Some Uncle Bob Quotes From The New HGs

WINE TALK
21

Once dubbed sycophant
Now we’re anti-flavor drunks
On goes Parker’s rants

22

If I had liquid in my mouth when I read this, I would have spit it at the screen.

Not many posts make me literally lol

23

Yaacov is good that way.

24

Bob is truely trying to save his ass regarding all the high scores he gave the Australians. He retasted this wine and dropped it three points from a 99 to a 96. I can’t imagine he enjoys drinking this wine 1/10 as much as he did in 2004.

25

Are you sure? Given the direction his palate seems to be heading I think he will actually start to like the jam monsters even more.

26

Eric is probably right. I was thumbing through Emile Peynaud’s The Taste of Wine last night. Among other things, Parker has often cited Peynaud for the notion that wines should be big fruit, big alcohol and low-acid. (Parker was reading too quickly. That is not at all what Peynaud said. He merely described the roles that each component of wine play, and warned against acid out of balance with the “sweetness” provided by alcohol, among other things. But I digress…) And Peynaud got some things wrong, too, like stating that fining and filtration were absolutely essential. But most interesting last night was his belief that, ideally, professional wine tasters should be under 50 and physically fit. Peynaud believes that one’s sense of taste diminishes after age 50, and that people that are not physically fit are not up to the rigors of wine tasting (the ability to concentrate being a serious concern). He also notes that people with illnesses and physical afflictions (I will not say gout!) are often so distracted by their discomfort that their ability to objectively assess wine is compromised. To top it off, he says that tasting from barrel, if in a producer’s cellar rather than a clean room, is too flawed by the ambient odors of the cellar to be meaningful (ever see the photo of Kermit Lynch in Chave’s mouldy cellar?). And, of course, one can find persuasive arguments in many places today that hold that barrel tasting is so flawed as to be worthless anyway.

Just sayin’…

27

I’ve never eaten with Bob.

28

[cheers.gif]

29

This very wine ruined a steak dinner I had because it was WAY too big, and that also marked the moment when I stoped buying Aussie wines. Yuck.
I like Bob Parker, and I am a fan of his. I don’t agree with him on this wine at all, but I know enough to overlook good scores and good reviews on wines such as these.

30

I guess there are 2 problems with Parker.

  1. His ego, if you don’t agree with him you’re wrong.

  2. He’s a dinosaur, we don’t need him anymore and he can’t except that.

31

Who is “we”? Certainly retailers still use him above all other critics to sell wine.

32

We, here, us…people on this board and ebob…people who know wine…people who can look up wines on CT. Etc, etc.

33

Not at all like Syms.

An edcucated consumer with a half a palate is his worst enemy.

34

So are you saying he is mooning us? hitsfan

35

Everyone, please stop repeating this. It’s just not true. There was general, but not unanimous, consensus from the get go that 1982 was going to be a great vintage.

36

The Emporer of Wine makes the case that he went against the grain on 1982 bords

37

Speaking as someone old enough to have bought 1982 Bordeaux futures and to have read the WA when the first reviews came out. There was hype in France about the 82s even before they were harvested. The big British wine writers of the time praised the vintage from day 1. In fact, I remember reading an article from Decanter when I was looking to buy futures that essentially liked the same wines he did. The big exceptions to the universal raves for 1982 were a few US wine writers, most particularly Terry Robards and Robert Finnigan.

The combination of Parker’s reviews, the confirming reviews in Decanter, and the great prices convinced me to buy futures.

38

very different from the WA history rewrite.
alan

39

This was a fun wine (02 Shirvington) upon release. Take it for what is was at the time, which for me, was a fun party wine that went great with sausage, pepperoni and aged parmesian cheese. Many thought 02 would be a classic vintage like 1998, but after time has passed, it appears that it is not so. It might have been 99 points in Bob’s eyes upon release, but it is not drinking like a 99 point wine now and surely not even close to a 96 point rating. Maybe somewhere in the mid to upper 80’s is where I would score this one now. At close to 17% alcohol, this wine shows the heat, since the fruit has taken a back seat to the high powered octane this wine offers. Mabye I will use the last few of these wines I still own and make a big steak marinade explosion.

I might even pack these up and send them to Todd French. [wink.gif]

40

I was at the luncheon, and in fact brought two of the bottles. My recollection is slightly different, in that I questioned Bob on the wine because I didn’t like it, not because it was a VA bomb. His point was that the wine will morph into something special over time, much like the '47 Cheval Blanc. Bob made the point to Scott Manlin and myself that he had been told that when the '47 CB was released, it was widely panned because tasters at the time didn’t have the data points at that point in time to understand the wine. It was considered port-like and over the top. He felt that the '97 Harlan was similarly controversial, and in time would be a special wine.

The early bottles that I had I didn’t like in the least. However, I haven’t had a bad bottle of this in quite awhile, not that I have drunk a lot of it. But I have had the wine perhaps 6 times in the past two years and thoroughly enjoyed it each time. I have also felt that each time I drank it that it clearly needed more time.

Just my two cents.