Worth Reading (and a chuckle too): W.R. Tish's Hall of Shame
The Ratings Game has devolved to the point where there are now only two functional wine scores: 90 or not. People are more informed than ever, and wines are more plentiful and better-made than ever—rendering ratings high and low more useless than ever. But still, the numbers keep multiplying... like Energizer bunnies without birth control.
Wine writer W.R. Tish combines both humor and wine knowledge, a rarity in the wine industry. Taking time with his site both entertains and educates. Obviously I more than agree with his take on the 100 point scale. This is, after all, a points-free zone.
Chicken Little
All it takes are gray skies and a little more rain than usual and the wine press panics. Taking the Chicken Little approach to winegrowing, the sky-is-falling stories soon start to appear. Perhaps this is understandable as bad news sells better than good. Thankfully, the winegrowers themselves have much cooler heads. Cooler heads like Adelsheim’s excellent winemaker David Paige in the article below:
Wines & Vines - News Headlines - Northwest Vineyards Off to a Cool Start
David Paige notes, “We’re not at the point where anybody should be declaring disaster,” he said. “If we do our jobs, we are going to be absolutely fine. And if we get all the wrong weather, we’ll probably still be fine—as long as we’re on top of it.”
The wine press seems to still operate with a 70’s mentality, which is the last time a major wine region suffered vintages that produced commercially unsalable wine like Barolo and Bordeaux in 1972. The fact is that enology and viticulture have advanced so far since those days that vintages like that will not occur again. Every year producers can make at the minimum good wines. The only question vintage offers any more is how hard they’ll have to work and how good the wines will be.
For great reds today, the only rating necessary is if they’re ready to drink young or not. It’s quite nice of Mother Nature to mix vintages that need aging with those ready to drink young.
Natural Spoofulation
The passionate Alice Feiring and her new book, The Battle for Wine and Love, have fanned the flames of the natural winemaking debate. In particular she has bruised the feelings of the California wine industry, to which she has not been very complimentary. This has resulted in some lively back and forth on the side of the Californians in The Los Angeles Times, hardly a surprising forum for the pro-California view. I applaud Alice’s spirited attack on industrial wines and support of wines with personality and a sense of place. Her intensity has helped keep the debate a debate.
Extreme positions help sell books and it looks like Alice has done a good job in riling up the Californians and keeping her book in the headlines. I’m sure if the truth came out Alice, like me, has a long list of California wines she loves.
It’s becoming the spoofulators vs. the natural movement and the main spoofulators seem to be in California. Yet this raises the question of what’s really natural or not and at what point the line is crossed from one to the other. It’s not as clear as it may seem. At some point it is just as bad to do too little to the wine as it is to do too much. Bad wine is bad wine, natural or not.
Let’s take a look at the revered (I agree) wines of Josko Gravner in northeastern Italy on the border with Slovenia. Gravner ferments and ages his white wines on the skins and seeds for six or seven months in terra cotta amphorae coated with beeswax. This has a somewhat dramatic (to say the least) impact on the flavor and color of his wines. Is this natural winemaking or a kind of natural spoofulation? The wines of Gravner are extreme wines manipulated to that style by the hand of the winemaker. Are the techniques of Clark Smith more intrusive than this? I’m not sure this is a question that has been answered.
There are a few buzzwords out there that seem to define the natural wine forces: biodynamic, indigenous yeasts, little or no sulfur and never, never any machines. Yet there are a whole array of interventions other than these that winemakers impose on their wines either because they dream of crafting great art like Gravner or because they are commercial winemakers that must put out a good tasting stable wine year-after-year to keep their jobs. It seems a bit preposterous to return to primitive methods of winemaking that more-often-than-not have the potential to produce faulted wines. Not all progress is inherently bad and any good winemaker will do everything needed to improve their wines. Many winemakers resolve this conflict between their desire to be part of the natural movement and the realities of putting better wine in the bottle by forgetting to talk about certain things when they talk to the press.
Great wines are made, they don’t just happen. That’s why they call them winemakers. There is an incredible array of tools and knowledge available to today’s winemakers. To not make use of any of these tools and techniques does not make any sense. However, what you do with these many new tools is all important. You can’t make wine without manipulation, but without a doubt you can’t make great wine with with over-manipulation. I believe in terroir. I have tasted it in wines way to often to have any doubt. As long as a winemakers manipulations are designed to enhance that terroir I don’t have any problems with them.
