I was recently a Fellow at the 2026 Wine Writers’ Symposium hosted in California by Meadowood Napa Valley and Napa Valley Vintners. As part of the application, I was asked to answer the question “If wine were only art or only science, what would be lost?” Below is my attempt. Photograph by me from a recent trip to Domaine Jean-Noël Gagnard in Burgundy.
It’d be a shame if wine were only art or only science.
Only art? Chaos. Like it or not, wine is science. It’s polyphenols and acids and thousands of other microscopic things. Without them, we’d have no wine. The maker can be as creative — as artistic — as you like, but if they can’t get to grips with fermentation and temperature control, we’ve got a problem. Before wine becomes wine there are innumerable obstacles that can derail its course. Our winemaker-artist may have a clear vision in their head, but if they’re not careful, they’re ending up with grape juice or vinegar or an explosion. So that wouldn’t work.
Only science sounds more promising. We might lose a little of the romance or the magic, granted. Perhaps we start treating what’s in our glass not as a Pauillac or a pet-nat but as objective data: a certain measure of acidity, tannin, alcohol and the rest. But hey, at least the maker knows what they’re doing — winemakers are scientists, after all, not artists. The wine is wine and it’s correct.
If it’s just science then it’s not art. The maker is analytical and the wine is the inevitable, repeatable result of deliberate actions. Their own subjective preferences, their tastes, their idiosyncrasies do not and should not enter into this equation.
And yet, the hand of the maker is a tangible, valid part of what makes wine wine. There are heavy hands and elegant hands and everything in between. Some makers are determined to leave no mark at all. Most producers today understand enough about the science of wine to know what’ll happen, or not happen, when they decide to do X rather than Y. But if wine were only science, there’d surely be no place for something so imprecise and fickle as the producer’s judgement.
What’s lost here, then? The smudge, the flourish, the indelible mark of the human being who did it their way. The freedom, and the courage, to engage more than just their logical faculties. Remove that and wine loses its variety, its difference, its breadth. The things that drew me to the subject in the first place, that have held my curiosity for well over a decade. If they went away, I’d probably go away too. I’d take a closer look at cider or seafood cookery or languages or something else entirely.
Of course, wine is art and it is science. If I had to choose, I’d say I’m Team Art. Most of the time, at least. In some settings, I’m perfectly happy to chat malolactic fermentation and cold maceration. When I’ve got a glass in front of me, though, the last place I want to be is some sterile lab. But it’s not like I want to stand back and observe wine from behind a rope, either.
Thankfully, I don’t have to choose. Other options are available. Wine is more than art and science.