Dwight Furrow

The Naked Emperor and 100 Point Scores Some friends shared a lovely 95–100-point wine with me recently—a 2018 Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon, the iconic Chilean wine from the Maipo Valley. Don’t get me wrong. This was a fine wine. It wa…

If “the best” tastes like a more luxurious version of what you already know… why would anyone new join the culture? The best wines aren't perfect; they're alive. #Wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2026/02/10/t...

What Does Your “Guilty Pleasure” Wine Say About Taste? This essay by Kyle Munkittrick entitled “Taste Values Craft” got me thinking about what it means to have good taste because he begins with a point very well-taken: Having good taste is knowing when…

What do you do with the wine you love…but can’t defend? This post argues for the “mature” answer. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/12/30/w...

Can Wine Be Rated Like Chess Players? George Nordahl on his Substack has an interesting proposal for rethinking wine scores. Of course problems with the current system are well-known and have been endlessly discussed. Wine scores prete…

This is an interesting proposal. Almost anything would be better than the current scoring system. But I have some reservations about it. #Wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/12/16/c...

When Horror Tastes Good Food and wine have to taste good. If they do not, we push the plate away and leave the glass unfinished. We are cautious about what we put in our mouths; there is no safe distance when you ingest s…

Food and wine have to taste good but Guernica doesn’t have to be “pretty.” Does that disqualify dinner from being art? I argue the opposite: pleasure is a condition of success in every art form, from black midi to Burgundy. #foodsky #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/12/02/w...

Do We Need Another Debate about “Natural?” I thought we were past worrying about how to define “natural wine” but apparently it’s still an issue. In World of Fine Wine, Benjamin Lewin (MW)  argues that the terms “natural,”“low intervention”…

Natural wine isn’t a fairy tale about “no intervention.” It’s a moral line in the sand about how far we let industrial and commercial logic shape what’s in the glass. Arguing about definitions misses the real fight over practice and quality. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/11/18/d...

The Hiding-in-Plain-Sight Ligaments of Wine Culture I don’t know that there is another human sub-culture as bound to habit and convention as the wine community. The wine styles available today—red, white, sparkling, rosé, skin contact whites, and fo…

We don’t just taste vineyards; we taste decisions. Conventions make wine intelligible. Curiosity keeps it alive. #wine #WineSky
foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/11/11/t...

Is Wine’s “Old People Problem” a Young Writer’s Problem? Peter Pharos recently wrote an article entitled Wine’s Old People Problem, about the wine industry’s current dilemma (which seems a lot longer-lived than “current” suggests. We’ve been talking abou…

Is the lack of young wine writers the problem or the symptom? #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/11/04/i...

The Technology vs. Terroir False Dilemma Debates that oppose “technology” to “terroir” treat winemaking as a zero-sum game in which each technological intervention diminishes site expression. This framing misdescribes how quality decision…

Remember the 2000s oak-and-extraction hangover? The backlash gave us “low-intervention” dogma. Time to move past the binary. I map a middle path where most great wines are actually made. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/10/28/t...

The Michelin Guide Will Review Wine? Last week brought the curious announcement that the Michelin Guide plans to start reviewing  wine. It’s not clear how this will work given that the Michelin Guide already owns The Wine Advocate, th…

Wine’s greatness is place, not polish. Can Michelin tell the difference? #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/10/21/t...

Why Detailed Wine Reviews Matter to the Wine Community If you want a community, you need a conversation; if you want a conversation, you need a shared record; and if you want a shared record in wine, you need detailed reviews—the kind that actually say…

Wine changes. Memory fades. Reviews keep the conversation alive. Read why tasting notes are the postal service of taste. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/10/08/w...

The World of the Italian Meal The traditional Italian meal—the all-day affair with (at least) seven courses—has always fascinated me because it is not just a meal but a way of organizing time and space around a sensibility. It …

The Italian meal isn’t just a feast—it’s a philosophy of time. Seven courses that teach patience, proportion, and the art of ripeness. When a culture puts taste before productivity, even lunch becomes an ethics. #food #FoodSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/10/02/t...

Terroir as Interpretation: Why Preserving Place is Always a Style Choice Let’s retire the pious fiction that the winemaker who “lets the site speak” abstains from style, as if terroir were a shy woodland creature spooked by the faintest human intention. Terroir is not a…

Non-intervention is a myth. A vineyard offers tendencies and resistances; the cellar organizes them into a voice. The question isn’t “intervene or not?” It’s: which articulation of this place are you willing to own? #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/30/t...

