Help Me Understand A Wine Critic: William Kelley (The Wine Advocate)

The goal of this thread is to understand a critic’s palate and how to interpret their wine tasting notes. These are related, but not the same, questions.

Instagram @wgfkelley [lots of excellent content is available here!]
[u]Abbreviated bio from an older blog/website @ Robert Parker Wine Advocate
William Kelley, PhD, developed a love of wine while studying at Oxford, where he presided over the University’s prestigious Wine Circle for three years while completing a doctorate in history. In addition to tastings with many of the Old World’s greatest producers, he brought many of California’s most celebrated and exciting wineries to Oxford for the first time. Kelley had the unique privilege to cut his teeth as a taster on many of the great wines of Burgundy of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. After a stint covering Burgundy for Decanter magazine and working harvests in both California and the Côte d’Or, he made the happy move to The Wine Advocate in 2017. His first-hand experience making wine informs the way he writes about it. Today, he reviews the wines of Burgundy, Champagne, Madeira and English Sparkling Wine.

William is a frequent poster on this Board, so I expect him to jump in at some point. That said, I find William’s palate to align the most with mine. I think he particularly appreciates pure fruited, elegant wines with good structure, and maybe particularly appreciates a sappiness to wines and fine boned structure over other critics. He is not as primarily focused on concentration as perhaps other critics, which I appreciate (as this creates some sleeper wines that I love, and the prices remain reasonable as other reviewers will give them a low 90s score every year). and other reviewers will score them low 90s keeping demand low for me). Today, I am willing to blindly buy a WK 95, although I think he is more generous in certain up-and-coming regions versus Nuits where a 95 Nuits will be the better wine. Generally, I find my own CT scores to be 1-2 points below Williams. If I see William saying a wine has “tangy acid”, I think that means slightly higher acidity than I like in my wines.

Most importantly, I think William is an excellent communicator. I think he does not obfuscate reviews and is willing to answer questions directly. His clear communication gives me more confidence he knows his stuff, as my experience in life is those who can communicate clearly more often know their stuff than those who do not. Separate, but related, I appreciate how William has been making his own wines to better understand the last few vintages.

Lastly, I think William tries to be objective in his scoring, allowing for more variance than other reviewers. For some reviewers I don’t bother to see how they ranked the various producers from vintage to vintage as I pretty much know who will be in top. But for William, it was refreshing to see different hierarchies each year (for example in Echezeaux), where the most $$$ don’t always dominate the top of the list each year.

For now, William is the only critic I can see subscribing to year-in/year-out and I would follow him around different platforms. I hope to find others, and am definitely curious to hear how others perceive William’s palate or reviewing methodology.

he’s just great. ‘Nuff said.

For the relatively small number of wines that I’ve tried and compared to his notes, he’s been terrific.

William is a wealth of knowledge and an open book and incredibly genuine seeming person in his responses on board, in messages, and through social media. My favorite of today’s critics.

Also love these thread ideas!

His passion and knowledge are inspiring. I haven’t had enough of a comparison to judge whether my palate aligns with his, but even if they did not, I would still read and listen to him.

AGREED!

I find that he has an exceptional combination of knowledge, nuance, passion and writing and communication skills. I don’t agree with him on everything, but have great respect for his opinions and his ability to express his knowledge.

Dan Kravitz

/thread

Good dude. Very studied. He even posts random notes on CT outside of his professional duties. A valuable voice all around.

Agree with all of the above. Plus for a Brit he has quite a good command of the English language

Also dude makes wine. That tends to provide an extremely valuable perspective.

Who?

popped his 2019 Chenin tonight, smokin

extremely learned and knowledgeable, a bit of a wordsmith both written and spoken, yet somehow also seems like a down to earth guy who you could share a bottle of wine or a few pints with

Also also he understand how to use Instagram. His photo essays on vineyards are really enlightening.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

If it’s not out of place to respond to what has been said (and it is always fascinating if a bit disconcerting to see how one is perceived my others), I would say that I do consider concentration, in terms of intensity of flavor, very important; but that I try to avoid conflating sucrosity of fruit / ripeness with true concentration of flavor. A weakness I am conscious of is that I may not do justice to leaner, more minimalist styles of Champagne (thinking of the likes of e.g. Barrat Masson, Péhu Simonet, etc) because I find it hard to transcend my personal preference for a more vinous, muscular, gastronomic aesthetic (think the likes of old Bollinger R.D., old Krug, Ulysse Collin, Egly-Ouriet etc). But, I hope I learn from my mistakes, and I certainly don’t consider any tasting note or score “definitive”—wines should be revisited, time and again, that’s the best way to learn, and something I do regularly for my own cellar. I also promise to stop writing about wine the day I get bored of it (or when I find that I’m repeating myself)!

Anyway, thanks again, including for handling me very gently.

William Kelley, Allen Meadows and John Gilman all do a great job of reviewing the wines of Burgundy pretty correctly and have made it pretty easy to buy Burgundy. That is great, except the way that they have democratized Burgundy probably has contributed to the huge increases in Burgundy prices. I love the way these guys have tried to combat that by pointing out bargains from less known regions from producers who are totally under the radar. William is esp. good in this regard with his emphasis on wines from the generally disregarded Cote Chalonnaise. If you want to know where the bargains of Burgundy are, go search some of William’s posts on this board. This is not always good as just this week William’s review in the WA “forced” me to order a 2019 Jean Javillier.

Now that is a producer I badly wanted to keep to myself! But, that is not what our subscribers pay my salary for…

If you like the Côte Chalonnaise stuff, stay tuned for two big verticals coming up soon. Dureuil-Janthial 1994-2019 (missing only 1996), and 47 different wines from Bruno Lorenzon back to 1997!

Howard - if you found them in the US I’d love to know where

I really like William. He is becoming my go to guy for Burgundy. I like his Instagram stuff. His latest vertical tasting of Duroche was brilliant. I bought a bottle off that article. Thanks William!