Maybe in a backhanded way Parker is talking about the state of Bordeaux wines before he started writing about them. He has had a positive influence in wine quality in certain instances. Maybe he’s thinking that the AFWE crowd is regressing to pre-Parker Bordeaux, when wines could be weedy and thin and rusty and be called “terroir.”
I think he hasn’t been to a lot of tastings where all the wines are good but none of them have surmaturite. In his defense it’s possible he’s had more good superripe wines than he has had good wines that others would call just right. There are and were a lot of crappy Burgundies, and a young crappy Burgundy can taste a lot like a young very good Burgundy to the undereducated palate (a recent 2005 Angerville Taillepieds comes to mind, all tannin, unpleasant to drink – but it will one day be grand).
So he’s had to taste a lot of crap, and any wines that remind him of the crap he encountered in Bordeaux circa 1980, he disses. PTSD from crap French wines marketed as “terroir.”
The fact that he bowed out of Burgundy may show that he can’t make this distinction when it comes to pinot noir as well as he can when it comes to cabernet and Rhone varieties.
If I’m right, then he should have said, “I heard the same BS from French vignerons when I started writing and I called them out on it;” but I think it’s safer for him to diss American amateur writers than to diss French vignerons.
And I must respectfully totally disagree with your total disagreement! His content and wine politics are one thing, and I suspect that all of us can agree with some of the things that he says, so if you want him removed from the fringe on a content basis, done. (Feiring stays out there. Don’t even ask!) The quality of his writing is another thing entirely. He is also given to attention-seeking hyperbole that completely undercuts many of the points that he makes. Read a paragraph at random by, say, Mike Steinberger, or Jancis, or Hugh Johnson, or Ben Lewin, or Matt Kramer, or Ron Washam, The HoseMaster of Wine. I understand that one might not always agree with or value their content, and I even concede that Kramer has even been given to mailing in some of his Spectator pieces in recent years. However, all of those mentioned above have a command of the English language, the ability to write clearly and crisply to allow their points to be understood, and the book and journalism deals to prove it. Try to follow Bonne’s recent dog’s breakfast of an article on Riesling and tell me that it is great wine writing. Much of the content is right, from my point of view, but it is so badly assembled that one is tempted to stop reading after a paragraph or two. To be clear, this is not about his point of view. I am saying that he is a lousy writer, that’s all. I also understand that in the dumb-downed universe of 21st-century wine writing, I am probably one of 10 people who still gives a damn about quality of wine thinking and writing. So be it. I am writing this for the other 9, wherever they may be!
P.S. Bonne is a better writer than Parker. However, that bar is so low that even Twiggy could not limbo under it!
I need to take this rare opportunity to agree with you, Chris. The blueberry milkshake stuff can get just as over-the-top as Parker’s ranting, to the extent that it gets personal, rather than just a given poster’s condemnation of a particular wine or style. However, if you take a count, I think that you will find a high multiple of wine or style attacks for every post that damns the SQN drinker instead of the wine. And I see no harm in a “blueberry shake” thread that trashes wines and not people.
Two other points, however: first, I think that poking at an SQN (or equivalent) drinker for paying four figures for a bottle of the stuff in the secondary market, while still nobody’s business but the buyer’s, seems fair comment to me, as that goes to relative perceptions of value and quality, and second, it is not easy to separate criticism of Parker and the wines that he champions from the drinking habits of those who choose to follow him. Should one who thinks what Parker is doing these days is total BS and can offer a lot of convincing evidence of it (like most everything he writes lately!) draw the line at being critical of a fellow poster who defends Parker and drinks Parkerized wines? I think that your answer would certainly be “yes”, based upon principles of civility and political correctness. I make only the point that, in the heat of vigorous debate, the line between criticism of a wine and its drinker will be crossed, especially if the drinker is championing the views of a polarizing figure of any side of the debate…
+50. All the more ironic coming from a man whose reputation was almost exclusively made by pimping two French wines, Bordeaux and, to a much lesser extent, Chateauneuf-du-Pape (whatever influence that he has in California and, for a time, Italy and elsewhere having followed after his Bordeaux work created a faithful U.S.-based following for his thoughts on all wines). And he has the French medals to prove it.
I don’t know if either camp is on the skids, but each ought to be.
As I read the railing all I kept thinking is how much the writer values his hedonistic sensibilities and what little he has absorbed on the subject of wine, which is exactly how the so-called naturalists make me think. Good old absolutism at work.
I’d say that’s only a small minority of the people who criticize the wines also criticize the people who like them. I’ve certainly seen it but I think the occurrences stand out in the minds of the people who feel attacked by them so that they seem typical rather than rare (the same way Nathan Smyth’s rants cause the boards Burgundy lovers to say that people always come onto Burgundy threads and say they are all overpriced when it’s really just one person). I will certainly agree that personal criticism is inappropriate on either side but not that it is inappropriate to give ones honest opinion of a wine on a wine discussion board.
Opinions about wine aside, it’s sad to see that all of Parker’s success has not made him more secure.
At this point, his continuing sweaty, paranoid, bunker mentality rants from his personal hell are a little disturbing not because of what he has to say about wine…
And on another level, he comes across like a politician, sinking in the polls, continually trying to start a little controversy while firing up his dwindling base.
He’s cried wolf so many times, it’s boring.
He’s become a troll on his own message board.
In my opinion, it’s time to quit feeding the demon and just ignore him.
I keep score by the sure winners, John. There are a lot of them. I can afford the occasional loss of a point due to hyperbole, but unlike Parker, I know when I place my points at risk and do not care. I always think that works out better than not being able to write anything worth reading or discussing, which seems like an epidemic on wine boards sometimes…
His content and wine politics are one thing, and I suspect that all of us can agree with some of the things that he says, so if you want him removed from the fringe on a content basis, done. (Feiring stays out there. Don’t even ask!) The quality of his writing is another thing entirely. He is also given to attention-seeking hyperbole that completely undercuts many of the points that he makes. Read a paragraph at random by, say, Mike Steinberger, or Jancis, or Hugh Johnson, or Ben Lewin, or Matt Kramer, or Ron Washam, The HoseMaster of Wine. I understand that one might not always agree with or value their content, and I even concede that Kramer has even been given to mailing in some of his Spectator pieces in recent years. However, all of those mentioned above have a command of the English language, the ability to write clearly and crisply to allow their points to be understood, and the book and journalism deals to prove it. Try to follow Bonne’s recent dog’s breakfast of an article on Riesling and tell me that it is great wine writing. Much of the content is right, from my point of view, but it is so badly assembled that one is tempted to stop reading after a paragraph or two. To be clear, this is not about his point of view. I am saying that he is a lousy writer, that’s all. I also understand that in the dumb-downed universe of 21st-century wine writing, I am probably one of 10 people who still gives a damn about quality of wine thinking and writing. So be it. I am writing this for the other 9, wherever they may be! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
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