The wine biz PP (Pre Parker)

WINE TALK
21

I really never got a WA until 1999. I had made it my custom to travel to Napa, Bordeaux or CDP whenever I got a break fron Trial from 1984 through 2001. I met many great people in wine and listened to them. In Bordeaux, several in particular were always aware of the great success stories in the current and recent vintages. I still very much admire Anthony Barton, a true gentlemen always dressed to the T during my appointments, who never made a bad suggestion to me about a left Bank Wine or any wine for that matter. Christene Valette and her girls and staff always made appointments for me with wineries I did not know, was aware of the great Right Bank wines of the day and was the first to tell me about the transformation at Pavie. The Perrin Family in CDP and Michael Chapoutier in Northern Rhone were terrific to listen to, taste with and learn from.
My friends in Napa/Sonoma are too many to list and many still give wine yearly to the Culinary Festival that I help to run in Scottsdale that raises over a million a year for Children and the Arts.
I did learn to respect Robert Parker in the past ten years that I followed him, (I ended my subscription this year) as a distinguished wine taster. I have not been able to travel when I became a single father so my trips to Europe and other wine regions have been on hold. 2002 was the first vintage in France I did not have the opportunity to taste on my own. Since then, I have used WA until this year to help me make my buying decisions since I have not had the benefit of my own barrel tastings.
This rapid decline of the Squires Board and the Parker Brand is sad to me. Parker still tastes wine and will still have a huge impact in the wine World, but I for one am not sure it will really ever be the same?

22

I really did not get into wine until I moved from New York to California in 1978…My first trip to Napa was orchestrated by my soon to be wife who was actually into wine long before she met me. [drinks.gif] I was so smitten that I soon had a part time ITB job for a great wine shop in Santa Monica (Bacchus & Associates). I worked there until it unfortunately closed about 10 years later…I still rue not purchasing the store and keeping it afloat. Working in this store increased my knowledge, cellar and debt [diablo.gif] incrementally. I was working in this store when a customer, visiting from Baltimore, came in with an early WA, and started asking for specific wines. I had never seen this style of “shopping” before, and it was my introduction to RP. This particular customer would not take any of my rather brilliant [blush2.gif] suggestions but only purchased from the WA. Oh well…C’est la vie… I think a lot of my taste preferences had already been developed but I have to give RP/WA credit for prodding me to take out a loan to buy '82 Bordeauxs en primeur…not many of my “investments” have turned out as well! [big_boss.gif] Luckily, I am still in the process of “liquidating” this asset [rofl.gif] with friends and family.

Cheers!
Marshall [cheers.gif]

23

As I’ve mentioned in some of my posts, I grew up drinking wine because my father was into it for as long as I can remember. He’d start letting us have a small glass with dinner (when we actually had dinner with him, as a young lawyer then, he was out of town a lot and would usually come home late) when we reach 9 years of age.

Being from the 3rd World Southeast Asia, I only became aware of Robert Parker sometime in '99 when I started participating in a consumer-based US website. I, however, had been buying my own wines since I got married and moved out of my father’s house in January '92. Before that, all the wines I’d drink were from my father.

I do recall vividly the difference of the Chianti, Burgundy, Bdx and CdP (I recall my father would buy Beaucastel) from way back when I ws growing up. They didn’t taste/feel like hot, thick berry/vanilla milkshakes/compote.

N

24

Started out with the typical teenage plonk like Bali Hai, Key Largo, Boones Farm etc. Had a house at the Jersey shore and the girls started calling me Aldo for Aldo Cella, I Actually dressed up as Aldo for Halloween while at Penn Stes and had two costumed Playboy bunnies as props and al the girls would come up to me chiming Aldo, Aldo. Bought wines like Inglenook Navalle to up the standard to impress dates. Then in 83 I went to St. Thomas on vacation and decided to buy some wine as a gift for my brother and picked some French white I had never heard of a Puilgny-Montrachet. I got home and I opened this book called the Wines and Vineyards of France by Alexis Lichine and read the entry on the wine. I opened the wine that night. My brother never saw a drop and have been hooked ever since.

25

Now that we have several thousand more members…BUMP!

26

I started getting interested in wine in the mid 1970s through my father who was a wine retailer. I learned a good bit about wine through him and about certain wines to buy and not buy. But then I finished law school and came to DC in 1980. Dad sold the store and retired in 1981. At that time, the world of wine was starting to change. New California wineries were coming around almost daily. Burgundy negociants started to be replaced by growers I had never heard of. The wine writing was awful. There was this magazine from a wine group called Les Amis du Vins. It was awful. Other wine magazines ranged from mediocre to awful. I wanted to learn more about wine and there seemed nowhere to do so. Then, a friend learned about this magazine called the Wine Advocate. It was much better than anything else out there. From the start, I did not always agree with every rating in the newsletter. For example, Parker hated 1966 and 1970 Leoville Poyferre, which I liked a lot. But I learned a lot from the newsletter and it helped guide me to find new producers. It got me to buy 1982 Bordeaux, one of the greatest wine bargains of all time.

