Why is the level of fervor is uneven: old world versus new world palates...

WINE TALK
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a few disagreements on the bolded statements:

  1. I’m not entirely sure this is as true with the broad brush that you’re painting. Certainly look at the vitriol that can happen towards Barolo that sees a major style shift and the same can certainly be said in Burgundy when ownership changes or the younger generation changes things up drastically (see Pousse d’Or and also the prices that Gerard Potel wines go for).

  2. I mean, you say that there is less vitriol from long time bordeaux drinkers and then right away mention the major beef that invariably happens when there’s a change. So, it could well be argued that there are those shifts that happen and anger can emerge

  3. I would highly suggest you check out threads that focus in on Cambie wines and the vitriol that can arise around 2007 CdP and other super ripe vintages vs the older styles that were around for a long time.



    as far as a focus on cabernet and Pinot Noir, we just don’t have the amount of posters to generate say in-depth Rioja discussion on a weekly basis for the kind of statements to happen. Rioja has certainly seen a massive shift, but I don’t think there’s that much discussion on the region so it goes unnoticed on this board for the most part. But, this does happen with other old world regions for sure and I would be quite certain if say there was a major shift at a Chinon producer like Charles Joguet that you would see some bombs being dropped on that (still exists in bordeaux varietals, but you can catch my drift). There also has certainly been negative things said irt Brunello with more modern producers vs old-school producers. It’s just the threads that one pays attention to and whatnot.

43

I, too, notice the inequal derision noted by the OP. I believe the Old World crowd is generally snobbier and more condescending than is the New World crowd. I will never understand why some folks harang others for different wine preferences.

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how is it any different than a NW palate claiming that an old world wine tastes like brett a bunch? selective bias on your part maybe?

45

This is where you lose me, it’s just a douche statement. You’ve posted 8000 TN’s and don’t understand that people have different preferences?

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In a word, No.

We did an OR Pinot tasting last week, BLIND FORMAT, and one ringer, a well known Burg producer, was nothing but a New World in style: high ripeness, high extraction and lots of new oak. (Not that most of OR ones didn’t resemble their CA counterparts despite all the proclamations to the contrary, but that’s a different thread).

RO comes from French wine making techniques last time I checked. And whereas much new oak was not a normal in decades past, due to cost, now that wineries can afford more of it, with way more revenue coming in due demand from Asia, the style has changed. As did picking riper, at times much riper. Those alc numbers on Old World labels? Ignore them, feel free to send in bottle samples to labs for proper numbers, as some of us do when palate impressions do not correlate to labels/claims. One reason I take plenty a TN with a huge grain of salt, I see plenty of people rate “names” rather than what’s really inside a bottle. Pretty much any wine making technique one cares to name in “manipulating” wine has come from France, shame that so many refuse to accept nor understand this fact.

BLIND FORMAT, been doing that for the past 20+ years and highly recommend it. Very humbling more often than not. And extremely educational.

As to the OP’s take on notes, I fully agree, there is a definite step up in how “Old World palates” seem to express themselves, pretty much in a very condescending way most of the time.

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Because they may be bretty? Just a guess.

As a friend of mine once said to me after his visit to a famed cellar in France, “You wouldn’t set foot in that place it was so bad”.

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I’ll attempt a serious answer to the question posed.

Every internet message board I’ve seen has a zeitgeist, which is the prevailing / fashionable opinion on there. If you’re on a college football message board, it might be that the current offensive coordinator sucks and is the reason the team isn’t having more success. If you’re on a political one, it’s going to lean hard one way or the other. If you’re on a movie discussion site, it might be that indie and foreign movies are awesome and big studio movies all suck. On Wine Berserkers, it’s Old World > New World, traditional > modern, lean > ripe.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be dissenters, or that the dissenters don’t have an opportunity to express their views. But it does mean that it’s very easy and comfortable to express one view, and it’s tough sledding and may take a thick skin to express the other one.

As a result, one view will get expressed much more often than the other. The prevailing opinion can be given in blithe shorthand (like “goop,” “Parkerized” and “blueberry milkshake” on this board), and it will receive mostly high fives. The unfashionable opinion takes more work and more effort, other than for the poster here or there that just likes to poke the bear and get reactions. That, in turn, means you will get more and more of the dominant opinion, and less and less of the dissenting opinion, which will only increase the extent to which the former is the dominant opinion.

Interestingly, the dominant view is not necessarily the majority one. It may just be that one side’s argument is an easier one (e.g. far easier to criticize an offensive coordinator than to defend one), or that one side has more energy and intensity than the other (the people who think the coach sucks are passionate and intense about it, the ones who think he’s doing okay are not).

