PUNCH: Parker & Parkerization of Wines

A somewhat interesting article in Punch by John McCarroll:

and the legacy of Robert Parker & his (continuing) impact on wine. A fairly balanced & non-judgemental
telling of the story we’ve all heard before.

Has anybody had any recent contact w/ Parker & curious as to his health status?? He seems to have pretty
much vanished from the wine scene.
Tom

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Interesting article. But these kinds of things cannot be helped. Even as children, people always have the tendency to rank thing or seek out existing “rankings” for things they enjoy. One quick example is the Youtube channel “Watchmojo,” which is dedicated solely to creating “top 10” videos and boasts over 24 million followers. People like rankings and seeing points assigned to things, especially if they are unfamiliar with the subject and they want to make sure they pick something “good.”

I am sure most people on this forum have at some point ranked or assigned points to wines, or favorite movies, or bands.

I agree it is a shame much of the industry became parkerized, or that wineries became obsessed with chasing point scores, as it does homogenize many kinds of wines. Especially wines below the $20 mark. I am always trying to expand my palette by trying wines i’ve never heard of from all different price points and it can be difficult to sometimes pick the right bottle from the ones that are covered in point score labels. But I understand why it happens. Wineries want to make money. It’s the nature of capitalism. To turn a profit.

I am curious to hear the opinions of WB’s that are ITB to hear their thoughts on parker or points in general and how they have affected their business.

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I don’t get the point of the article Tom.

Parker came along. He liked some wine. He gave that wine high ratings. Lots of wine makers wanted high ratings. They made wines that got high ratings. People hated Parker for giving high ratings to wines. In the future, we should all avoid letting one person be so important to the industry.

Nothing new to say.

And he gives a nod to Alice, which is irritating.

There will never be another Parker. There will never be another period when ancient wine producing regions are suddenly freed from communism and dictatorship and try to re-discover their lost legacies.

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Yup, Greg… sorta agree. It doesn’t break any new ground. Just sorta a reprise of Parker phenomenon.
But I’ve no problem w/ his reference to Sweet Alice. I always get a hoot from her grandiose subtitle “How I Saved the World from Parkerization”. I don’t feel any safer!!
Tom

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A rather boring piece and not much new - except the concept that the ‘phenomenon’ continues even without the man leading the charge.

He still seems too easy of a target these days - even though his impact has become a ‘non issue’ with many. That said, the fact that so many, including on here, are so enamored with ‘points’ - albeit not his, but instead JD or AG or JS or name your poison - means that his legacy continues on.

He was quite instrumental in bringing Rhone varieties out of the dark ages and into the consumer light, and for that one reason among many, I will always admire him. He was not afraid to like what others didn’t, not because he wanted to be a ‘naysayer’ but because he found value and quality in areas other didn’t.

With him basically ‘gone’, what is the current argument of why so many high scoring wines continue to be big, bold and brash?

Cheers.

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I think people are slightly misreading the article, which really says that Parker’s power was caused by the fact that the world was ready for what he was advocating and not that it changed because of him. I’m not sure why Baby Boomers are called out for having American tastes. Plenty more than that generation like Coke and sugar. And the last paragraph suggests that lemming behavior will always be with us, so that now natural wine is the new fad. I don’t know that I agree with any of these things, but it is an interesting and different take.

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Where do I apply for a refund for the 5 minutes of my life I wasted reading this singularly formulaic, unoriginal and nuance-free piece?

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We hope. Having been around when a lot of that freeing was happening, I sincerely hope it never has to happen again.

It’s true that RP predilection for highly extracted and ripe wines became increasingly obvious over time while he was active. It’s also true, as RP has written in his own defense, he’s praised and highly rated many well-balanced and low intervention wines. The discussion I find absurd is the notion that he is somehow responsible for decisions of an industry and pendulum swings in aficianado buying and drinking preferences. If anyone wants to criticize wine making approaches that were influenced by the pursuit of numerical ratings, I’m good with that criticism, I just can’t blame RP for those decisions that were made by individuals who would presumably agree they are adults and thinking wine industry professionals.

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Red-hot scoop from circa 2002

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In related breaking news, my cell phone has a camera. That I can take photos with.

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Can’t stress how important I find that point. The problem is that this is still an issue today to varying degrees in varying parts of the industry. Whether it is critics, distributors, retailers, varieties or even the power a region’s name holds like Brunello for example. There will be fights over what the limitations should be for the region, and what should be included. As long as their is disproportionate influence over the future of wine producers will gravitate towards what the most powerful critics prefer, or what Total Wine wants, or the US market which mostly drinks wines the day they buy them.

The saddest part to me is that, we are getting rid of experiments with other grapes on different land, that could be revelatory wines years into the future. I think the only answer is exactly what you said about avoiding letting someone get so much power, but I would just go a bit further and say not just one person, but group or corporation. Many wines that were not so sought after 100 years ago, are very much so today, and we are lucky that things were so localized, that producers kept producing them despite the limited to no global interest.

