Hopefully not what’s in the bottle! ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Let’s deal with facts. I reviewed 895 wines in the Napa article. As I explained on our board, because of delays caused by Hurricane Sandy, an additional set of reviews will be published in late Jan. That will take the total number of Napa Valley reviews to just north of 1,000. I tasted approximately 500 other wines that did not make the cut. There are 2 100 point wines in this article, or less than 1% of both wines reviewed and tasted. If there are 100 wines scored 96 points and above, that works out to 10% of total reviews and 6.7% of total wines tasted. It is not my job to decided if those percentages are reasonable or not, it is up to our audience. That said, on the surface of things, I don’t think those numbers are egregious in any way.
I think the greatest problem for people - and I know it is an issue for me - is to grasp the sheer enormity of CA and its major appellations, Napa Valley included. I read recently that CA, if it was a country, would rank as the 4th largest wine producing country in the world after Italy, France and Spain.
Consider the Napa Valley has great weather in most vintages, with a much less capriciousness than is typical of Northern European wine regions (which means a lot of France and Italy), a high percentage of valley floor vineyards that are relatively cheap to farm and also capable of carrying high yields, and irrigation basically everywhere. Then add that in global terms Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are relatively easy to farm and vinify. On paper, Napa Valley has all the ingredients to turn out large amounts of wines of consistently high average quality.
Now, let’s look at Italy’s equivalent top regions (Piedmont and Tuscany), since a lot of people are drawing comparisons to my work there. Nebbiolo and Sangiovese are much more difficult to farm, as they ripen only in the best places, viticulture in the great appellations is almost all on hillsides (which reduces the number of sites some varieties can be planted), vintages are much more variable, and irrigation is not allowed. The presence of Dolcetto and Barbera in Piedmont, two humbler grapes) means that an article of mine on Piedmont will naturally have a much large range of scores, a range that reflects everything from everyday drinkers to world class wines. Same thing in Tuscany. But in Napa Valley, the focus of the region is largely on prestigious wines or wines that are seeking to enter that realm. These are very different playing fields.
Lastly, with regards to the question of score inflation at the 85-90 point end of the range, it is quite obvious to me that quality in this part of the market has improved dramatically. It has nothing to do with winemaking or vintages, but is simply a reflection of the economy. Market demand for expensive wines remains weak (with a few exceptions) which means that estates are taking a significant amount of juice they were previously bottling under their top labels and putting it into their lower priced wines, thereby improving the quality of their less expensive offerings. It really is that simple.
Antonio-
Thank you again for participating in the discussion. In two posts, you really have set yourself apart from many of your peers. I mean that sincerely.
It isn’t your responsibility, but part of the frustration many, including myself see in score inflation is the inevitable price inflation- again, not your responsibility. The question remains for many also- why were 85-90 points something that needed to inflate?
I stopped following this stuff in large part due to the previous writer who covered Washington state assigning what were in my opinion, absurdly high scores to the same producers each year which produced the rather unfortunate outcome of other producers chasing the style rather than their own distinctive quality to become part of the 10% rather than the other 90%. Good business decision in the short term, not sure what it gets them in the long term.
Anyway- I do appreciate the explanation. It certainly provides some perspective I didn’t have before reading it, and on many levels it does make sense. I hope you continue to participate here as your schedule allows as I have a good feeling that you would add a lot beyond this discussion.
Antonio, do you still think that Toscana and Piemonte have such a towering edge over the rest of Italy?
The Veneto makes the most DOC wine and the sheer number of staggeringly good Amarone and VDT’s there is amazing.
Alto Adige may have the highest average quality level of any wine production zona on the planet. I have NEVER tasted a less than quite good wine from there.
The rise of top class Montepulciano based wines from Conero in Marche and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo a bit further south has been nearly exponential. Ditto Aglianico based wines from Campania and Basilicata.
Montefalco Sagrantino has been making scores of great wines for several decades.
Sicily may be the new Spain (especially Etna).