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Your Government is Protecting you: First Al-Qaeda and now Brunello
You can feel safer in your bed tonight knowing that the United States government is protecting you from another danger. That new evil is, of course, Brunello di Montalcino that might have a bit of cabernet or merlot adulterating the sangiovese grosso. These are the same consumer protectors that brought you the 75% rule for American varietal wines, which requires that the stated variety make up at least three quarters of the named wine. So while it’s fine for an American producer of pinot noir to blend in 25% syrah or anything else the missteps of a few producers in Brunello will bring down the wrath of the TTB on all producers.
It’s great to know that our government is always on the watch.
US threatens to block all Brunello imports - decanter.com
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A Humble Critic
Robinson's comment, "We must always remember that we are parasites on the business of winemaking" should be in the back of every critics mind. Considering Robinson's status as one of the most influential wine writers in the world this is an striking statement that only adds to her already substantial and well earned respect within the wine trade.
Critics should be guides, not gurus.
See the Decanter article at the link below.
Jancis Robinson: critics should show more humility - decanter.com - the route to all good wine
The Rise and Fall of The Wine Advocate
I’m beginning to think it’s time to let the anti-Parker tirades fade into the past, just as his dominating influence is starting to do. It is clear that Parkerism has reached its zenith and is on the decline. In fact, this recent spate of Parker bashing books are coming a little too late as the natural rise and fall pattern of something like The Wine Advocate was already in place and I think these books are having little impact and seem more like piling on than muckraking. I can think of few less productive uses of my time these days than reading a book about Robert Parker’s sins. The Wine Advocate that everyone rails against no longer exists as Parker has brought in a whole staff of writers all of whom have their own convictions, palates and style. Things have changed not only at The Wine Advocate, but in the wine world as a whole, where the so called “Parkerization” of wine style is also something that is clearly going out of fashion. While it won’t disappear overnight, you can’t miss the growing interest in smaller production wines that express distinct personalities. It is also clear that there is a strong and growing consumer movement building for wines with more moderate alcohol levels. I think its time to let Parker and his Wine Advocate ride off into the sunset on its own and move our focus back to wine instead of personality. Concerning these realities, I think we can even spend some time considering all the good things that Robert Parker has done for the wine industry and consumers during his reign.
While it’s time for all of us to mellow out about Parker and his now declining influence, I think it’s also time for Parker himself to mellow out and assume the well deserved role of elder statesman rather than continuing the vitriolic outbursts on his forum, one of which had this result: Parker fined for defamation - decanter.com - the route to all good wine. Such outbursts do far more to hurt his image than any book has done.
Anyone who is upset about the the current direction of winemaking and wants to change things would better use their time reading about wine rather than reading about Parker. Robert Parker is, as they say, history.
Debating Points: Spoofulation
I find George Will particularly irritating. The conservative columnist and television commentator is just too smart and well-spoken. All too often in face-to-face debates he shreds the argument of the liberal commentator across the table from him with his swifter wit and broader knowledge. It ticks me off no end.
In the debate about so called “natural” winemaking we have the same situation. Clark Smith, winemaker, super-consultant and king of spoofulated wines as the owner of Vinovation, is becoming as irritating to me as Will and for the same reasons. Smith, who makes his own wines besides consulting and “correcting” wines for hundreds of wineries, just has too much knowledge and experience for it to be a fair fight when it comes to debating winemaking ethics with people who have never made wines themselves. All to often these people are known as wine writers. It does surprise me how many writers who have don’t have enology degrees and whose experience working harvests is more akin to adventure vacations than real winemaking come to consider themselves winemaking experts. After all, does a trip to a dude ranch make you a cowboy?
Smith uses his superior knowledge and experience to effectively dismantle the “natural” winemaking debating team’s positions (which I mostly agree with) as he did in a recent article published on Appellation America’s website called Spoofulated or Artisanal, which is well worth reading. Spoofulated, for those unfamiliar with the term that debuted on the Wine Therapy Forum and became part of wine lingo, refers to manipulated wines, which are often made in a style that appeals to Robert Parker and The Wine Spectator. It is a word used as an insult by those seeking a more terroir-driven winemaking experience as spoofulated wines all-to-often taste more-or-less the same.
