Tom Wark's blog on "Free Wine Is Good"

Tom initiated a healthy debate about accepting free samples and I raised the issue of “doctored” samples. He asked for further details yet my response is too long to fit Tom’s limits. So I’m posting it here simply for those of you interested to learn about various authors’ thoughts on these matters.

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Andrew Jeffords emphasized (The New France, under Bordeaux Flak, p 176): “The system, of course, is wide open to abuse. Samples can be coaxed, cosseted, and massaged into shape; no one superintends their authenticity.”

According to Thomas Pellechia (http://www.vinofictions.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;), “It’s been suspected by some for many years that a few producers would take advantage of the ability to manipulate the critics by sending to them a wine under one label for evaluation, but sending to the marketplace a different wine under the same label. Since the critics don’t check up on them, the chances are that a great numerical rating has helped move inferior product in the marketplace more than once. … Sniping aside, the point of this situation is that first, wine critics should compare what the producer provides for evaluation with what the importer brings into the U.S.–mostly, they don’t.”

Claassen’s comments get straight to the point (http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/pendock/2007/11/05/when-the-wine-in-wine-journalism-turns-to-vinegar/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
): “how much value can wine lovers attach to the ratings of wine publications and wine writers?” he asks when he receives so many examples of unethical wine judging and marketing. The one he presents is of a “blind” tasting at a restaurant on top of Table Mountain with a group of wine connoisseurs and writers judging bottles from which the brand labels had been removed - although the back labels were “conveniently” still visible.

In Purple Prose: The Wine Writers (“Anatomy of the Wine Trade” by Simon Loftus, pp. 159-160): “Wine writing, in particular, seems as much a plague as a profession; highly infectious and a sore trial to the world. … Far commoner are flowerly imprecisions, or dull repetitions of the same hackneyed formulae. Worst of all, perhaps, is agency prose, the cloying breathlessness of the copywriter. As the wine merchants woo the wine journalists these regrettably deathless phrases slip easily from advertisement to editorial. For most wine writing, however grand its pretensions, is really an extension of journalism. … A great many wine articles and not a few books are complied in a hurry by idle hacks who are content to meet their deadlines by subscribing their names to the glowing terms of the press release. The real authors of their columns are the PR departments of the large wine companies.”

Also worth seeking out are “Wine Scandal” by Fritz Hallgarten as well as “Wine Snobbery” by Andrew Barr.

A few telling historical excerpts from The Story Behind the Glory and Scandal of Bordeaux by Nicholas Faith (1978): “Cyrus Redding, probably the leading English wine-writer of the first half of the nineteenth century, commented that there were ‘many receipts extant’ for ‘manufacturing claret here’ as well as improving it. … But the biggest problem derived from the way wines were ‘treated’ for England, ‘to give the pure Bordeaux growths a resemblance to the wines of Portugal’. Redding noted that the Dutch, the Russians, the Prussians and the French themselves drank the better clarets ‘pure and unmixed … comparatively unadulterated with spirit’. But the processes required to satisfy the English palate were elaborate. Even before fermentation a very little brandy–probably not more than a couple of parts in a thousand–was mixed with the unfermented fresh grape juice–the ‘must’. Afterwards, more brandy (Redding says up to one-fifth of one per cent) and a great deal more Hermitage or Benicarlo were mixed in–and the additive had itself to be of a certain quality. A poor vintage in Hermitage in 1810 caused consternation in Bordeaux. This was called ‘working’ the wine to give it ‘body’ and thus a warmer and more intoxicating effect. To achieve the best results the process had to be carried out before the wines had been racked and fined [presumably by the Chartronais?]. Larger proportions could be added to the older clarets which were ‘nearly worn out’–had become thin and undrinkable, often because they had been left too long in the cask. … The Bordeaux merchants were well aware of the varied requirements of their customers. … Even so, the best ‘guarantee for fair dealing’ lay ‘in the position and respectability of the merchants’ under whose names the vast bulk of the wines were sold, and who verified the quality even of the ‘grands crus’. For the owners of the major chateaux were not averse to cheating–especially if they had contracted to sell their production for some years ahead by contracts which generally guaranteed them a price similar to that obtained by comparable wines.
… According to Redding, the keener growers were prepared to keep their wines for many years ‘to give them a superior title’ instead of selling it the first year according to custom. By this means an individual will get his wine changed from the fourth to the third class, which he had perhaps occupied before for many successive years. … Unfortunately for aspirant social climbers, the classification was frozen in 1855 in one of the most publicized and least understood events in Bordeaux’s history. The 1855 classification sprang from the innocent request to the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce by Prince Napolean, organizer of the Universal Exhibition to be held in Paris that year, for a comprehensive display of the wines of the Gironde, arranged by category. The Chamber, aware of the emotions engendered by the whole subject, sent back a list based on historic prices paid, with the wines in the different classes arranged in alphabetical order. But the Prince insisted on a ‘new’ classification; and he was the cousin of an emperor who took a keen interest in claret, and had actually stayed at Chateau Margaux, owned by the Marquis d’Aguado, a great friend of the Empress Eugenie. So the embarrassed Chamber handed the job over to the brokers’ ‘syndicat’–their federation. And the famous list was duly produced, giving information which, basically, was known to the whole of Bordeaux. The only difference was that the brokers did not rely entirely on price comparisons. They tasted the wines more or less carefully (though they were not helped in their job when Lafite provided only some immature wines, and Latour and Haut-Brion refused to submit any samples at all). Then they placed the wines in order of merit within the classes.”

