Once more, with feeling

I’ve long been troubled by the disparity between the enormous, glorious galaxy of feelings that wine elicits, and the narrow band of tools, ideas and language we’re given to express them. Drinking and thinking about wine ignites our minds and delights our senses, to speak nothing of the cosmos of pleasure when the two are combined. And yet, while our hearts and minds explode with myriad feelings as we taste wine, we’re so often asked to react rationally and without emotion.

I see how we arrived here. A few decades ago, the industry responded to wine writing’s reputation for being...