Is spoofulation always evil? I don’t think so. Commercial wines, which are produced for consumers not seeking nuance or complexity, but just a “winey” tasting beverage are better wines than ever due to these techniques. For all to long these inexpensive wines produced in huge quantities were thin and faulted. However, now those seeking nothing more can easily buy clean, fruity wines that neither require nor invite thought or contemplation. It is a fact of the market that the vast majority of consumers are perfectly satisfied with such wines and want nothing more. Clark Smith and his methods are a positive boon to such consumers.
It’s when wines pretend to more lofty goals that Clark Smith and I part company. I’ll draw an arbitrary line at the $10 a bottle point. That’s starting to get expensive and I think the consumer has a right to expect that wines with different labels will actually be different wines. The main problem with spoofulated wines is that they all taste the same. The differences get manipulated out as the wine is more-and-more manipulated. The fact that there are so many expensive New World wines that exhibit the bright simple ripe flavors of the commercial wines mentioned above is a real problem that is starting to destroy the reputation of places like the Napa Valley. Consumers that are willing to spend a significant amount of money for these wines are starting to realize how boring they are.
On the other end of the argument are writers who are “natural” wine fundamentalists who seem to believe the high point in winemaking knowledge was achieved by the Romans and any technique or knowledge achieved after Nero are unnatural manipulations that destroy a wines terroir. Of course such extremists only display their limited winemaking knowledge and a lack of sophistication as they (instead of the wines) are manipulated by winemakers who tell them only what they want to hear. While there are many winemakers who believe in and practice minimalist, natural winemaking, there are few to none willing to let several tons of fruit in a fermenter with problems become garbage without taking actions that don’t always meet these ideals. These are stories that journalists are unlikely to hear or understand if they did. Contrary to some writers opinions, winemakers sometimes actually have to make wine.
Spoofulators like Clark Smith and biodynamic guru Nicolas Joly actually have more in common than partisans on either side of the debate understand. Both are passionate, brilliant winemakers who are driven to pursue their vision of what makes a wine great. To make a truly great wine you need to ignore the ranting of journalists and the whims of consumers and make the wine you believe in. This is something that winemakers like Smith and Joly share.
As always, those that oversimplify issues are usually blinded to the finer points of the debate.
The Erudite Need Not Apply
Those that follow the writings of Jeremy Parzen on his blog Do Bianchi appreciate his erudite posts, which cover a range artistic topics ranging from food, to wine, to music and literature. Parzen is one of the most educated and thoughtful food and wine writers on the Internet and reading his blog always makes you examine your own thoughts on the topic. He makes you think and teaches in the process. I learn something new from each of his posts.
Recently Parzen applied to participate on the eRobertParker.com Forum. It’s hard to imagine someone who could contribute more about Italian wine, food and culture to a forum. However, Mark Squires, moderator of Mr. Parker’s Forum decided to decline Parzen’s application for membership. Apparently brilliant, well educated people who can write are not what they’re looking for over at the eRobertParker.com Forum. What strikes me particularly strange about this is that Wine Advocate writers Robert Parker, Antonio Galloni, Neal Martin, Jay Miller and David Schildknecht are all thoughtful, well educated people who would certainly appreciate not only Parzen’s blog, but his contributions to their Forum. Apparently Mr. Squires does not work on the same level as the Wine Advocate’s star reviewers.
The scuttlebutt around the Internet is that Parzen was denied membership to the eRobertParker.com Forum due to his connections to two bloggers already banned from that Forum: Alice Feiring and Lyle Fass, who are both writers that I enjoy, respect and follow regularly. Yet Parzen’s posts are without the strident certainty of Alice or the rage against-the-machine character of Lyle and it is hard to understand why he would be banned. I guess guilt by association is good enough for Squires as it is inconceivable that he actually read any of Parzen’s work and still banned him.
I think most wine lovers applaud Mr. Parker’s additions of such knowledgeable writers and reviewers as Galloni, Martin, Miller and Schildknecht to The Wine Advocate. Like Parker himself, you can agree or disagree with these writers, but their consistency of palate makes their ratings a valid reference point. It is unfortunate that the bannings and censorship at the eRobertParker.com Forum are detracting from the real improvements in The Wine Advocate itself.
