”A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” American philosopher and moralist Ralph Waldo Emerson (above) memorably opined. But in the world of commerce, consistency is pretty much everything: the very hallmark of the branded product.
Many perfectly reputable wine estates aim at achieving it. In the wine world ,its most accomplished practitioners are the bigger Champagne, Port and Sherry houses which have long been on a first name basis with this particular little monster.
Opposing this approach are most smaller-scale, artisan wine producers, laboring in facilities that are more like workshops than factories. Here, alternative priorities prevail, among them a determination to express the facts-on-the-ground in all their immediate particularity. Call these ‘wines of place.’
For this group, consistency appears more like mandated monotony, while variation from vintage to vintage and even bottle to bottle is something to celebrate, not run from. The man known as the Sage of Concord could be their patron saint.
But, hang on. If the durable features of a vineyard (site, soils, exposition, native yeast populations, etc.) are primarily responsible for the distinctive features of a given wine, and if one purpose of wine is to express this specificity, shouldn’t we expect to encounter stability of character from year to year or even from generation to generation?
We think the answer is a qualified yes … but rather than risk aggravating the squabble over the value of consistency by taking sides, we suggest reorienting the conversation away from replication and toward continuity.
Why continuity? Because its pursuit doesn’t demand or even expect the kind of machine-like precision associated with mass-produced goods. Its constraints are less confining, its contours softer and more graduated. It’s more forgiving of experimentation, creativity and variety. It presupposes connection rather than replication.
In wine, continuity respects historic benchmarks of style and quality, but needn’t be bound by them. It doesn’t adhere slavishly to idealized norms. It shoots for the sort of resemblances we find in nature, wherein species have identifiably familiar features, without conferring on individual specimens the regularity of widgets.
As a concept, continuity provides a way to think about and bring about wines that have a historical identity and a connection to place while still enjoying room to roam — an escape hatch from the small-mindedness that afflicts the industry more than it should.
Its inherently more generous terms might also make us all a bit less prone to the kind of foolish thinking that so repelled old Ralph Waldo. We imagine he would drink to that.