Heady discussions about the role of the wine critic may strike many people as navel gazing. Yet one issue has bubbled up on social media and blogs repeatedly in the last few months: Should wine critics allow their personal preferences to color their critical views? Or should they remain neutral on questions regarding a wine’s style, regardless of how they feel about it?

I find this issue fascinating, and before you dismiss me as one more self-absorbed wine writer, let me say that I think these are important questions for anybody who cares about wine. How you answer them shapes how you think about wine, your attitude toward its aesthetic potential and, indeed, what you expect from critics.

Let me not keep you in suspense: I believe a critic’s point of view is crucial. My job is not to act as an impartial arbiter of bottles, but as a guide, leading readers on a quest to explore what is most beautiful, fascinating, distinctive, curious, delicious and moving in wine. I hope to inspire curiosity, promote ease and comfort with wine, and provoke discussion and debate. Ultimately my aim is to eliminate the need for wine critics (at least in a utopian sense) by helping consumers become their own best authorities.

This requires me to view various styles of wine critically, which, emphatically, is not a question of simply promoting what I like and attacking what I dislike. In a recent column on Napa Valley cabernet sauvignons from the 2011 vintage, I made it clear that I was not a fan of opulent, powerfully fruity blockbuster wines, an opinion based on personal experience and aesthetic ideals. I would like to think it was well reasoned and thoughtful, and that I was exercising critical judgment rather than simply lashing out at something I personally don’t enjoy.