For similar evidence about doctored Bordeaux wines, see also pp 239-241 of “The Wines of the Northern Rhone” by John Livingstone-Learmonth.

According to “Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation” by Amerine and Roessler (1983) concerning “Wine Quality”:
Pitfalls – Appreciation of the quality of a wine does not depend on its reputation, tradition, or price. This is all the more important to remember in a world in which the Madison Avenue huckster has made a fine art of touting just about anything as a superlative ‘quality’ product.
… The intelligent wine connoisseur must therefore have the sensory skill and aesthetic appreciation to be able to ignore with confidence both the ad agencies and the wine snobs. The latter would often have us believe that the expensive and the imported are automatically better, and that wines from certain vineyards, producers, or vintages are always, ipso facto, superior.
… SOME SHIBBOLETHS THAT NEED TO BE QUESTIONED
…Famous vineyards, renowned vintages, and producers of great reputations did not usually acquire their prestige unearned. [This may not be true currently when Madison Avenue is so often involved.]
… What fools so many people is that the name and year on the label are no guarantee of quality. The practice of the Bordeaux chateaux in recent years [circa 1976?] in bottling wines of bad years as chateaux-bottled vintage wine is well known and deplorable, if not scandalous. Hanson (1982) documents similar practices in Burgundy.
… Advertising, snobbism, scarcity, local and state taxes, and the markup of the wine shop or restaurant also determine price. It is regrettable, but the markup on different wines is not uniform.
Greed and snobbism know no limits !
… Some famous vineyards, secure in the knowledge that they have an established market, often charge whatever the market will bear, even for wines of inferior quality. A well-known St. Emilion chateau got away with this deception for years [circa 1976?] ! This means that some famed wines are not worth the higher price if quality is the criterion for selection.
… ‘Pour bien deguster, il n’est que d’avoir de bons sens et du bon sens.’ (P. POUPON)."

Some of us thus remain doubtful that analogous manipulations and rip-offs have now been miraculously eradicated.

According to Anthony Hanson’s monograph titled Burgundy (2003, pp. 16, 180) under Changing Burgundy: “Twice yearly blind tastings could be organized, behind closed doors, at village level tasting like-with-like wines by growers of the appellation. The wines should be drawn by chance from bottled stocks, and tasted anonymously, the discussion to be open, with marks voiced by all present – the wines being identified only after the results had been handed out (no outsiders allowed in, of course). It would certainly be embarrassing for some, but isn’t that preferable to some consumers continuing to be ripped off, albeit much less often than in the past? … Given that private, internal controls do not work (any more than internal regulation of financial or insurance markets in London’s Square Mile succeeded in preventing inefficiency and fraud on massive scales) consumers and traders should become more publicly voluble. Writers can have some influence, but their position is not as strong as that of traders and consumers working together. Those growers selling Grands Crus at high prices when they taste no better than village wines need publicly deriding, from outside the region. The French cannot do it, they get accused of being unpatriotic. Foreigners, however, need not be so inhibited. Wine is meant to be fun after all, not a painful rip-off. Laughter may yet prove stronger than legislation.”

Caveat Emptor.

Great write up?

Bottle variation is still a well discussed issue. I’ve tasted wines, while reading either critic or non pro TNs, and wondered if we were drinking the same wine. I also remember in the not so distance past having a winery’s bottle # 0032 and bottle #3— of the same wine at an OffLine tasting. Both bottles were fine, but nowhere near the same wine. The blends were completely different.

Would adding Hermitage, or port, to the Bdx"s (other than the legality) in the past be any different to adding megaPurple today to achieve that tannic mouthfeel?

You seem to be prescient Gordon:

The Daily Beast" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hat tip to Mike Dildine, who provided this link in a thread he started today:

Producers fess up: Who's using "Mega-Purple"? - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;