I don’t have any way of knowing, but there may well be more people who like new world and riper / more robust styled wines on WB than those who disdain them, or at least a lot more than you would think reading the board. But when one of them opens a Marcassin, Voerzio or Lascombes and enjoys it, he is much more likely to decide it isn’t worth the effort and the slings and arrows to post it on WB. Conversely, someone (maybe the same person) has a Gonon, Mascarello or Arnot Roberts and enjoys it, he’s far more likely to post about it, and to enjoy all the plaudits he’ll get. If you picture some WBer late evening after enjoying a wine and imagine his decision process about whether to go post a tasting note or not, it’s not hard to see how that goes some of the time.

As the internet goes, WB is probably in the 98th percentile in terms of being pretty tolerant of other people’s views and tastes, and in terms of having a reasonable diversity of opinion. I think being a real names board is a big factor in that, and then the fact that many of us have met others from the board in person, which increases respectfulness and collegiality. But I think what the OP describes is a real thing here, and those are my views on how it happens.

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I obviously don’t visit the “right” threads because I don’t see a ton of condescension and what I do see is usually in (apparent) jest. (And also seems to be pretty evenly distributed among new world/old world fans)

That may well be because I don’t open threads about the latest CA or Ore wines. They don’t really interest me and it is poor form and really a waste of my time just to stick my nose in the thread to say “your wines suck.” I know it happens sometimes but I honestly don’t see it often. I’ve seen more of it in this thread than any recent thread I can recall (again, evenly distributed). And no one behaves like that much in the champagne or bdx threads i am more likely to visit.

Maybe I am internetting wrong

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omg … read what I wrote, please.

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How is what any different? There is snobbery and condescension on both sides. I just see it emanating more from the OW side.

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[thumbs-up.gif] +1

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I consider myself to have an OW palate, but do agree that those who prefer OW tend to be more divisive in tasting notes, etc. That said, Twitter has taught me a whole lot about noise vacuums. I wouldn’t be too surprised if you hung out at a wine shop for a day, you’d see see the exact opposite. My S/O definitely prefers NW and I always find it pleasurable to be able to identify what she or others with different palates than mine would like.

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  1. Old world fans are more likely to be, well, old. And crotchety. New world fans are more chill. They don’t like the elegant stuff, but hey, whatever.

  2. High octane distilled jam is fundamentally an offense against nature. “Thin” wines are just not worth the effort, move on to the next wine.

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Has any body correlated old / new world palate with coke drinking? One data point, fwiw, I can’t stand coke.

54

Except you can’t have an honest discussion here without pointing out that the modernization of viticulture and vinification in bordeaux has dramatically altered the style of any number of offerings, just as it did in Napa. This effort to deny that fact is willful ignorance fed by efforts to lay down those young big ass pups for decades. The proof, though, is in the pudding just as it is in Napa. Compare the pick dates and ABV of Bordeaux from the 70s-90s to Bordeaux from 2000, or better yet, 2005 forward. While most classed bordeaux may hang onto cedar, shoe polish, and tobacco, they’re also denser, darker fruited, and richer in the mouth. It’s one reason, along with price, I think, that many “old schoolers” are pushing off vintages like 2014 now…a more classic profile.

But that’s not really different from Napa. You can look at 13.2% abv wines from 1987-1993. You can find 12.5% and 12.1% wines from the 60s and 70s, even in good vintages and famous wines like 1974 Mondavi Reserve. When you’re dealing with BDX nutters, though, you get a double whack of criticism for what I think is a fairly obvious reason. If you’re a bigtime bordeaux drinker, you’re mostly drinking wines that are 25-35 years old, right? That’s the “mature” sweet spot? 1985-1995 vintages fall into that range right now. Even if we expand it to like 1985-1998 that should about cover it. Everything else is drinking pretty young, I’d think. You’re drinking in the past. You’re not addressing modern v. modern. You’re addressing past practices while saying “style stays consistent.” It doesn’t. That’s not true. A 1970 Cos or even a 1985 Cos or even a 1996 Cos little in common with a 2005 Cos, let alone a 2009 or 2010 Cos. So the drinker is denying reality while drinking mature older wines. Drinker is then comparing that older style of bordeaux to a modern young vintage of Napa cab. Drinking Napa young means (i) modern style and (ii) already more fruit focused wine. The result is the antithesis of older bordeaux. Sweet fruit, higher alcohol, denser mouthfeel, lower acid, more prevalent oak. Thinks that aren’t uncommon in 2010 Bordeaux, a “vintage of the universal concept of time”, but that would be an atrocious surprise in a 1986 Margaux.

