I love Malcolm Gladwell. No, that's not an admission of an embarrassing crush. I say it in the way that I might love Shiraz or the trombone solo in Mozart's Requiem. Gladwell is an interesting thinker and I find greater subtlety and insight each time I revisit his ideas - just as I do each time I revisit a glass of Shiraz or a piece of music with meaning.
He is of course the man who introduced the now overused term The Tipping Point into our vocabulary; in his book Outliers he very entertainingly unfolded the story of success; and in Blink he gave us insights into the power of thinking without thinking.
It was in Blink that Gladwell shed light on the prejudice that existed in the world of classical music right up until the 1980's. Until then, orchestras were predominantly the preserve of white men. It was considered that women didn't have the strength, attitude or resilience for certain kinds of pieces hence they had a very high rejection rate at auditions. Then in the 80's new rules were introduced for auditions, including placing the musicians behind a screen so that the auditioning panel had no preconceived ideas and focused purely on the quality of the music.
The result? In the thirty years since ‘blind' auditions were introduced in the US, the number of women in orchestras has increased fivefold. The ‘blind' audition removed the context and the performance was judged purely on its merits. The removal of prejudice from the decision-making process resulted in a musical revolution.
Gladwell's eloquent telling of this tale had stuck with me and I had become an advocate of ‘blindness' when making qualitative judgements. So when I heard philosopher Roger Scruton rubbishing the process of the ‘blind tasting' as a way of assessing good wine, you could almost have registered my disdain for his notion on the Richter Scale. Nothing he could say would convince me of the wisdom of this idea. Surely it was anti-Gladwell.
Scruton suggests that the ‘blind tasting' removes the context from the wine, and his argument is that the context is part of the pleasure of wine consumption. If you know that your Shiraz comes from a particular vineyard in South Eastern Australia; is blessed with a certain kind of soil; and has an idiosyncratic name which conjures up images of a place that you may never have been to, then these things can contribute to the experience and enjoyment of consuming the wine. He says that wine is not about the objectivity of taste, it is about the subjectivity of experience, and removing the context dissipates this.
His plea was not to treat your wine as a commodity but as an experience which can be enhanced by your relationship to the context. I found myself agreeing. This wasn't anti-Gladwell at all it was merely the opposite side of the coin. By removing the context as in blind auditions we can do away with undesirable things like prejudice. The danger is that we can do away with desirable things like a feeling for ‘sense of place' which can make wine so much more enjoyable. Scrutons advice is to meditate on your wine so that you enjoy your thoughts about the context as well as the taste and the feeling. At this point he was interrupted by an antipodean lady who said "When I drink wine it makes me even more talkative than usual. How on earth can you meditate on your wine?"
Scruton shrugged. "Symposium" he said. It's an ancient Greek concept which confers upon people the duty to be silent when another person is talking. In a world where the currency of the wine bar is becoming the size of your decibel count, I especially like the concept of the symposium. Perhaps it is the next big social improvement after the smoking ban.
I like Scrutons ideas. I still love Malcolm Gladwell though....especially with a large glass of Witchmount Estate 2004 made from grapes grown in Rockbank, a small slip of red volcanic soil in Victoria. The best Shiraz in the world...probably.
I Drink Therefore I Am, by Roger Scruton
He is of course the man who introduced the now overused term The Tipping Point into our vocabulary; in his book Outliers he very entertainingly unfolded the story of success; and in Blink he gave us insights into the power of thinking without thinking.
It was in Blink that Gladwell shed light on the prejudice that existed in the world of classical music right up until the 1980's. Until then, orchestras were predominantly the preserve of white men. It was considered that women didn't have the strength, attitude or resilience for certain kinds of pieces hence they had a very high rejection rate at auditions. Then in the 80's new rules were introduced for auditions, including placing the musicians behind a screen so that the auditioning panel had no preconceived ideas and focused purely on the quality of the music.
The result? In the thirty years since ‘blind' auditions were introduced in the US, the number of women in orchestras has increased fivefold. The ‘blind' audition removed the context and the performance was judged purely on its merits. The removal of prejudice from the decision-making process resulted in a musical revolution.
Gladwell's eloquent telling of this tale had stuck with me and I had become an advocate of ‘blindness' when making qualitative judgements. So when I heard philosopher Roger Scruton rubbishing the process of the ‘blind tasting' as a way of assessing good wine, you could almost have registered my disdain for his notion on the Richter Scale. Nothing he could say would convince me of the wisdom of this idea. Surely it was anti-Gladwell.
Scruton suggests that the ‘blind tasting' removes the context from the wine, and his argument is that the context is part of the pleasure of wine consumption. If you know that your Shiraz comes from a particular vineyard in South Eastern Australia; is blessed with a certain kind of soil; and has an idiosyncratic name which conjures up images of a place that you may never have been to, then these things can contribute to the experience and enjoyment of consuming the wine. He says that wine is not about the objectivity of taste, it is about the subjectivity of experience, and removing the context dissipates this.
His plea was not to treat your wine as a commodity but as an experience which can be enhanced by your relationship to the context. I found myself agreeing. This wasn't anti-Gladwell at all it was merely the opposite side of the coin. By removing the context as in blind auditions we can do away with undesirable things like prejudice. The danger is that we can do away with desirable things like a feeling for ‘sense of place' which can make wine so much more enjoyable. Scrutons advice is to meditate on your wine so that you enjoy your thoughts about the context as well as the taste and the feeling. At this point he was interrupted by an antipodean lady who said "When I drink wine it makes me even more talkative than usual. How on earth can you meditate on your wine?"
Scruton shrugged. "Symposium" he said. It's an ancient Greek concept which confers upon people the duty to be silent when another person is talking. In a world where the currency of the wine bar is becoming the size of your decibel count, I especially like the concept of the symposium. Perhaps it is the next big social improvement after the smoking ban.
I like Scrutons ideas. I still love Malcolm Gladwell though....especially with a large glass of Witchmount Estate 2004 made from grapes grown in Rockbank, a small slip of red volcanic soil in Victoria. The best Shiraz in the world...probably.
I Drink Therefore I Am, by Roger Scruton
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