Americans equate quantity with quality. Big plates of food and big voices like Celine Dion fill seats in restaurants and amphitheaters alike. The same proven concept has overwhelmed the wine industry: (big wine x price)+big points=sales. Everything is about power and we no longer can hear or taste the nuanced pleasures of complexity. In music the artistry of Ella Fitzgerald is replaced by the vocal pyrotechnics of Celine Dion, while in wine the layers of Lafarge have been replaced by the variety-free jammy characteristics of Loring. Can Dion sing and Loring make good wine: sure. However, they leave nothing to the imagination or the individual forcing the drinker/listener down the path they have chosen instead of creating art that awakens their spirit and intellect and invites them to become part of the experience. A Loring wine or a Dion song happens to you like a sit-com with a laugh track that tells you when to laugh.

Michael Foley, an outstanding chef in Chicago, once told me that Americans were so used to flavor overloads that they could not understand simple foods. That palates raised on the dozens of flavors of a Big Mac could not understand the subtle beauty of a simply poached fresh salmon. I think he was right and palates and ears accustomed to Whoppers, Dion and Loring lack the ability to experience anything beyond that first wave of flavor or sound.

To be art, the work should involve you and make you think. The same goes for great wine.