If wine were only art or only science, what would be lost?

I was recently a Fellow of the 2026 Wine Writers’ Symposium in Napa Valley. In late February, I spent several days in classes and on field trips in the St. Helena area.

I met winemakers, toured vineyards, tasted unreal bottles, and conversed with wine writers at every stage of their careers–from beginners to near-legends. It was a mind-blowing, heart-filling experience, and I plan to write more about it when the shock has settled a bit.

For this year’s in-person event, the 24 Fellows were selected via an application process that included a short essay prompt. We were asked for around 500 words on the following topic: “If wine were only art or only science, what would be lost?”

I’ve enjoyed reading the just-posted responses from some of the other Fellows, including Kate Reuschel on her Substack (Survives on Wine) and Charlie Geoghegan DipWSET on his blog.

Here, I’d like to share my attempt at an answer.

If wine were only art or only science, what would be lost?

A glossy smear of finger paint. A piece of cardboard hot-glued with sequins and pasta shells, held up by a four-year-old for the approval of a loving parent. There’s no doubt that these things are art. The joy that went into creating them is easy to see, regardless of any lack of finesse or marketability.

I’ve tasted wines like that, for sure: First vintages, homemade projects. Here is a pale, stemmy Cabernet poured with pride in the brand-new tasting room. Here is a yeasty, cloudy cupful–someone’s attempt to turn a summer bounty of peaches into fruit wine for a holiday potluck.

Those amateur wines are art, too. They are made with passion and offered with hospitality. They make your heart smile, even as you discreetly look around for the dump bucket.

Clearly, a sincere artistic impulse isn’t enough to guarantee a palatable wine. On the other hand, wine lovers know the shortcomings of wine that’s made without any imagination.

Every supermarket and corner store has shelves of mass-produced bottles and boxes, engineered to taste exactly the same from year to year and place to place. Agricultural science collaborates with market pressure to churn out all this uninspiring juice. Artificial intelligence chooses the product names and designs the labels. It’s all impressively precise. It’s also mind-numbingly dull.

Yet here is where I’ll make a case for science. (Because in this thought exercise, we can only keep one or the other.)

In the science of wine, we find the answers to many questions that playful, spontaneous winemaking can’t solve on its own. Why did the fermentation stop? How can we achieve a more pleasing color? What is the ideal ratio of acidity to residual sugar? Why does this vineyard site perform better than that one? What should we plant next, as the planet warms?

Wine drinkers want beauty and variability in our wine, but we still need science. Without a scientific understanding of wine’s microscopic processes, we wouldn’t have the abundance of very good wines that we enjoy today. Without wine science, excellence in winemaking could still happen–but only by chance. More often than not, wild fermentation would do its thing and we’d end up with the wine of our distant ancestors: Buzz-inducing, usually safe to drink, but probably not all that consistent or tasty.

Is it unromantic to choose science, when it is the art of wine that often drives our passion? I don’t believe so. Science is the starting point from which creativity can flourish. In a good wine, the work of science is invisible—but the artistry can still shine through.

Big thanks to Napa Valley Vintners, Meadowood, and Natural Cork Council for making this experience possible.

If you’re a Fellow and you’ve also published your “Art or Science” essay online, drop a comment or send me a message and I’ll add a link to it!