That’s just about reds, when you add in Soave, bianchi from Friuli and Alto Adige and the stunning Greco, Fiano and Falanghinas from Campania (and don’t forget Franciacorta!), it’shard to make a case for the old guard in Toscana and Piemonte being the only things that matter anymore…
Kevin,
I think you tend to rate weight too highly. It does not show up in your preferences, which I have some familiarity with from all the times we have tasted together. I think of weight as an attribute of a wine, not necessarily a positive or a negative. Some of my favorite wines are wines that somehow put together a lot of flavor intensity in a lower-weight package. I tend to think that you prefer these wines also, but for some reason believe that objectively wines with more weight are better when you are scoring wines.
Am I close?
Frankly, this is part of why I have stopped rating wines when I post tasting notes. I don’t want to rate wines purely on my tasting preferences and yet feel like I would be lying to rate a wine that I don’t like as much higher than a wine I like better.
Nowhere in this post did Antonio say,“that Toscana and Piemonte have such a towering edge over the rest of Italy”…rather as:“equivalent top regions (Piedmont and Tuscany)”…soooooo ![[scratch.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/42a16863a8714da3c1604419e3eb9206bb87aa50.gif "scratch"){kind=small}
BTW,save your advertising for your newsletter.
What I was disputing was that those are the top regions of Italy any more. Taken as a whole, I wold put the Tre Venezie (Veneto, Alto Adige & Friuli) on top based on quantity of top wines.
Plus, how is anything I said advertising??? I mentioned no cantine, importers or brands, just internationally recognized zones where great wine is made.
Antonio,
Thank you for your honesty and transparency in how you are rating wines, how your approach to rating wines is evolving, and for coming here to discuss your methodology. My question has to do with your approach in rating even two wines 100 points is the following. Over time, given the number of wines you have tasted, I am sure that there must be a handful of wines that are just better than anything else you have drunk. Call them 1947 Cheval Blanc, 1945 Mouton, 1945 Comte de Vogue Musigny, whatever. They don’t come along one or two or ten times a year. They come along maybe 10-20 times a lifetime. Clearly, these would be 100 point wines. Even if you limit your universe to Napa wines, there have to be a few legendary wines that are just better than anything else you have had and that are not replicated every year. If these legendary wines are 100 point wines, then does this mean you think the wines you have just had and rated 100 points are as good as these? Or to you does 100 points encompass a larger range of wines, not all of which are equal?
The issue kind of is do you rate lines on a linear scale or a bell shaped curve and if the latter how steep of a bell shaped curve. All of this is a kind of long-winded way of asking when you rate a wine 100 points, are you saying it is one of the top 1%, 1/2% or whatever of the wines you taste (which would be consistent with what you said above and a more linear approach to rating) or are you saying that these wines are equal to the greatest of legends. To me, either is legitimate, but until I know which you are saying I don’t know how to evaluate your ratings.
Thank you very much and have a happy and healthy new year.
Antonio, I do not have the time right now to share all of the thoughts with you that I would like to, but I don’t think it changes anything to gross up the numbers by throwing in more wines that weren’t worth reviewing. Your boss (or former boss) has long been on record that the vast majority of CA wine is bargain-priced plonk, coming from overcropping, poor choice of varietal for the site, sites better suited to fruit and vegetables than to wine grapes, etc., so the truth is that WA reviews, for Napa and elsewhere in CA, have long been only of the top tier. (The same is true of Bordeaux and the southern Rhone as well.) Thus, I think that we can rule out the sample size as a rationalization for anything, and I, for one, am not much impressed with the attempt to diddle the numbers in that way.
While I would agree that Napa is not a static situation, there is only so much quality land available there, and most that can be developed for wine production has been. I also have serious doubts about Napa having an endless supply of winemaking geniuses with limited track records who strike pay dirt with their first offerings. That is not true anywhere else in the world, and there is no reason why that would be true in Napa alone, great weather notwithstanding. I am also doubtful that there has been the radical escalation in quality that you seem to be claiming since Bob Parker stopped covering the region. For a few producers, you can make the “second wine” argument, but not for enough to justify your stratospheric scores. What you see more often is producers making ever-growing numbers of single-vineyard wines, which at this point is not going to have much of an impact on quality, and might even hurt some of what were previously successful blends from multiple vineyards. (Cory Miller, I also need to observe that there is ZERO correlation between small production and quality, even if a high number of great wines do, in fact, come in small quantities. Old vines and low yields matter, at least in some cases. Not being able to buy but so much land or fruit is a very different thing. I do agree with you, however, about the northern Rhone score inflation.)
