What would you do?- Part 2

Another dilemma the Prince if Pinot faces:

“A winery submits one or more wines for review. I find one or more of the wines are of poor quality for any number of reasons and would have assigned the wines very low score(s). What would you do? I contact the winery and explain my findings and give them the option to request that the reviews not be published, a request the winery always answers in the affirmative.”

I actually think I would post the reviews without consulting the winery. Maybe that`s being too harsh and insensitive. This is why I pose the question to the board of what would you do?

I can’t imagine any winery not asking for the review to be pulled if the scores are low once asked. Duh!

Is the Prince of Pinot a wine maker? Or is he just a guy who likes free wine? If the former, I’d offer my services to help them out.

If the latter, I’d offer my publicity services to the winery. GaryV sold pallets of at least one wine he slammed - people were curious as to how it could be so bad in such clear ways. And if he doesn’t have enough notoriety to sell out their bad stuff, his review wouldn’t make much difference either.

If I was the winery or winemaker I’d ask if I could pay $800 to see what I could do to make things right.

If they paid me $100, I’d tell them to use rockstar hedonistic grapes that hung on the vine 2 weeks longer than usual so the brix got higher, resulting in a higher ABV after fermenting to complete dryness. Then I’d tell you to use 100% new oak, and you’d get 2 more points while saving them $700.

Why do I have deja vu?

Here’s where criticism gets ‘grey.’

If the reviewer can keep his own ‘likes’ out of the way to review a wine, then publish the negative review about the wines merits.

If it is simply a matter of the wine not being made in the style the review subjectively prefers, then don’t publish (and change professions.)

I think this dichotomy is what drives the pro-Parker, anti-Parker divide.

Again, an independent critic’s first responsibility is to the readers, not the winery. Unless the bottle is flawed and expected to differ from a sound bottle, as in your “part 1” post, the review should be published.

It sounds like your reviewer friend hasn’t really figured out the purpose of his reviews. If you want to be respected as a reviewer, you have to call them as you see them. No pulling punches/hiding bad reviews or you lose your credibility. Or at least list them as tasted with no recommendation.

If the idea is to publish only positive reviews in order to get free wine samples, that is not an independent reviewer. I pay no heed to those reviewers as they are not to be trusted.

Greg, I can certainly understand your comments. Personally, I do not recall a wine ever being slammed, but I obviously missed it in this case. In fact, I find he has very positive things to say and seems to represent the half full aspect of things in general. I have had problems with his scoring system as I find he tends to rate wines on a lower level. Im not a fan of scores anyway and only do so when its mandated by an event I attend where that is required.

I was introduced to Rusty by Burt Williams and have shared a few wines with him and had limited discussions at the Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival in years past as well as email communication. I like him personally and I like his informative reviews of wines, producers and events which are mostly for OR and CA. To my knowledge, he has not made wine, but that could be wrong. IMHO he certainly understands it and as far as I can tell, his reviews are based upon what he finds and are offered with sincerity. His palate has been right on for me and I`ve made some good buying decisions on unfamiliar wines as a result.

I posted the 2 threads thinking the dilemma he has faced as a wine reviewer would be of interest to not only those who review wines, but to those ITB that send out wines for review. I took his expression of these issues to come from a genuine place of concern and wanting to do the right thing.

Great comments Anton. Its tricky to review wines objectively. I attempt to keep this in mind when I write up wines, but still insert my favs on the night and of course, thats based upon may subjective palate preferences.

David, I actually believe Rusty has figured out his purpose for reviewing wine and merely was citing some of the issues he`s faced with for others to ponder which is why I posted a couple. IMHO, his TNs are written up as he sees them and as stated above, they have been helpful to me for making during decisions as I have found my palate to be in pretty close harmony with his.

This reminds me of the Aussie show scene, where the large companies could submit their wines to all of the shows, in the belief that they’d pick up a few silvers, maybe a gold or two, perhaps even a trophy. The wine would be released to the public proudly proclaiming “2 gold medals and 4 silver medals”, yet it also got 7 bronzes, and 15 nothings which are easy not to mention.

If a winery submits a wine for review and the critic tastes it, unless it’s clearly faulty (many send a backup bottle, others will supply a replacement on request), then any critic with credibility should publish the tasting note (and score). If the winery doesn’t think that sounds like their wine, by all means send another bottle in. The first tasting note remains, but if the critic has a very different view from the 2nd bottle, then that is also published and the two notes cross-referenced.

If that’s a problem for the winemaker, then they really shouldn’t be sending their wines for review.

Thanks Blake. I misinterpreted this as a request for advice rather than a thought experiment. Apologies if my response seemed critical. Good topic in either case.

