It's not that the historical context doesn't matter. It's that wine experts pretend that their judgments about context are really judgments about the physical quality of the wine. The wine experts of the 70s claimed that their judgment of the superiority of French wine was founded on taste, not on pedigree or prestige.
But there's so much more depth out there, for those who are interested, and that transcends far beyond just the actual flavors in the wine.
But the actual flavors of the wine don't seem to matter that much at all. It would be like being a literary critic who could expound for hours about the literary trends of the 20th century, but who couldn't recognize the difference between David Foster Wallace and David Walliams. If wine connoisseurs wanted to bill themselves as simply historians and trivia masters, that would be one thing - but they don't, they're explicitly seeking to be judges of aesthetics (on the level of flavor).
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Notes -
It's not that the historical context doesn't matter. It's that wine experts pretend that their judgments about context are really judgments about the physical quality of the wine. The wine experts of the 70s claimed that their judgment of the superiority of French wine was founded on taste, not on pedigree or prestige.
But the actual flavors of the wine don't seem to matter that much at all. It would be like being a literary critic who could expound for hours about the literary trends of the 20th century, but who couldn't recognize the difference between David Foster Wallace and David Walliams. If wine connoisseurs wanted to bill themselves as simply historians and trivia masters, that would be one thing - but they don't, they're explicitly seeking to be judges of aesthetics (on the level of flavor).
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