I will purchase half your case for half of what you paid…
You mean Parker makes a great point of stating frequently that his opinion is useless. I’m glad we have clarified that.
No, you are misreading.
Only you are the proper judge of what is good or bad wine for you. Bob likes to point this out when people are unhappy with him.
However Bob is the only absolute judge on the planet of what constitutes dilution and vegetal wine. So if you like diluted, vegetal wines, well have a party.
Nothing like a little humility…
Eric I was kidding. Of course it is not Parker’s style which is why he downgraded his score. I wonder what happened back in the 80’s when more wines were vegetal and what scores he gave them, only to revisit them 10 years later and either increase or decrease them. Very interesting indeed.
Mike, I was only sort of kidding.
Parker loves to use the “everyone should make up their own mind, I am just one guy” line when he is cornered. However in this case he is perfectly happy to state as absolute fact that, if you like this wine, then you like diluted vegetal wines. Therefore your palate sucks. Have fun hanging out with the Brits and other people who prefer fruitless, dilute wines. (OK, I am going a bit far on this.) There are so many other ways to word the note above to inject even the faintest bit of humility, but it seems when he has an his fangs on an opponent’s neck he NEEDS to tear out the jugular.
His utter absolutism and certainty is one of the great reasons for his success, but it is a double-edged sword. For example, I see no issue with someone rating Duck Muck at 100 points and someone else calling it undrinkable. The real key will be allow people to find others who share their tastes and values. In Bob’s world, if you disagree with his 100 point rating, well then you can’t think outside the box, and therefore your palate sucks.
I have only been following Parker for 10 years, so I don’t have a sense if he has always written this way or if he is getting more cranky of late.
I will try one soon and let you know what happens. ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
more cranky–I followed him from about 1986-2002 and finally stopped renewing the WA, but mostly because of the variable and late red Burg coverage.
alan
Very strange. Dilution is usually not hard to tell from barrel or on release. Why should that only become apparent now? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
More cranky. I used to enjoy reading TWA but I stopped subscribing when his insults got to be too frequent for comfort.
I tried the wine 3 yrs ago and found it to be pretty ordinary, but thought it needed a good decade or so to meld.
Actually, he was pretty harsh in the early days. Here’s his take in 1984 (issue #32) on the '81 Pichon-Baron: “The 1981 is overly oaked, perhaps consciously to disguise a lack of concentration and depth, so some tasters might be fooled by all the lovely vanillin, oaky aroma… Oak fanciers who put a premium on splinters in their mouth will get more of a charge from this wine than I did. 83”
Or the '81 Montrose: “More impressive from the cask than from the bottle, the wine of Montrose seems to be on a diet… where’s the beef? … 84”
As for Figeac, in 1982 (issue #21) he described the '79 thus: “One never knows whether Figeac will be overly light in style or will have some tannins for cellaring. This offering is very herbaceous, with simple yet supple, fleshy flavors and medium to dark ruby color. Drink up. 78.”
I happen to notice, too, a positive review in that issue that amused me now. He liked the 79 Certan de May (87 points – which was a rave in those pre-grade inflation days), but said it “should develop rather quickly over the next 2-3 years, but keep for 4-5 years.”
That was a brooding, backward wine in the early 90s and drank superbly when I finished my last bottle two years ago – 14 years after his review.
Eric is correct. We are all the only judge of what is good or bad. But I was at the 2000 tasting with Bob. I posted my comments on the wines April 2, several months before Bob published his notes. As you can see from my notes, I was not exactly thrilled with the wine either.
2000 Figeac - with a red and black fruit, herb and licorice nose was light in the palate. The wine did not taste fully ripe and the tannins were drying in the mouth. 84 Pts
You still have my address, Jeff. Please send me your stash. I’ll do you this favor, but only once! ![[welldone.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/fc9709a841aa9379fd892a9cf0b535b05f473b86.gif "[welldone.gif]"){kind=small}
Hey, we disagree, but that doesn’t matter to me. We just have different opinions on this wine, or you had a bad bottle.
Jeff, are there vintages of Figeac you have liked? I see some of your notes here: Learn about Chateau Figeac St. Emilion Bordeaux Complete Guide" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Jeff – So why, if it was dilute, was that not apparent at the outset? How did you score it earlier?
26 years after the review?
It’s always been clear that Parker does not like most wines with a lot of Cabernet Franc (there are certain exceptions, though, notably Cheval Blanc), hence his persistent trashing of Loire reds and his lack of enthusiasm for many wines from Graves/Pessac-Léognan. Everyone has their preferences, and as long as one understands that he expresses only one person’s opinion, nothing wrong. It’s when he insists that he has a lock on defining what is quality that I have problems.
