For three years now, La Tulipe Rouge has been tasting French wines with the same independence and professionalism that have driven us since our beginnings. These values are increasingly appealing to vineyards, as evidenced by the number of samples submitted for the 2024 awards. A success of which we are proud, even to the point of being seen as pretentious, or even giving lessons to some! Are our selections debatable? Absolutely! Long live pluralism (but certainly not relativism). Is the way in which these selections are made open to criticism? Absolutely not! There is no vanity in this, only the pride of standing firm in a media universe with shifting ethics, where the only responsibility is to guarantee the independence of judgment and the professionalism of those who establish it. Unfortunately, once you scratch the surface, there aren’t many left standing on that platform. Scratch a little yourself, and you’ll see. You must understand that wine critic is not communication. It doesn’t have a “price.” It may be part of it, but it isn’t communication itself. It has its own rules and its own methods of execution, which very often place it in opposition to those employed in traditional communication. This is what gives it such power within communication! If it loses its values, if it loses its worth, it becomes mere communication, and like all communication, it has a price.
For wine critic to have value, it must be impeccable. And for it to be impeccable, it must be professional and independent. I will return to this. Whether or not you agree with it, what matters is that it holds value. And I’m not talking about monetary value! No, otherwise we’re back to square one! It’s hard to imagine value outside the prism of money, isn’t it? In fact, for those interested, a good review 100-scaled note is primarily about making money: for the producer, selling their wine better, and for the wine enthusiast, buying their bottles better. So, does that mean wine critic, at the end of the day, creates monetary value? Well, no. It’s not the note that increases the selling price of the bottle or the average value of purchases. It’s the producer or the consumer. Proof of this: a wine that’s three times more expensive than another from the same region, with the exact same review score, doesn’t necessarily sell less well than the cheaper one. So, there are two possibilities: either wine critic doesn’t create monetary value, in which case, what’s its purpose? Or it relies on levers other than wine critic itself. In that case, it’s no longer criticism but “networking,” communication, merchandising, or whatever you want to call it. So, let’s look at the role of wine critic, its value, in an era marked by a crisis of values, particularly a crisis of monetary value.
No one has missed the fact that lately, the disconnect between the price of a bottle and its “objectifiable” qualities has grown extreme. Arbitrary pricing doesn’t reign, far from it. The wine market, like the art or fashion markets, knows how to give primacy to symbolic criteria (rarity, celebrity, novelty, authenticity, historicity, ethics, etc.) over the more objective criteria of wine critic (vintage, faults, winemaking, aging, style, consumption purpose, etc.); without these latter criteria fully defining the wine. Whether one believes in the law of supply and demand or subscribes to the more convincing theory of mimetic behavior, inspired by René Girard*, which argues that a product attracts because it is desired by others, the fact remains that the pricing of a bottle is not solely determined by a review that awarded it a favorable score. On the contrary, criticism serves to rationalize. It argues in favor of quality without concern for price. It’s not its role, so to speak. Critics, including La Tulipe Rouge, often make the mistake of rightly pointing out the excellent quality-price ratio of a bottle… But for whose benefit? For the producer struggling to raise prices by 10 cents, or for the consumer always looking for a cheaper option? And what about the new winemaker, deep in debt, who has no choice but to charge the highest prices in the region? Wine critic rationalizes in that it provides justification for a “minimum” level of objective quality, sometimes favoring a cheap wine, often softening the blow of a more ambitious price. Part of the vineyard and media world has fully understood this cathartic power of criticism. How else can one justify an unreasonable price or questionable quality without seeking the blessing of a self-proclaimed critic, ready to generously rate a wine to satisfy the needs of their “client”? Business is business, isn’t it? Of course. But in that case, it’s communication, not wine critic, as we’ve already said. There’s nothing wrong with that, aside from a few side effects…
When money flows, all is well. The wines sell, with or without 100-scaled notes, and everything is fine. Dubious critics make an illusion, and everyone is happy. But when money itself experiences a crisis of value, everything falls apart. Georg Simmel, in Philosophy of Money (1907), tells us that money, endowed with dual meaning—both as a measure, a unit of account, and as a moral value—no longer functions as value but as “a value frozen in substance, a value of things without the things themselves.” What does this mean? That wine, stripped of its monetary value, no longer has any value! And that wine critic, turned into communication, is ineffective at guaranteeing a “minimum” level of objective quality, since it, too, has become a product of monetary value, and thus without genuine value.
When everything goes off the rails, we tend to return to what we know well, to what we have already experienced. We don’t tempt fate, and we take the time to think. Good wine isn’t necessarily the cheapest. It all depends on its quality…which we try to evaluate as best we can… Word of mouth often does the job… Critics, too, guarantees a “minimum” level of quality… But only if it’s independent and professional… Without which it has no value… Especially in times of crisis.
Some may say this isn’t enough or that these ethical subtleties are of no interest to anyone. The opposite is true. There is genuine interest in a transparent and ethical approach. La Tulipe Rouge is proof of that. If wine critic is losing ground, it’s because it’s no longer respected. If producers hesitate to present samples, it’s because they doubt its purpose. Finally, if consumers are less and less interested in wine critic, it’s because they no longer see it as reliable advice. At La Tulipe Rouge, wine producers are not clients. We are completely independent in our wine criticism. Our professionalism is reflected in our resumes, our experience, and the trust of the producers, renewed each year. In fact, starting in 2025, we will be increasing the number of wines we taste. While some media outlets are “optimizing,” La Tulipe Rouge continues to taste more wines. We will provide more details in upcoming newsletters.
The wines tasted and selected for 2024 are available online at www.tulipe-rouge.com. Whatever your budget, these wines are truly worth having on your tables. Yes, there are many of them. So, we’ve decided to highlight a few favorites. Of course, we love them all, but some more than others… Happy reading.
Olivier Borneuf
*René Girard, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, Paris, Grasset, 1977