich, 1996).

I think that says it all.