Wine faults are subjective?

Earlier this week I attended a Burgundy tasting and dinner led by Allen Meadows, "Mr. Burghound." We tasted Burgundy wines all from the 2005 vintage, 8 wines before dinner and 3 with dinner. During the tasting portion of the program, Allen was talking about Brett, and how he enjoys some wines with "a little Brett," but that too much causes the wine to taste metallic, and he doesn't enjoy that. He went on to ask rhetorically, "Aren't all faults subjective?" This was part of his larger discussion about how wine tasting is subjective, and he tried to make the point that just as how we perceive the flavor of wine is subjective, so too is how we perceive wine faults.

I heartily disagree with this premise. While I do believe that so much of our perception of the flavors and aromas of wine is subjective, I think a faulty wine is faulty and there is nothing subjective about it. It is only the degree to which the fault is perceived from person to person that varies. For example, I am highly sensitive to TCA in wine ("corked wine"), so when I smell a wine that is corked, I smell the TCA and not much else. When a person less sensitive to TCA smells a corked wine, that person may only perceive that the wine smells flat and lacks aroma. The person is not perceiving the TCA, only the effects of the TCA on the wine. The TCA masks the other aromas and flavors of the wine.

On the other hand, Brett (Brettanomyces, a wild yeast that reacts with the chlorine with which corks are sterilized), has an additive effect on the wine. It adds aromas to the wine while leaving intact or even enhancing the other aromas. Indeed, some wine lovers feel that a certain amount of the "earthy," "barnyard" aromas of Brett are desirable in a wine, especially in Old World wines such as those from the Rhone Valley or Burgundy. But that does not mean that we perceive the Brett differently; it means that the degree to which we perceive the Brett and how we feel about it varies.

So how is this different from the subjective way in which we perceive a wine? Perhaps the best way to explain the difference is to use the explanation I give to "newbie" wine drinkers when they ask me, "How do you taste all the different flavors, like cherry and raspberry and currant, in a wine? Isn't that what wine tasting is all about, being able to discern the different flavors?" My response is no, even after tasting thousands of different wines, "wine tastes like wine to me. I don't try to figure out if I'm tasting cherry or raspberry or currant." I taste the wine and decide whether it's balanced, has good structure, is varietally or stylistically correct, and of course, whether it has any technical faults like TCA or Brett.

Do you agree with Allen Meadows that wine faults are subjective, or do you agree with me that they are not?