The latest trend in newspaper wine journalism – The New York Sun happily excepted – is the tasting panel, wine writing’s version of a group grope. You will find tasting panels on the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle, to name but three prominent newspapers that have succumbed to the safety of a tasting herd.

Put simply, wine tasting panels are useless. They’re about as instructive and usable as asking directions from five people at the same time.

On the Chicago Tribune, for example, their tasting panel recently surveyed 13 different bottlings of viognier, an aromatic white grape originally from France’s Rhone Valley and now popular among Rhonistas in California.

Now, 13 wines in a blind tasting is hardly a daunting number. With 20, 30, or 40 wines, you’ll inevitably get some “judgment drift.” But a mere baker’s dozen wines allows focus – or so you’d think.

Yet tasting panels, like too many cooks, structurally sully the soup. What are you, the reader, supposed to do with advice such as “‘Flinty, dusty taste,’ said one taster. ‘A wee bit sharp,’ said another, but a third panelist gave the wine a perfect 10, praising its elegant balance”?

Or this: “One panelist gave this Aussie wine a perfect 10, calling it ‘lovely, elegant, balanced, nuanced’ with a ‘great tingly mouth feel.’ Another praised the ‘stunning’ tropical fruit aroma and dry styling. Those less enchanted complained of a slightly bitter finish and ‘new eraser’ smell.” Now that’s useful: Either it’s a perfect wine or it smells like a new eraser, a descriptor not commonly raised in worshipful wine praise.

You can peruse the tasting reports from any newspaper wine panel you’d care to inspect. The message comes back loud and muddy: There’s no “I can use this” kind of consensus. And when it does emerge, I’m here to testify – having participated in panel tastings in wine judgings and the like – that the middle-of-the-road, least “offensive” wine wins. Wines have significant variation in quality and style; in panels the really characterful version comes off as idiosyncratic rather than benchmark.

No one is served by this journalistic nambypambyism. So why are newspapers doing it? A.J. Liebling, the great New Yorker writer and press critic, put his finger on it best. Newspapers “know and revere their awful power,” he said. “Like a prizefighter in a bar full of nonprizefighters, they are loath to loose it.” The current trend toward newspaper wine tasting panels is based on such self-awe.To invest this “awful power” in the palate of one man or woman, well, an editor just couldn’t sleep at night.

Insecurity is the driving force. It’s a rare editor who actually knows about wine and thus feels capable of judging the house critic. Everyone’s an expert on food, music, and art and consequently restaurants, performances, or exhibitions are never subjected to group judgment. Only wine requires a “let a thousand palates spit” tasting panel populism.

Not to be ignored is the class element. Wine still seems hoity-toity. And there’s a whiff of sin about it, too, something faintly corrupting. This grates on the sensibilities of many newspaper editors. They want to take it down a peg. What better way to do this than subject it to the vox populi of a panel tasting, where Joe and Jane Everyman can take a righteous swing at it? They wouldn’t dare do this with, say, art or music, both of which are institutionalized and powerful. But wine is fair game, like dunking the banker’s kid at a neighborhood carnival.

The result, of course, is a kind of “median mediocrity” of taste. But there’s safety in (wine taster) numbers. Editors are off the hook and readers, well, they’re more baffled by wine than ever. How can a wine be “lovely, elegant, balanced, nuanced” and have a “new eraser” smell? Beats me.

HERE’S THE DEAL

COTES DU VENTOUX 2003, LA VIEILLE FERME

French wine is going through all sorts of upheavals. For example, the price of everyday red Bordeaux has plummeted by half in the past three years, as producers can’t find a market for their over cropped, flavorless wines. Elsewhere in France, the news is less harrowing, but hardly cheery either.

That said, it would be a big mistake to ever count out France as a source of really good wine at persuasive pricing. This bargain-priced red proves it.

Cotes du Ventoux is a district in the southern Rhone Valley, the Vaucluse to be precise. It can be hard to grasp just how much vineyard land France possesses. For example, the Cotes du Ventoux appellation has 17,000 acres of vines, which makes it roughly half the size of Napa Valley. And it’s just one of dozens of districts in the Rhone Valley alone. As they say in California, there’s a lot of juice around.

Most of this wine – 82% – is processed by local winegrowers’ cooperatives. They rule. Unfortunately, theirs is the rule of mediocrity. (See comments on tasting panels above.) Still, there’s good wine to be had, if you know where to look.

La Vieille Ferme is a brand created by the Perrin family, which owns Chateau de Beaucastel, one of the best estates in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. They know where the wine bones are buried. They buy large quantities and blend to their taste.

Several different bottlings, from different appellations, are offered under the Vieille Ferme (old farm) label. You want the one designated Cotes du Ventoux. A blend of grenache (50%), syrah (20%), carignan (15%), and cinsault (15%), this is a high-impact, perfumey red wine with backbone, thanks to the syrah. It’s fresh tasting, silky down the gullet and at $6.95 a bottle, nearly weightless on the wallet. It’s one of the great red wine bargains to be found right now. Worth noting is that this 2003 vintage wine is sealed with a screw cap, making it in the vanguard of where fine wine ought to go. Bravo!

RAMOS PINTO “COLLECTOR” PORT NON-VINTAGE

Port is one of those wines that, like winter squash, comes in all sorts of versions. You’ve got ruby, tawny, vintage, late bottled vintage, and seemingly everything in between. The average wine bibber could be forgiven for throwing up his or her hands and settling for a nice cabernet.

So let’s make it simple: this is terrific port for the money. Technically Ramos Pinto “Collector” is somewhere between a ruby port (freshness of fruit) and a late-bottled vintage port (it sees six years of aging in large barrels and has real depth and complexity). So what is it? The producer calls it a “vintage character” port.

Call it what you may, if you like port, the odds are good you’ll call this wine delicious. Deeply colored, it is unusually dimensional in flavor. Most conventional ruby ports are rather cough-syrupy, while this “vintage character” port does offer layers of flavor more commonly associated with the style called late-bottled port. It brims with fruit, as well as the (expected) edge of sweetness. This is the sort of wine that begs for dark chocolate and, if you can wrangle it, a crackling fire in the fireplace. The price is exceptionally good for the quality: $14.95.