What does it take to have as objective an opinion as possible about a wine? Discernment, an open mind, and usually some experience in repeated wine tasting to get an idea of how different types usually present their typicity, either by their varietal character or by the identity of the production area, winemaking techniques, etc...
The first thing you should know is that there is no single answer. Many different qualities contribute to greatness, and even more, factors come into play when evaluating whether a wine is truly significant or not. "Great" is a subjective term, but there are a few attributes that you look for in a wine:
Balance - Complexity - Length.
-Distinctive character-
Great wines are distinguished not only by their aromas and flavors but also by their texture. A great wine is not bland on the palate. It has a sensation that excites. That sensation can be as smooth as silk, as mineral as mountain water, as brisk and crisp as fresh lime juice, or as falling snow (which is the texture of many great Champagnes). The nature of the texture doesn't matter. What is important in a great wine is that it has a perceptible and distinctive texture.
Ultimately, distinctiveness is perhaps the most important attribute of a great wine.
-Balance-
One of the words most often used to describe a great wine is balance, along with its cousin integration. The two words mean slightly different things. Balance is the characteristic a wine possesses when all of its major components (acid, alcohol, fruit and tannin) are in harmony. Since no one component stands out more than the others, a balanced wine has a kind of harmonious tension of opposites.
Sweetness, heat, acidity, spiciness... all are in perfect tension with each other and, as a result, the wine tastes harmonious.
Integration takes this concept one step further. When a wine is integrated, its components and flavors come together in a way that seems almost magical. Instead of various components and flavors that are all separate and discernible, an integrated wine possesses a unique and surprising character that comes from the synthesis of the merged independent parts.
A wine that is balanced when young has the potential to become integrated when older. Balance or integration is essential in great wines. However, they are difficult characteristics to describe. Wine that is not balanced or integrated is much easier to describe. It presents itself as a broken star on the palate, with some points sticking out. When oak is unbalanced, for example, it is easy to perceive because, from a sensory perspective, it sticks out as if you were running your tongue over a piece of wood.
-Accuracy-
Interestingly, sensory scientists often compare the taste of a wine to sound. Is taste X a whisper or a scream? they asked in one experiment. The precision of wine is like when you don't adjust the dial perfectly, you can still hear the music, but its integrity is lost in the static. When the frequency is just right, the music takes on a special beauty because it is precise.
There are cases of two well-made wines from a vineyard from the same good year, and it is not clear why one wine might taste more precise than the other. There are many ways that winemaking can (over-handling of wine, oak, etc...), can destabilize it.
But it is also known that certain vineyards, for the most part, year after year - for reasons immensely complex to understand - simply produce precise wines.
-Complexity-
Wines range on a spectrum from simple to complex. Simple wines are monochromatic in flavor and monodimensional. They may be delicious, but in a sense, they have only one thing to say.
In comparison, complex wines have multifaceted aromas and flavors, and this is the most important part: Those layers of aroma and flavor reveal themselves in sequences over time. Tasting a complex wine is a mental journey. Just when you think you have grasped the flavors, the kaleidoscope turns and new flavors emerge, revealing different facets of the wine. Therefore, a complex wine cannot be known in one sip, a complex wine almost drags you into it, forcing you to take sip after sip to understand it while enjoying it a lot.
It is important to note that complex wines do not have to be powerful, full-bodied wines. Subtle, flowing wines can also be complex.
-Beyond fruity-
The qualifier "fruity" has become so positive in the last two decades that what I am about to suggest may seem surprising, even sacrilegious.
But the fact is: The world's great wines are not simply fruity. Fruity alone often comes across as juvenile and stuffy, like wearing a pink dress. Great wines go beyond fruit and are interwoven with complicated aromas and flavors, such as tar, bitter espresso, roasted meats, blood, worn leather, exotic spices, minerals, rocks, wet bark, and dead leaves, to name a few. These characteristics that go beyond the fruit give the wine an even broader and deeper sensory impact and make it more intellectual and stimulating.
-Length-
The persistence of wine on the palate, even after it has been swallowed, is called length or finish. The better the wine, the longer its length. In contrast, the taste of an ordinary wine disappears almost as soon as it is swallowed. (This can be a blessing).
The importance of long persistence on the palate as a hallmark of great wines is undoubtedly a fairly common parameter for determining their quality.
-Movement-
Does the wine attack the palate with explosive flavors, then crescendo and fade into a slow exudation? Does the wine move with broad brushstrokes? Or is it precise and pointillist, like the tiny dots in certain impressionist paintings?
One thing seems certain: the best wines are multidimensional on the palate. There are wavelengths of flavor, strength, volume, and speed, and in good wines, you can feel it, they do not go unnoticed.
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-Conexión-
Connectivity is perhaps the most elusive of these concepts and the most difficult quality to determine. It is the feeling you get from the aroma and taste of the wine that it is the embodiment of a particular place. Connectivity is the link between a wine and the land in which it is born. Connectedness, like cultural identity, makes one thing different from others and therefore worthy of appreciation.
Connectedness, though difficult to describe, is easy to find. Try a Côte-Rôtie (syrah) from the northern Rhône, with its almost wild flavors of pepper and game, or a fresh, acidic Riesling from the German Mosel region of Germany. None of these wines could come from anywhere else but here.
-Ability to emote-
This is the last point that makes greatness and it is the combined result of all the points discussed so far. Great wines provoke emotions, they make you remember the people who shared them with you, they transport you to the place of origin and you want to embrace the person who made them.
Great wines not only appeal to the intellect; they have the rare power to make us feel.