It really isn’t all that different from what takes place within Napa. I love using Forman as an example. Forman was a “classically styled” Napa cab, often coming in during the 80s and early 90s around 13% abv. It’s recent releases are 15.2% or so, but you’ll still hear some long-time Napa fans refer to Forman as “classically styled.” It just isn’t anymore, but it’s 1991 may be acceptable to a Bordeaux fan drinking a 1990 bdx. A 1974 Mondavi Reserve at 12.5% abv may appeal to old BDX drinkers who have a distaste for ripe fruit, and want autumn leaves, tobacco, and bracing acidity. At least we’re talking apples to apples in time and style. But even Napa fans who have been drinking 1991 Ridge or 1987 Dominus, or whatever may find a 2015 Dominus unrecognizable. A person drinking 2010 Cos might not find 2010 Dominus unrecognizable, though.

As for the opposite attack, as Alan Eden pointed out, you must have missed all the shots taken at Burgundy, how it is the worst QPR of all time, how it is pathetically inconsistent, how it is lean, tart, and unsatisfying for even $200 a bottle, and how one might have more success and pleasure walking through a mined field in the Democratic Republic of Congo than buying Burgs and actually hitting a dinger.

As for Northern Rhone, see attacks for Brett. As for Southern Rhone, well, there are threads and threads taking gargantuan shits on how southern rhone styles progressed from 1998 to 2007 and beyond, and how buyers went completely away from the zone for decades due to Parkerization and outrageous ABVs and glycerin loads.

55

Chris Seiber, great post.

KJohn, I mostly agree but I don’t think there is consensus among us Bordeaux nutters that we are drinking only in the past or that style is unchanged.

First, many of us old curmudgeons are also sampling younger Bordeaux that haven’t yet hit maturity. We are seeing changes in the young wines that have us questioning whether the recent versions are going to taste like the Bordeaux we’ve come to know and love when they hit 25-35.

Second, we’re not the first generation to complain that they just don’t make them like that any more. Francois will tell you that the traditional methods were mostly lost after 1961. Others point to 1982. Others point to the mid-90s or even more recent vintages as the beginning of the apocalypse. Winemaking is continually evolving, though the pace accelerated dramatically with the introduction of air travel and then email and the internet.

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Chris Seiber, great post.

Yep. [cheers.gif]

It strikes me as extremely cynical and condescending to assume people drink the wine they drink because they “learned they were supposed to.” Many people talk about their tastes changing over the years, and I’ve no reason to assume this isn’t based on well, their palates actually changing over the years. I don’t think it’s really all roads lead to Burgundy either, just changes in tastes over time, changes in winemaking within regions over time, and the desire to explore new things drive changes in drinking preferences.

Michael - I agree with all of that. But I also stand by my statement. Note that I didn’t say “everyone” who drinks xxx is such and such. But I’ve known people who did exactly what I said. Culinary school graduate, mostly drank beer, got into wine, a year or so later is bashing wines he’d never even tasted. Another person started out deciding to be a wine collector, asked around and settled on Burgundy. She had some money. So did a few people who only bought Bordeaux because those were the only “good” wines. But they’d really had very little to compare to and hadn’t tasted widely around the world.

It’s true that people’s tastes may change, wine making may change, etc. The Insignia example is a perfect case. Actually I can think of a few wines in Napa and in Bordeaux and in the Rhone that went through stylistic changes. But you’d have to have had those wines and known them. My reference was to a group of people who want to be “into” wine. There are consultants who actually help those people get the “best” wines, or “investment” wines. It’s a weird phenomenon to me.

57

I’ve said that many times, but, apparently, it isn’t convenient to hear. The natural wine movement started in France in reaction to what was being done, as the new norm, in France. It takes an extreme to spur an over-reaction.

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K-John:

I had a 2015 Dominus Napanook last week. It is unrecognizable as Dominus. My last Dominus Estate was 2008 and 2007. Also much different than the Dominus of yore.

I emailed you a pic tonight of a 1993 Dunn Howell Mountain that I popped tonight with Berserker MarcF. We also popped a 1986 La Dominique, 2002 d’Armailhac and a 2004 Giscours. The Dominus stole the show in this old world crowd. What surprised me, though, was circling back to the Dunn at the end of the night, three hours after opening, and it was indistinguishable to me from the Bordeaux. A seriously good wine. 13% ABV. WOTN.

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I think we’ve gotten to the heart of the problem.

[rofl.gif] [rofl.gif] neener

(We should all be using internetting as a verb!)

60

What a wonderful post.

I’ve had the temerity and to post alternative views (I don’t see the point in being the 27th person to say “I agree”) Not only have I been quickly shot down, but the tone has been downright rude. What’s the point in message boards if you can’t have a debate?

FWIW I like balanced, traditional Old World-style wine with some fruit, tannin, acid and unobtrusive secondary flavours even if they come from New World countries (like the US, South Africa and Australia.)