Eight Ways People Judge Wine Recently I posted an essay on my theory of wine tasting which evaluates wine by how its structure creates movement, texture, and tension over time, connecting those felt dynamics to character and p…

Tired of “95 points!”? Meet the other 7 ways people judge wine and what they get right and what they can't see. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/23/e...

This is an agent of the US federal government, armed for live-fire combat against a modern army, slamming a passive and nonviolent female candidate for the US Congress into asphalt.

Then walking away without checking if she has injuries, with his identity concealed behind a black facemask.

Roast the Algorithms; Then the Vegetables We live under the regime of instrumental reason—the worldview that treats everything as a means to something else, preferably something quantifiable. What is the value of a tomato? Depends: yield p…

No “fast kimchi.” No frictionless cuisine. Cook like a citizen, not a user. #food #foodsky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/18/r...

Tasty is the Floor, Not the Review I’m not going to link to it or name the writer since I’m not into calling people out for minor transgressions. But I recently read an article from a wine writer entitled “Why Tasty is the Only Tast…

We don’t need fewer words for wine—we need better ones. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/16/t...

Heraclitus in the Glass: Why the Most Interesting Wines are Unruly Originally posted at Three Quarks Daily Wine tasting is a great seducer for those with an analytic cast of mind. No other beverage has attracted such elaborate taxonomies: geographical classificati…

My theory of wine tasting: aromas aren’t properties; they’re performances. Taste isn’t a checklist—it’s choreography in the glass. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/09/h...

Watch Out for Natty-Washing There is plenty of evidence that natural wines are maintaining steady sales despite the overall drop the wine industry is experiencing. I found this anecdote from Jeremy Parzen to be particularly i…

When Big Wine discovers its inner pét-nat, you know ‘natural’ is about to get spin-cycled. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/04/w...

Is It a Tragedy When We Drink a Wine Before It’s Time? Most premium wine is consumed before it hits peak quality. Estimates suggest upward of 90% of wine in the U.S. is opened within a week of purchase.  This includes no small share of bottles that wou…

Wine isn’t a museum piece. It’s for the table. Stop mourning the bottle you didn’t age and enjoy the one in your glass. #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/09/02/i...

What the Hell is Data-driven Cooking? There is a lot of hype among some sectors of the food industry about data-driven cooking (aka  computational gastronomy). It is the practice of using structured food data (recipes, ingredient chemi…

Pairing tables ≠ cuisine. Texture, timing, and order can flip the script. I break down where computational gastronomy helps—and where taste pushes back. #food #FoodSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/28/w...

Winemaking and Artmaking It’s been awhile since I’ve seen this argument in print but it has really become standard fare. Tim James in World of Fine Wine used his recall of a fine Amontillado tasting to proclaim that regard…

"Artists create; winemakers respond." That's a cute slogan. But it's also wrong. If Spiral Jetty counts as art, why not Sherry? #wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/26/w...

Yes. That is interesting

One of the best pieces I've seen in awhile. It absolutely nails the value of wine and the limits of wine as a commodity.

Food’s Fragility is an Aesthetic Gift Food is ephemeral. You taste it, and in moments—sometimes even before the thought of tasting registers—it vanishes, leaving only memory and an empty plate. Unlike a painting that hangs for centurie…

Stop judging dinner by museum rules. #food #foodsky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/21/f...

Yarrow vs. Beckett on Wine and Food Pairing Well, thankfully, it wasn’t exactly the Hatfields and McCoys, but there was some heat generated in the Decanter-hosted debate between wine/food pairing expert Fiona Beckett and wine blogger Alder Y…

Wine and food pairing is about probabilities, not pronouncements. Somms aren’t priests; they’re guides and pairing is an adventure, not a catechism, more like disciplined improvisation. #Wine #WineSky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/19/y...

I tasted a lot of Frontenac a few years ago when traveling through the upper Midwest. If was dreadful unless made into a fortified wine. But maybe they have learned to deal with the acidity.

I'm sorry that happened. If legal action isn't possible, public shaming seems to be the only alternative.

But clinical synesthesia i would imagine functions differently

There is some good evidence in sensory science studies that music can shape how a wine is perceived and it is at least to some degree independent of preferences. If you find a wine disgusting music won't help much but the effect seems independent of musical taste.

Wine and Music: 5 Classic Pairings The thing I miss most about no longer doing wine reviews on this blog is the wine and music pairing that accompanied each review. The book I wrote with Clark Smith on wine and music pairing was a b…

Champagne that dances, Margaux that dreams, Grange that slams, Sassicaia that soars, Único that shapeshifts. Press play, pour. #wine #winesky foodandwineaesthetics.com/2025/08/12/w...