One of the questions that relate to wine tasting is a highly theoretical one. Is our experience of wine a personal, subjective thing? Or does this experience constitute some objective knowledge of the wine itself? A number of wine critics, at least those not schooled in philosophy, weigh in reflexively on the relativistic end. For them, judgments on wine are based less on fact and more on opinion and the final arbiter of taste is the person who brings the glass to his/her lips - if anything, the pleasures of wine can only be computed through a private hedonistic calculus. (Such relativism routinely leads wine critics into a form of double speak - they urge you to drink whatever you are happy with while bombarding you with information about what you should really be drinking.)

This form of vino-subjectivity of course is often founded on a larger utilitarian theory of aesthetics and can be applied to pretty much anything, including books, art or music. On this view, as long as the amount of pleasure you receive is the same, the Beach Boys are equal to Beethoven and a Golconda is just as nifty as a Grand Cru.

The subjectivity/objectivity debate becomes intensified in the world of wine for at least a couple of reasons. Relativists routinely draw attention to hugely embarrassing experiments that purport to show that the expert consensus about good wine (or bad) is simply manufactured by manipulative wine critics. Example: in 2001, a French professor invited 57 wine critics to sample glasses of a white and a red. They were in fact the same white wine; the professor had used colouring to give one a red tint. Result: not one of the critics recognised it as a white.

The ratings system is another focus of the debate. Thanks to Robert Parker, wine ratings systems that score wines against a scale of 100 have become powerful benchmarks in assessing wine. Disdain for rating systems has its basis in the difficulty in accepting that something so nuanced and subtle - capable of epiphanic awakening and aesthetic satisfaction - can be quantified in numbers. Would we ever accept our collections of art, music or poetry weighed in numbers, a system that accorded for example a 99 to a Mozart sonata and a 98 to a Schubert symphony?

Both these lines of argument are flawed. The fact that even the best wine experts are sometimes shown up (particularly in blind wine tastings) does not establish the total absence of organised knowledge about wines. Do experiments that exposed art critics for failing to spot the difference between a Jackson Pollock and a child's scrawl irredeemably condemn modern art as resting on arbitrary systems and random processes? As for wine ratings, the mistake lies in associating quantifiability with objectivity. Parker ratings make no secret of hiding his preferences for big fruity wines; while they may be assessed for internal consistency, it is wrong-headed to assume they are a universal standard merely because they are in numbers.

The mistake lies in assuming that the debate is between a quantifiable objectivity and total subjectivity. In his sharp essay that deals with this and related philosophical issues, 'The Objectivity of Tastes and Tasting', the academic Barry Smith shows this up as a false contrast and concludes, in true Aristotelian nature, that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. He argues and plausibly “that through our subjective experience of wine we gain personal access to what is objectively there in the wine.” All right, it is not a mind-blowing conclusion and it follows after tricky negotiations with Hume's aesthetics and many painstaking arguments that expose the case for subjectivity.

It is recommended reading only for those with an interest in philosophy andsigh those stuck for a subject for a wine column. If you are the kind of wine drinker that is equally happy with Petrus and Plonk, and never mind the difference, then so be it.

(mukund@thehindu.co.in)