Apologies if this has been covered.
Tyler Colman tweets that John Gilman had this to say about 2010 Pavie:
“Absurdly overripe…liqueur-like nose…zero focus…blur of alcohol…biggest train wreck of the vintage. 47-52+?”
Yipes. I wonder if wines like 2010 Pavie and Cos have bifurcated the critical field, forcing critics to take sides in the ripeness / size debate.
Alas, Gilman was actually pretty positive on the 2010 Cos d’Estournel.
I find it funny that the review starts with “I had the good fortune to taste the 2010 Pavie at both…” (meaning twice) At 47-52 points, I don’t think that’s good fortune 
FYI, I did take this out of context, he goes on to say that he was glad to taste it twice, thus verifying how horribly wrong he thinks the wine is.
Agree or not with his opinions – and I often do – it is great to have a professional critic who is willing to eviscerate wines that he or she despises, rather than saying “it’s nasty, but very well made for its style… 87-88+ points”. Gilman combines an amazing breadth and depth of knowledge with a willingness to state and defend a real opinion, which makes him incredibly useful as critic.
His 2010 vintage write-up is fascinating.
-Steve
My take is a little different. I could have told you before I saw this post that he would dislike the wine and write a note in the most intemperate, vicious language he could muster. This is like reading religious text, wine-tasting-as-jihad. Totally useless to me.
It is useless that a critic gives his honest opinion? (and yes I do beleive it is an honest opinion)
Gilman is my favorite critic because he subjectively calls them like he sees them and has similar palate preferences to me.
You beat me to the punch. I was actually going to reference his review of the Trottevielle, in which he references - twice - the “overt smell of bug spray in the nose of the wine” and channel the great sportscaster Warner Wolf as follows:
“If you bet that the worst review of a 2010 Bordeaux you would ever see would read ‘While this wine will never offer any pleasure and is borderline undrinkable, one could serve it when dining al fresco and at least kill off the mosquitos’, then YOU LOSE!”
The quote above is about the Trottevielle, which looks downright generous next to what JG wrote about the Pavie.
Fun stuff.
Yes, Berry, it is useless because it is honest.
Really? Was I that opaque?
Find me a Pavie wine post-Perse he liked. If you can, then his review of this year’s or next year’s Pavie tell me something about how that year’s Pavie relates to others or how I would react to the wine. But he isn’t interested in that. Instead, he is interested in reading from the “yesterday was better” hymnal. That’s fine. But I don’t need to read his reviews – he doesn’t even need to taste the wine – for me to know he is going to hate every Pavie and every other wine made with so-called modern techniques in bordeaux. That means I know without giving it a moment’s thought that “Gillman will hate this.” It makes his actual reviews useless and unnecessary.
He rated 2005 Angelus 84 points. He rated 2005 Pape Clement 72 points. He rated 2005 Canon La Gaffeliere 69 points. Utterly, completely predictable without ever reading a word he said.
These are polemics, not wine reviews.
I don’t find him to be quite so predictable. 2010 Cos d’Estournel being a prime example, on the heels of his equally vicious trashing of the 2009 last year.
He not only calls 'em like he sees 'em, he provides a huge amount of background information – essays – on regions and vintages. I dig the critic-as-educator role that he plays in the market. I feel the same way about Terry Theise. Too many critics are tasting note machines, rather then educators.
-Steve
A critic with very little following who is looking to be outrageous for attention. He tends to appeal to the anti-Parker crowd, but he becomes just as predictable on the other side. If he ever gets a vintage right that most others (esp. Parker) get wrong (ala 1982 for Parker), he will have a subscriber base locked in. Until then, he throws mud on the wall hoping some of it will stick.
For French wines, I view his reviews as contrarian indicators.
He is an excellent writer, however.
Chris
Do you get upset with critics who consistently love Pavie? Are their reviews useless and unnecessary?
Personally I think a critic should keep reviewing a product they historically loved or hated just to let us know if anything has changed.
Im perplexed why either exteme would bother you unless it somehow irks you when someone disagrees with your palate preference.
These are polemics, not wine reviews.
As long as it an honest opinion I have no problem with that. I have no problem with a critic taking an aggressive stand. In fact I think it is important that they do.
