(NYTimes) - If you drink bad wine long enough, will that eventually lead to drinking good wine?

No, I don’t think so. Still, a couple of wine writers have recently tried to make the case that bad wine should be tolerated, if not embraced. They argue that it can’t be entirely bad if it appeals to large numbers of people. Drinking bad wine encourages the love of all wine, and, really, nothing is harmful about bad wine, so why not live and let live?

I’m all for peaceful coexistence. I would never fault people for the wines they choose to drink, or for not making good wine a priority in their lives. But if you do care about drinking good wine, then you ought to take serious issue with these arguments, as I do.

Just as important, these articles suggest that wine critics should not make reasoned aesthetic judgments about good and bad. Instead, critics should encourage drinking wine of any kind on the theory that wine culture will ultimately benefit from the quantity consumed rather than the quality.