From my colleague Nicola Perullo at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont to leading sommelier and author Pascaline Lepeltier in New York City, wine thinkers across the world are trying to forge a new language — a new dialectic — to describe the tasting experience.
If ever the twain were to meet, I doubt they would agree on much — except for one thing: the hegemony of the 20th-century tasting note (and score) must be disrupted for Westerners to continue to evolve as tasters.
For an international and youthful wine community where wine and wine culture have long moved past the idols of the last quarter of the 1900s, it’s hard to believe that the tasting descriptor canon created nearly 50 years ago continues to be the predominant medium for wine communications.
In the light of these highfalutin and literally epistemological issues being faced by the current wine intelligentsia, I drew a deep breath of fresh air when I walked into Allegra Angelo’s extraordinary wine shop and wine bar last night in Key Biscayne (Miami), Florida.
Allegra, one of the most brilliant wine communicators I’ve ever met, has dispensed with nearly every one of the stodgy conventions of wine retail that have dominated our industry for far too long.
Just take a look at her shelf talkers, above!
It was amazing to watch her customers browse her shelves and confidently purchase and select wines using her unique and innovative system.
When I commented that she had devised an entirely new way of thinking about and communicating wine, with a user-friendliness that imbues the whole shop with her exhilaration for the wines she loves, she wondered out loud whether her approach was too “whimsical” at times.
No, I said, it’s just what our world of wine needs: fresh, energetic, creative thinking to an age-old problem. She an original and an inspiration and I can’t recommend her lovely shop to you highly enough (check out the link to get a taste of her aesthetic and approach to wine retail).