Dale, you are probably right, they lack the interest or knowledge to bother writing about wine. Their cellars are a reflection of wealth nothing more. BTW I have enjoyed Ray’s recent notes and more than once been quite happy not to be drinking disappointing trophy wines he has posted on, he is one of the few drinking these wines I trust, pity about the others.
There is a very good reason to know who the 12AM are. It is extremely likely that these individuals have cellars full of Rudy wines. Should they consign or sell wines from their cellars buyers should know the risk regardless of their otherwise upstanding reputations.
This is regarding cellartracker and a question I posed to Eric. I love cellartracker and all that it represents. I utilize it for
tasting notes regularly. I have had a concern about one of the aspects of the site and wanted to address it.
It’s actually something I thought about for sometime…and in light of everything that has been discussed with the Rudy trial/American greed I felt compelled to pose my concern/question.
Though unproven I have to assume a number of John Kapon’s notes are derived from fraudulent bottles. These notes are clearly displayed openly on cellartracker. Aside from this I always assumed he played the ‘see no evil’ roll when submitting these wines for auction. Again, strictly my opinion, I am sure some support this opinion and some will shrug it off, maybe call me a troll etc… If true or not, perception is reality and therefore the credibility of this individual is damaged or under scrutiny.
First I want to ask what the hell makes John Kapon an expert taster?? Really JK?? I believe half this board is more of an expert taster than him. Aside from this, if it is true about my speculation that Jk is not credible as an individual or that a number of his tasting notes are from fraudulent wines (Ponsot believes 80% of pre-1980 being sold at auction today are fake)
then do you think his presence should be removed from CT?
I believe what Eric has created is a important website of substance and great integrity that I would hate to see compromised.
Eric believes he has done enough vetting of JK to keep his presence on the board. I feel otherwise, maybe I am an outlier, someone who hangs out on the edges of the bell curve, the Bluto speech of Animal house "who’s with me? Lets go C’mon!! Ahhhhhhh!) Or am I?? (Even DRC’s de Villaine suggested those who sold Rudy’s wine are also guilty)
Again this is just my opinion and I was just curious of everyone’s thoughts.
It’s actually pretty interesting to read through JK’s old tastings where Rudy, the Angry Men, etc. were prominent participants. I have no comment on the Angry Men and don’t care who they were – but the glimpse you get into the sort of wines Rudy et al were opening, in light of what we learned later about Rudy, is pretty interesting. Meadows even makes appearances. For example:
I think I remember reading somewhere that burghound was submitted to fakes but didn’t catch it…a difficult thing to do with(supposed) rare wines u may only try once
There are lots of problems with lots of reviews on CellarTracker. Some people give scores to corked wines; some people have obviously bought wines well after they were released that were cooked or otherwise somehow managed to cook them themselves. Many notes are by people who have no idea what they are tasting. But, that is also the nature of Trip Advisor and lots of other similar sites. You cannot look at a composite score. You have to look at individual notes and try to see what people are describing.
Until your posts, I had never seen a Kapon note in CellarTracker. Is he listed as a pro reviewer - like Meadows or Gilman, etc.? Isn’t there a huge conflict of interest labeling any person who is a retailer or wholesaler, etc., as a pro reviewer? Maybe there should be another category of ITB so that people are warned that the review is by someone who would profit from purchases of the wine.
There are several that are ITB and they are clearly marked as such. Every channel has a ‘Disable’ button to turn them off if that content of is no interest to you.
Kapon’s tasting note superlatives references various types of sex (liquid, sweaty, chocolate, etc.) and cocaine…how those retain their relevance is beyond me.
I do hope that there isn’t any tasting notes of his for Ponsot Clos St. Denis pre-1982 (I believe that is the first vintage they produced)…despite how good he thought those wines were!