I understand David. I did not make it perfectly clear until I qualified the reason for the post later on. Always appreciate your input.

Does this mean “all the reviews will not be published” or “the bad reviews will not be published?”

Anyway, I’m not sure the above matters much. To me the original question is just revealing his conflict of interest. My interpretation is that he’s relying on free wine to review and he knows that bad reviews will shut off the flow of wine. The only way to really be independent is to procure the wine for himself. Then if he receives unsolicited wine for review, he could contact the winery before tasting the wine and say this: “If you would like to submit wine for review, I will pay your regular price for the wine, and I will decide what to publish. Do you agree to these terms?” If they agree he can independently review, and if they don’t he sends the wine back or disposes of it without reviewing.

BTW if this isn’t feasible for him financially, then he could just do it whatever way works and disclose how he does it. If he wants to let wineries opt out of bad reviews, just state clearly that this is what he’s doing, and don’t make any pretense of being a fully independent critic. I expect most readers would appreciate the transparency.

It’s impossible to review wines objectively. Claiming preferences are merely linear is folly. There are different appeals in wine for different people, and an element that triggers a rare elation in one person or utter revulsion in another can be a single compound, out of thousands that can potentially be present.
Some wines will find very large agreement, others can find very divergent views, where both the “love” and “hate” are triggered by the same thing, or be directly related to that same thing.

There are reviewers who seem to like everything, which is useless. There are no reviewers, no humans, who are physiologically capable of objectively reviewing all wines.

As a reminder: We all line up pretty well with Parker on traditionally ripe Bdx. It was some of his own long time readers who he went crazy on, coining the completely off-the-mark term AFWE for, because they didn’t agree with his delusions of being some objective god. The metrics he used well to assess one type of wine fool him on another. That doesn’t mean those wines are bad, they just have a narrower appeal, and often offer greater pleasure to that subset of consumers. To him, his standards didn’t seem to have changed.

That’s a long running lower path here. There’s no shortage of wine competitions, and the results are highly random. In all my years, I don’t think I’ve seen anything beyond indifference from even the most novice customer when these homey wineries try to show off their medals (and showing anything below gold has a negative impact).

I really enjoy this conundrum.

There are definitely horses for courses.

The old Rolling Stone rule of thumb was, “Don’t send a Moody Blues fan the new Ornette Coleman record to review.”

Knowing one’s wheelhouse is important for a critic, as you mention with Parker. (As an AFWE-type, I don’t even really appreciate what he did to Bordeaux, but I get your jist!)

That’s not feasible for any critic financially.

As an example: When Parker pretended it was, making a big enough point of it, Ridge took him literally and stopped submitting. As the years went by, the chorus of his readers on his forum got louder and louder, but still no reviews. Not even for Monte Bello. A little deflection here and there, but no resultant reviews. At a crescendo, with a very active thread, some participants reached out to Ridge, who in turn invited him up to taste their current releases plus a vertical of the Monte Bellos he’d missed. He came. They’ve been submitting and getting reviewed since. Back to normal - how it works in the real word.

I know plenty of wineries who don’t submit. I don’t know of any who get reviewed without submitting.

I remember back when Parker was attacking his subscribers, leading some of them to cancel their subscriptions. The subscription numbers were published and they were shockingly low.

IMHO he should publish all scores regardless of high or low but … on the low scores (say anything below 85) he should explain WHY he gave it such a low score. This would allow readers to form their on opinions of the wine based on the difference between their palates and his. For example if the wine had the flavors he likes but was to earthy on the finish then he states as much and let his readers decide if they agree or not with his rating.

I have noticed on more than one occasion a wine getting say 88 pts from one source and 93 pts from another, so there is lots of wiggle room in ratings.

That is the truth of it Wes. It’s one of the few ‘freebies’ I’ll accept as a necessary practicality. A free bottle of wine to taste and comment on might perhaps sway a newly established blogger, but for anyone with a name already there, it’s a genuinely nominal thing. Even sending a bottle and a back-up bottle feels reasonable for those using cork still. If the first bottle is fine, then the backup going into the cellar, or gifted away is no great shakes.

At some point the freebies start to feel more of an ethical concern. ‘Educational’ trips to Portugal arranged by the Cork manufacturers used to be an obvious area where some wine writers utterly lost credibility with me, but there are plenty of jollies still on offer for a wine writer with a relaxed ethical position. Open declarations help mitigate this, but there are some wine writers I avoid these days due to them having a free and easy approach to free trips that would attract the attention of the (anti) financial crime staff in my industry.