That’s precisely the point of the article. It almost entirely absolves Parker, and well it should. It wasn’t his fault at all. He just said what he liked as is the right of anyone to do. Robert Parker was the Anna Wintour of wine, with the difference that consumers can’t see pictures of wine and form their own opinion. Is there a solution to that other than, as we have done, getting more critics and editors?

I don’t find the article formulaic as William does. And I think it has much of the necessary nuance, except maybe it fails to mention that palate changes with age (and probably even weight), and that outlier wines will tend to stand out in marathon tastings more than balanced ones.

Sorry to disappoint anyone but, I like scores. Given the sheer number of wines that exist, the notion that one should simply taste far and wide to figure out what one likes is ludicrous. You could have a different wine every day from the day you’re allowed to until the day you die and still not try all the wines out there. Nobody wants to do that. And there are some we’re supposed to age before we try them. We want the right wine for the right food and the right occasion. And there are sourcing concerns. How much is trying one bottle of Larry’s wines going to cost me if it’s not available at retail where I live? Do I have to buy a case to bring the cost per bottle down? That’s a lot of money. Consumers need a way to narrow down the choices. And scores help.

But I do agree with Greg that the whole Alice thing was unnecessary.

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I agree with the idea of more critics and editors 200%! How do we fund it though? Either publications and their staffs now are making way too much money and simply need to hire more critics, or we just aren’t paying enough under the current circumstances to sustain more critics. I think we could also use more in store tastings, more educated retailers, and limiting the incentives to bias people, as well as the even more difficult more global education on skepticism in general.

Sorry to disappoint anyone but, I like scores. Given the sheer number of wines that exist, the notion that one should simply taste far and wide to figure out what one likes is ludicrous. You could have a different wine every day from the day you’re allowed to until the day you die and still not try all the wines out there. Nobody wants to do that. And there are some we’re supposed to age before we try them. We want the right wine for the right food and the right occasion. And there are sourcing concerns. How much is trying one bottle of Larry’s wines going to cost me if it’s not available at retail where I live? Do I have to buy a case to bring the cost per bottle down? That’s a lot of money. Consumers need a way to narrow down the choices. And scores help.

I am with you here too. Scores are a great guide for me for producers/ wines I don’t know. I also rate most wines I drink, assuming I get to see it evolve over a few hours, but I don’t post it on my CT notes, because it is just for my own guide to monitor palate changes and how I feel a given wine evolved with age.

Tough crowd. As I understand it Punch is positioned as a generalist publication for a younger audience. Some light quote-gathering aside (some of it questionable in the case of phoning up Feiring it seems) there’s obviously no real reporting here.

Sure, nothing new, but “everyone already knows this story” and “what’s the point of this article?” seems like an odd case of Punching down to me.

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Well, without wishing to get drawn down a rabbit hole, I think it fails to contextualize RP’s work; fails to understand the importance of the way he disrupted traditional hierarchies above all in the 1980s (e.g. writing about Selosse lavishly in 1985, championing “country wines” such as Cornas or Madiran as the equals of many “noble” appellations, criticizing some of the most celebrated crus classé of Bordeaux as underperforming); fails to actually get into how wine criticism functions and how it affects the outcomes of tastings (i.e. the difference between big mass tastings vs. visiting producers); and doesn’t really interrogate the notion of “Parkerization” (it would be interesting to get into the role of importers, consultants, other journalists etc etc here). This isn’t me being some sort of ex-cathedra defender of the faith, far from it, I simply tend to think that if you don’t have anything to add to the conversation, you should remain silent. My reflection was, much along the lines of the comment that the historian Geoffrey Elton once made at the end of a seminar presentation, “if you thought it was worth doing, why did you do it so badly?”

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Either it’s not a full time job or it apparently pays better than being an Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College.

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I see him at a local restaurant. I don’t go there very often, probably a handful of times a year, but he has been there every time I’ve gone. He looks to be in decent health for a guy his age. He’s obviously sitting down, so I don’t know if he moves well. But he’s usually there with one or two other couples and they are eating and drinking wine, so he’s still out and about and seems fine.

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Thanks…sorta what I was interested in hearing.
Tom

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But this is Punch, not the journal of Wine Philology. I can see why this article might seem trivial to you, but, then, you are not its audience. Moreover, it’s topic was specifically Parkerization, so I don’t know that there was any reason for it to get into that, unless as a matter of contexting unfair criticism of Parker. But, again, despite the reception here, the article is not Parker bashing and it argues that the phenomenon we call Parkerization was not solely, or even primarily, due to him. When it comes to wine criticism, I surely don’t get out enough, but I find a claim that a) Parkerization and lemming like behaviour do exist, and b)Parker is really not to blame for them, to be, at least, unusual.