Perhaps it’s time to considering upgrading more than the forum software.
Pointless Beauty
Big Pinot
I never got the big pinot thing. Happily, it seems now that the pendulum is swinging the other way, best of all, it's back to my side. My biggest complaint about the point-driven fad for big pinot is that they really had no reason to exist. If you wanted a big wine there were varieties out there that could handle the job with more elan. If you want big drink syrah or zinfandel, which excel at the task, not super-charged pinot that is barely holding itself together as a wine.
Oddly enough I seem to have a new teammate in this struggle against goopy pinot noir. The odd part is that it is winemaker Brian Loring, the "poster boy" of big pinot. On a recent thread on Wine Therapy, winemaker Loring makes the following statement, "While I was the poster boy for "the darker side" of Pinot Noir... I'm happier now making wines that are in the mid 14s (alcohol) and have enough acid to live at least 3 or 4 years in bottle. I'm done with the "dry port" style... that just turns to prune juice after 3 years."
I applaud Brian for his guts and honesty. This is an almost unbelievable statement for a winemaker to make these days and only someone of great passion would take the risk. I can't wait to try some of his new wines.
While this is a testament to Brian's integrity and devotion to winemaking, it is a strong indictment against those wine writers who gave 90+ score-after-score to wines, which in Brian's own words, "that just turns to prune juice after 3 years". I can't fault Brian for this as he was doing what he truly believed in and when he found it was the wrong path changed directions. As in all art, not everything works. However, the so called expert critics should have known better. Once again reviews provided by "sixty second tasters" fail the consumer.
With all varieties there will be excellent wines made that range from robust to delicate. However, wines that are over-the-top should be easily recognized by any critic worth following.
The 60 Second Taster
I’ve now been a wine professional for over thirty years. Before I got in the wine making side of the business I was a wine distributor for almost twenty years. The low point of that experience was more-often-than-not the presentations to retailers. You’d take samples of wines from small estates, where the producers sweated every day over their vines and wines passionately trying to make the best wines they could, and present them to the buyers. Often you were in some seedy back room and the resident wine expert would rapidly blow through the samples making instant pronouncements on the life’s work of others and then subject you to enduring their pontification on the qualities of each wine. Sometimes they would have cheap Libby glasses, but usually they would make their judgments out of plastic cups. You would often have to wait in line for the privilege presenting wines to these “connoisseurs”. Perhaps in their defense it should be noted that they worked brutally long hours for very little pay and this probably forced them into such foul moods and the need to exert whatever power and humiliation they could over sales people and the samples of their poor producers. The best account of this horror is the now famous The Three-Tier Schnook System by Joe Dressner.
Fortunately I have not had to be exposed to such a situation in years, but today something brought that feeling chillingly back to me. I finally saw my first episode of Wine Library TV. There before my eyes was that retailer of my past, only with a Riedel glass instead of a plastic cup. That, at least, is a little progress. I had tried to avoid watching his programs after first seeing him in a horribly embarrassing segment on the Conan O’ Brien Show, but I kept getting so many hits to this site from a link that someone had placed to one of my posts that I had to check it out. That was a mistake as I should have followed my instincts and stayed away, but like someone passing a car wreck I could not avert my eyes.
Under cover of supposedly witty banter, Gary Vaynerchuk with a minute or less thought tells you all you need to know about the wine he is tasting. Not only that, but he actually gives you points so you can have an exact reference to how a wine tastes and can rank it among other wine choices. Well actually he only gives you an accurate reference point if you only drink a wine for sixty seconds before moving on to the next bottle. Once again someone is gaining influence by rating wines in a situation that has nothing to do with how we actually drink them. Many writers over the years have complained that Robert Parker’s method of tasting sometimes hundreds of wines in very short periods, often giving wines scores after only seconds, did not allow for wines of elegance to show their true character, while big alcoholic wines that were not very good to drink full glasses of stood out under the onslaught he put his palate through. Lately we have all been hoping that the explosion of wine blogs would bring so many voices to the consumer that the monochromatic recommendations of someone like Robert Parker would never again dominate the market. The apparent popularity of Wine Library TV once again dashes our hopes as yet again we have someone pumping out casual opinions as calibrated pointy facts after only a few seconds of consideration. Anyone who has tasted a really memorable wine remembers how the wine evolved and developed as you drank it and how the symbiosis of wine and food expanded the experience to a new plane. An experience taking something more than a minute. The method of tasting on Wine Library TV ignores this most alluring facet of wine.