Steve, you subscribe to Gillman and I don’t, so you have more data than I do. I don’t know what he has said about Cos. And if you found examples of positive Gillamn reviews for Pavie or its “ilk,” I would be the first to admit defeat. I don’t think you can.
Based solely on what I have seen, Theise and Gillman share almost nothing in common. Terry does have a very specific perspective. You could call it narrow or parochial or even financially self-interested. But I never (or rarely) get the sense that his perspective blinds him to quality that lies outside his wheelhouse. That is the very definition of Gillman’s work to the limited extent that I have had a chance to read it.
My point to Berry (which was apparently too obscure or inartfully worded for him to understand) was that Gillman’s religious faith makes him as predictable as the sunrise. If a film critic had panned every Woody Allen film ever made, claimed in every review that the film ranked with the worst ever produced, argued that Allen was taking valuable air and space on planet earth that some other human might productively use, it would make little sense to seek out his opinion on the new Woody Allen film (at least as anything other than diverting entertainment).
I think this borders on being an ad hominem attack. Besides your description of his opionions really don’t reflect reality. I don’t think your descriptions represent the tone of his newsletters at all. I’ll just take two snippets of his writing at random:
At the time of the partition of their father’s vineyards in 1922, Francesco and
Giuseppe Rinaldi had to decide how to share vines in two of the greatest crus in Barolo.
Back in 1870, when Giovanni Rinaldi first purchased vineyards and began his career as
a grape grower and winemaker, he utilized his acute knowledge of the vineyards of the
region to make his purchase, so that the estate was originally founded on parcels in two
of the very best vineyards in the entire Barolo region- the Cannubi Boschis and Brunate…
1997 Graacher Domprobst Kabinett AP #8- Weingut Willi Schaefer
The 1997 Domprobst Kabinett AP #8 has now reached its apogee and is
beginning its long cruise at peak drinkability. It is a very classic example of the
Domprobst, with fairly broad shoulders for a Kabinett, as it offers up a complex bouquet
of sweet corn, peach, a touch of savory spices, pit fruits, gentle notes of petrol and a
lovely base of slate…
Oh my god! The humanity! So outragous! So much mud! Actually sounds pretty benign to me and this is how 99% of his writing comes across in tone and style.
He may have a few random, strongly worded negative opinions but that is not even close to being representative of the bulk of his output.
I think it is equal parts hillarious and sad when people get their panties all in a bunch when a critic poorly rates a beloved wine. They take it personally.
I think Parker’s evermore effusive manglings of the English language in an effort to top previous plaudits are also designed to be diverting entertainment more than informational. I would be that the same percentage of his subscriber base - smartly - sees them as such as the percentage of Gilman’s readers do for John’s barbs at wines like Pavie.
A.
It’s interesting that writers like Parker and Laube get slammed for tilting their scoring towards a style they like (e.g. Laube is more likely to give a high score to a high quality opulent-style California pinot noir than a high quality lean-style California pinot noir), yet it seems that many of the same people celebrate it if another critic, in a far more exaggerated fashion, score wines high for being lean/traditional and extremely low for being modern/opulent.
Is the distinction that someone in Laube’s or Parker’s position should make an effort to be objective and evenhanded, whereas your freelance blogger type should just score based on his stylistic likes and dislikes? Or is it just a “whose ox is gored” sort of inconsistency? Or am I misunderstanding something else that explains this inconsistency?
Woody Allen is a brilliant filmmaker. Try writing the same paragraph about Michael Bay movies. Would it still seem so odd if a film critic said that every Michael Bay movie is a piece of trash? It’s not the critic who’s being predictable, it’s Michael Bay.
Nobody slams Parker or Laube for favoring styles they like. The problem is that they don’t admit that’s what they’re doing.
Well, without getting into the philosophical discussion as to whether such a thing as absolute quality/beauty exists, or whether it is all inherently relative, I’ll say that there are “modern” wines that Gilman does like, although his reviews usually use phrasing such as “it’s modern, and it would have been even better without all that new oak and micro-ox, but it’s still pretty good”.
Every critic is predictable to a degree, sometimes highly so. Parker seems to like every Perse wine. Ditto with Allen Meadows and Mugnier. Being predictable (to me) doesn’t mean that a critic’s opinion lacks value.
-Steve
Gillman is 10X the writer Parker is. No question. Parker needs points because his command of the English language is limited.
Sounds very much like what Jancis said about the 2003 Pavie…