However, it did not provide everything I needed. There was little or no coverage of German wines, which I loved. There were a couple of good stores here with German wines (like Morris Miller and later Eagle wines). But then I saw an interesting ad for German wines at a store called Rex. I had heard of Rex, but had never been there and knew nothing about it. I stopped by one night on the way home from work and started talking to a thin guy who talked real fast named David Schildknecht. David was the second big influence on my palate, after my father (who used to buy wines from David when he came up to visit).

I relied on Parker some on Bordeaux and California wines and on David and myself more on Burgundy and German wines (through David I came to meet people like Terry Theise and Bobby Kacher).

But, through the 1980s, Parker made a lot of good calls. He called 1982 Bordeaux, he called 1990 Bordeaux over 1989. He called out a lot of producers in Europe and California for making mediocre wines. If you go back to that time period, he was spot on with a lot of wine regions (I don’t think he ever got Germany and was hit or miss with Burgundy).

It was later that Parker really started rating fruit bombs highly. I don’t know that these wines were really there in the same way in the 1980s, but over time Parker became less and less reliable to me. It was not that he didn’t rate more elegant well-made wines well, it was more that it was hard to tell these wines from the junk he also rated highly. Probably started happening more in the later 1990s to around 2000.

I think when he started Robert Parker was a major positive who revolutionized wine writing. Prior to Parker, there were an awful lot of mediocre wine that nobody criticized because the property had a high status. He really was the first one to call a poor wine a poor wine. Everything in the wine business was not wonderful before Parker. Roberto and the other older farts are remembering with rose colored glasses. Parker did a lot of good.

But, over time, people started making wines in a style just to get high points and he never really got that. He became an advocate for big wines with no elegance. It is a shame, because his writings helped really talented importers like Terry Theise, Kermit Lynch, Bobby Kacher, Peter Weygandt, etc., get established in the market. But along the way, he got lost. It is a shame.

27

“Roberto and the other older farts are remembering with rose colored glasses.”

If so it’s because I LIVED in Franconia, Germany through most of the mid 70’s including the amazing 1976 vintage then got to work in one of the best cellars in the country (at the time) and learn from folks who had been serious about wine since the 40’s. We tasted everything and made our own decisions.

My point with this thread is that there are many folks who just don’t BELIEVE that you could buy any of dozens of CNDP labels, that we managed to “discover” wineries like Stony Hill or Matanzas Creek on our own or that Krug and Salon were ALREADY famous (and for being good!) when I started in the biz in the early '80s…

28

I should have made clear that when I was discussing “old farts” I am clearly in that group. Or, possibly, that was made clear by my chronology.

29

Has that changed?

Remember, the people that follow Robert Parker slavishly (different from people who read the WA and make their own decisions) are not likely to be people who in the 70s tasted everything and made their own decisions. They are more likely to be people who bought wine based on reputation, recommendations of friends or fancy advertising.

30

I’m a little too young to be “pre-Parker” but my exposure to wine was before my exposure to Parker. This came sometime around 1990 on a trip with my college French class I tasted a CdP, and it was one of those moments when I thought, “yes this is what wine should taste like…” When I got home I read Wines of the Rhone by John Livingstone-Learmonth and that began my journey. Back then, the region was awash in good vintages, most CdP cost $15-$25, Beaucastel was $30, and the only real luxury price was Rayas closer to $60. A Guigal B&B was $35-40.

My first exposure to Parker was a few years later, probably '94-ish, when he first published Wines of the Rhone Valley. This was a great resource for me, but I was quickly getting the impression that this little known and underpriced region was catching up in notoriety and in price. I don’t know if I can blame Parker for that, or even if it’s a bad thing, but many wines that used to be everyday wines for me are now rare splurges.

My other entry into wine was a bit more embarrassing, when I met the lady who’s now my wife, to play catch-up with me in wine knowledge, she bought a copy of Wine for Dummies. This book had some decent nuggets, one of which was a “10 wines to try before you die” list, which allocated no less than 20% of its list to one Ridge and one Ravenswood. These were simple enough to find, and it started our love of California wines and Zin in particular.

Nowadays, living in Northern California, I value more than anything getting out, meeting and talking to wine makers, and tasting their wines. For those not living in wine country, I can see how a good retailer can make a decent hand substitute for this, even offering a broader experience.

In the age of the internet, when so much is bought online and the major sales pitch is nothing but a pro tasting score, often without even a note, I can see how this can lead to homogenization around a couple influential palettes. This maybe makes the ParkerPoints® more detrimental now, since the publications are no longer the gateway to planning a trip to a retailer or to wine country, but instead the beginning and end of many people’s interaction before buying a wine.

31

Ah, the olden days. When I was in the business, wine criticism in the US was primarily Robert Finigan, Bob Morrisey (and his upstart tabloid, the Wine Spectator) and Connoisseur’s Guide to Californian Wine. Very few of our clients were familiar with European wines beyond the “names” and fads that swept the nation (Piesporter Goldtropfchen anyone?) which made our job very interesting and, at time, quite frustrating.