I’ll admit that my dislike of these programs is probably partially generational as I don’t find him funny, just hyper and trying too hard to be cool. However, what bothers me most of all is the lightness which people like Mr. Vaynerchuk take someone else’s’ life’s work. If you define a wine after only a few tastes you will make a lot of mistakes. It seems irresponsible to turn such shallow experience into recommendations that will impact what people will buy. It should be remembered that Wine Library TV is a product that Mr. Vaynerchuk is selling and that the attitudes that he takes are more about selling his product than accurately reviewing wines. Just as The Wine Spectator is not about selling wines, but about selling magazines, Wine Library TV is about getting hits, not about wine. Such advise should be taken with caution.
The Internet’s most passionate wine programming? How sad.
Merlove - A movie about Merlot Wine
Sideways was a strange movie. I’ll admit to liking it, but am still amazed by the impact it had on wine consumption considering that both lead characters were big time losers. The shot it gave to pinot noir sales is already legendary in the trade. Yet, what probably stood out to most people was Miles’ tirade, “I’m not drinking any fucking merlot!” While I thought that a bit extreme, especially as beautiful women were involved, it highlighted the fact that merlot had come to represent the most vacuous aspects of drinking wine. My amazement never seemed to go away no matter how many times I heard someone walk up to a bar and order a glass of merlot without any thought to who made it or where it might be from. I guess it’s understandable as merlot and chardonnay had become the burgundy and chablis of the previous generation: generic house wines that did not demand (nor recommend) closer examination.
Apparently to counterattack this assault on merlot, there is now a movie: Merlove - A movie about Merlot Wine
This seems a bit unnecessary, both commercially and artistically. What Sideways did for pinot noir was to increase the production of lower quality industrial pinot noir. What Sideways did for merlot was to hurt the sales of lower quality industrial merlot. It seems to me like merlot came out ahead in the bargain.
An Opulent Certification
In the Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow finally gets his brain by getting a piece of paper he can frame and put on the wall. While the Scarecrow had to prove his intelligence to get his paper, there are other documents that people hang on their walls that prove exactly the opposite. After all, there is that old saying that a fool is born every minute.Now you too can prove to your friends that you are a bonafide wine expert by getting your very own piece of paper to hang on the wall. For a mere $195 you can get certificates ready for framing from The Parker & Zraly Wine Certification Program, which you can check out at this link: Wine Certification Program.
Having to hang such a document on your wall to prove you’re an expert proves something else. Taking that $195 and investing it in a few books and, most importantly, more wine to taste is a far better investment. There is also the reality that these days there is a vast amount of information available online for free. If you really need something to put on the wall, you also can just print one up on your own.
Next time you wander into someone’s office or house and see one of these certificates, the refrain, “If I only had a brain” should come into your head.
Demon Alcohol
“If you taste a wine and it seems to be balanced, the alcohol content shouldn’t matter,” writes Laube. I could not agree more, but if someone thinks a dry wine, destined for the dinner table, that has 16.9% alcohol is balanced, I just have to question what their standards of taste are, one thing for sure, they do not mirror my own.
So in this case I will argue taste with Mr. Laube and fundamentally disagree. Balance in wine is not like a balance scale. It does not mean that if there is enough massive big fruit on one side of the scale that it will naturally balance the massive big alcohol on the other. Port is balanced because it has both fruit and sweetness to carry the alcohol, take the sweetness out of Port and you’ll have a raw, harsh wine. Keeping the scale in balance is not so simple and is not dependent on the wine alone, that is unless you believe a wine’s purpose is to be consumed with no accompaniment or, perhaps, only with other wines.
Ultimately it’s true, you can’t argue taste and if Mr. Laube loves the Martinelli Zinfandel at that alcohol level so be it. However, trying to convince the rest of us that such a wine is truly balanced seems to be taking things a bit far. Perhaps it’s understandable. Lord knows what I would write after drinking a wine with 16.9% alcohol.