Antonio, I cannot accept your Piemonte/Tuscany arguments, either. There is no difference between the presence of Dolcetto and Barbera in the Piemonte, or all of the foreign varietals grown in Tuscany, and the poor-quality Cabs, Merlot, Chardonnay and other varietals grown in Napa. None of those wines count in any meaningful comparison of scores. You measure only top to top…Barolo and Barbaresco against Napa Cabs (blended and unblended seems fair to me) against the top Supertuscans (there not being enough truly great Brunellos or Chianti Classicos to allow a top-to-top comparison with those wines). Since there are fewer, say, Barolo and Barbaresco producers working less land, and not all of the producers are making high-quality wines, it is reasonable to assume that there will be fewer great wines made. However, I am hard pressed to think of any Cali Cab that you could prefer to the wines from the greatest vineyards of the greatest producers in the greatest vintages in the Piemonte. Ditto Burgundy, measuring top to top. California has no G. Conterno and no Giacosa, no Aubert de Villaine, no Lalou Bize-Leroy. It has no soil to match the soil that those producers work. And what about the extraordinary, almost unbroken string of strong vintages in the Piemonte? Indeed, the Piemonte and Burgundy would not be the only regions filling the bill in my line of argument above. And is not Italy, rather than just the Piemonte or the Piemonte and Tuscany, every bit as vast as California?
California is an infant wine-producing region in the grand scheme of things. It suffered years of dreadfully wrongheaded advice from UC-Davis wonks and all sorts of trial-and-error experimentation with soils, varietals and clones. It is a work still very much in progress, and the region whose wine styles have been most influenced (dominated really) by Parker’s insistence on ripe, fruity, high-alcohol, oaky wines. I am not her to say that CA wines have not come a long way; they surely have. I am not here to say that there are not many excellent wines, regardless of my personal preferences. I am saying that there is virtually no chance that the quality of the wines that you have tasted is so dramatically and uniformly better than those from the rest of the world. Lastly, the notion that your lack of tasting experience earlier gave rise to lower scores stands logic on its head. If that is the case, then, with all due respect, why would I want the scores and notes from your on-the-job training in Burgundy, Champagne and California? I appreciate very much your appearance here and on the Squires board, and your openness and willingness to share your views. However, I must also observe that doing so has obviously been an attempt to defend against the criticism that your work has engendered, which is part of the broader criticism of Bob Parker and the Wine Advocate in recent years. I applaud the effort, but for me, it has not succeeded…
Roberto - It was just a general example. Don’t worry…I have a huge passion for the wines of all of Italy, and hopefully my work at TWA reflects that.
Bill - I know we will never agree so that is fine. If you want to ignore the facts surrounding the number of actual wines reviewed or tasted, no problem. I didn’t say the larger number of wines weren’t worth reviewing, rather they just fell short of our 85 point cutoff. Many of those wines have no real flaws, they just aren’t distinctive. You can also choose to look past the number of new estates that did not exist a few years ago that are now making great wines, OK.
You can make the argument that the vast majority of wines in any region is crap. The total annual production of Barolo? Around 10million bottles. Brunello? About the same. Chianti Classico? 35 million. Yet how many of those wines do we and most of the world truly care about? A handful or two…
I fundamentally disagree with your opinion that CA has no visionaries or terroirs that are as great as the best in Europe, but I do agree with you that the CA wine culture is much younger. That is why this is such an exciting time.