I had the 1996 Figeac 4 or so months ago with a small group in Phoenix and the wine was crowd favorite, including me, and I love my Cali Cabs. Yes, there was some green pepper, some black olive, and I found the wine quite balanced.
Hmmm. My how time flies.
Good evening Guillaume,
I did not mean to suggest that. What I am saying is that this whole debate about changes in winemaking style that we have seen recently is just another example of where personal preference and experience should be key to making a decision about buying a wine and not blindly relying on the points awarded by a wine critic.
Given the state of the wine market today, I often I think I am part of a very small minority who has found the non-TN content of Parker’s books just as valuable as the tasting notes themselves. He makes it very clear that one’s personal tastes should inform a buying decision. It is not his fault that most wine buyers are going to take the easy way out and buy based on the most condensed and easily absorbed information possible- i.e. the score granted a given wine.
Let’s take traditional versus more recent approaches to winemaking out the equation for a second and focus on Cheval Blanc.
Cheval Blanc is a great wine- one of the greatest wines in the world. Parker’s raves are warranted.
I personally cannot stand the stuff. I have tasted it more than a few times- discussing and scoring it without bias I like to think, and it never ceases to intrigue and impress me- but I just do not care for it. It is not a wine I would fondly go digging for in the cellar even though I find it so interesting that on occasion I do like to drink it.
If I were to just go out and buy top Bordeaux based on Parker’s scores, I would surely have a lot of Cheval Blanc on hand. I do not because I have tasted the wine enough times to know that great as it is, it is just not for me.
Both at the tasting table and courtesy of my time in retail I know how very few people buy $50+ wines for the cellar and systematically taste some or all of them at release, and then check in on a few every few years as maturity approaches.
It is just not generally done because so many people have chosen to place undue reliance on a numerical rating someone else gave that wine at a given point in time.
I have watched the old vs. new and many other debates about wine critics rage on this and other forums for years, and I have finally decided that the real problem is people are spending huge amounts of money on wine without doing their own homework or investigation- and thus without appreciating just how much of a crapshoot this really is and that 20+ years of tasting experience are required to even begin to have the knowledge necessary to regularly open bottles at the right moment for that person’s tastes.
While I disagree with Parker strongly on many wines, in his approach and his disclosures about tasting itself I find him exemplary. And this is why I am no longer on the anti-Parker bandwagon. Anyone who makes a point of tasting and understanding what they buy will know very quickly whether Parker or anyone else’s notes are useful- and in what context (for example, Parker’s 89 score and complimentary note on 1989 Latour made me think I would love the wine- and I was right!)
Excessive reliance on point scores and or worrying about what a change in score means- and the anxiety and disappointment they bring- is just the price of placing undue reliance on the opinions of others. I understand the urge, and I know the costs involved to do it right- but that is just the way of things.
Buying the bottle is not enough- the real costs of being a wine connoisseur go much further than that, just as buying a Ferrari leads one down the path of spending 5 figures a year on insurance and maintenance. And even then life is not perfect. Who would ever have known that 1988 Lafite at 20 years of age would be mature and ever so slightly short on the finish while the 1989 is a grand creature needing at least another decade with the potential to surpass the 1990? This is just one of many examples where surprises came with time, and even personal experience could not have predicted it (not to mention some would surely personally disagree with my conclusion on that and other examples.)
Tom,
I think you’re a bit out of touch with most wine buyers. Many people simply have not had the opportunities to taste, especially great wines like Cheval, that you have had. That’s the entire reason for the existence and success of Parker and other critics. If I could easily buy top young Bordeaux (or Burgundy, Barolo, etc) at reasonable prices and taste them myself I’d do that. I imagine most of us would. But those days are gone so when you write
It is not his fault that most wine buyers are going to take the easy way out and buy based on the most condensed and easily absorbed information possible- i.e. the score granted a given wine.
I think you’re being unfair. Those short notes and scores are Parker’s main product (this is true of other critics too) so pretending that his longer form writings are the real deal simply ignores what critics do. It’s not that Parker’s main products are his books and TWA is some sideline - the books are the sideline made possible by the success of his newsletter. The periodic reviews of all critics are their main product. When someone is looking for wines to buy a vintage overview isn’t going to be that useful - they’re looking for recommendations on particular wines. Sneering at them for doing that isn’t helpful.