As to my ‘on the job’ work that you have no regard for…you have previously spoken highly of my Piedmont Report, which is my first professional work. I had far less experience then than I do now, yet you speak glowingly of that early work and are so dismissive of some of the other things I have done more recently. I am curious, should we view the work you were doing as an attorney when you were in your early 40s in the same light? Was that ‘on the job training’ too?
![[popcorn.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/1/1ca9f29573458cca2424a66a50d6c1261081dd3e.gif "[popcorn.gif]"){kind=small}
Bill, your argument is simply a subjective diatribe on your perception of the lack of quality of California cabs/blends relative to wines from other regions. It reminds me of my three year old simply saying “no it isn’t” without providing any real supporting evidence. More specifically, you simply sound like you’re saying “no it isn’t because it doesn’t taste as good to me so you must be wrong.”
Statements like the one below completely undermine your arguments.
However, I am hard pressed to think of any Cali Cab that you could prefer to the wines from the greatest vineyards of the greatest producers in the greatest vintages in the Piemonte. Ditto Burgundy, measuring top to top. California has no G. Conterno and no Giacosa, no Aubert de Villaine, no Lalou Bize-Leroy. It has no soil to match the soil that those producers work.
That’s simply a matter of subjective interpretation. There are certainly a number of renowned winemakers in California that have excelled on the foreign stage. There are profound wines coming out of California and that have come out of California. Perhaps they just make wine that is not to your taste. There are any number of board members who would prefer various Screaming Eagles, Harlans, Abreus, Colgins, and others to wines produced by the winemakers/houses you mentioned. I have personally enjoyed a number of other-worldly Napa Cabernets that have hung tough with some of the most profound bordeaux and barolo that I’ve ever had. Perhaps your skepticism and preconceived notions are now clouding your judgment. Regardless, after reading your post it’s growing increasingly difficult to take you seriously.
No,what you said was: “Antonio, do you still think that Toscana and Piemonte have such a towering edge over the rest of Italy?”
Nowhere did Antonio get close to that.
As for advertising…sure ![[swoon.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f425e8dac3e7344bee264da02e55428971be23a9.gif "swoon"){kind=small}
So, if someone ITB mentions the very existence of a well known wine zone without mentioning any actual wineries, that is advertising? Wow.
Antonio is here defending his actual product. That must really have you seething…
Breaking news: they make beer in Belgium and brandy in Jerez, Spain.
The fundamental issue with me is that I find it hard to place credence on an avalanche of 95+ scores given to California wines from somebody who built his reputation on an Old-World palate. I cannot imagine a wine drinker with more than a few years of experience who would, say, equally prefer Aubert Pinots to d’Angerville Burgundies, yet that’s what these scores claim. Unlike Bill I won’t make the argument here that one is inherently better than the other. But I cannot conceive of a single, experienced palate honestly equating the two in quality.
I have no idea what this means,other than you have no response to the fact that you completely skewed/misstated one insignificant phrase of Antonio’s post to enable your advert/monologue.
Antonio, your explanations about all of the reasons that Napa turns out many high quality wines are true enough, but all of those things were true for last year’s Napa report too. I haven’t done a report-to-report comparison (though I think Bill Klapp might be persuaded to 
) but the part I’m really focusing on is, do you think you have shifted upward somewhat in scoring philosophy due to evolution (as you put it) just since last year’s report or do you think the difference is purely vintage variation?
From his numbers (100 95+pointers out of 1500 tasted) it’s hardly an avalanche, and completely consistent numerically, if you take it to be a %age scale. Methinks you people do protest too much–but what else is new ![[shrug.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/48636ebda2a440a43ad8d24c83be20ac20c53420.gif "shrug"){kind=small}
Really?
No need to make that argument here. The only assumptions required to make my point is that there are lots of experienced wine drinkers who think Aubert Pinots (and others of the ilk) are exceptional (95+) wines and lots who like d’Angerville (and the ilk) are exceptional (95+) wines. But IMHO the intersection of the two groups is almost zero. I think Antonio is stretching his palate to score from “the perspective of” a ripe Cali drinker, the prototype for that drinker’s palate being Parker, which predictably results in everything being scored almost identically as Parker did.