Curious why Parker changed his score. Doesn’t seem warranted to me as this is a fabulous wine especially for the price.
From 2015: Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate #215 Oct 2014 Robert M. Parker, Jr. Score: 99 Drink: 2014 – 2029. The nearly perfect 2012 Proprietary Red Ontogeny is Bevan’s least expensive and biggest production cuvée (700 cases). A blend of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Petit Verdot and 10% Cabernet Franc, it comes from four of Russell Bevan’s favorite vineyard sources – Tench, Tin Box, Two Dogs and Sugarloaf Mountain. A big fruit bomb, it boasts a dense purple color as well as loads of crème de cassis, tobacco leaf, underbrush, graphite, lavender, roasted meats and blackberries. Amazing aromatics and super-intensity make for a powerful, full-bodied wine to drink over the next 10-15 years.
From 2021: Score 95 Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
The 2012 Ontogeny Red Wine is a blend of mainly Cabernet Sauvignon with lesser portions of Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Deep garnet in color with a touch brick, it wafts from the glass with a fragrant perfume of Morello cherries, spice cake and preserved plums, plus underlying suggestions of cigar box, tree bark and pencil lead. The medium to full-bodied palate delivers maturing black and red fruit preserves layers with loads of spicy sparks and a chewy texture, finishing long with a compelling lift.
Even Parker back in the day felt free to reevaluate wines and rescore them.
I made up some spreadsheets eons ago of the changes, both up and down, in his 1982 Medoc and 1986 Cal cab scores. As you can see, there were some big swings, and more demotions than raises. He knocked some down 10 points and more over 8-10 years. (The '86 Carmenet cab, which went from 94/92 to 72 for Parker, was a brilliant wine young but cracked up for some reason.)
Exactly. People talk about wanting tastings of older wines, when all they really want is to know if it’s ready to drink and that the precious score didn’t change unless it went up.
Curious what William Kelley would score this wine, given his more Euro-inspired palate.
As noted above, you have different reviewers here, plus you cannot expect a score to remain constant as the wine evolves. The wine can show differently at various points in its evolution.
Aside from some good points already brought up, I’d also think when you are tasting wines that are meant to cellar/evolve when they are so young, primary, and tannic, you’re also doing a mental projection of how they will evolve when scoring. Perhaps they charge exactly down that road and fulfill the promise, or perhaps they flag a bit (or maybe they turn out even better).
Ha! This was in fact compiled on a vintage ~1995 Dell laptop that went in the trash 20 years ago. What I uploaded here were scans of a printout because I don’t know where the file is. (It might be in an old folder of docs I exported to a floppy disk before I dumped the machine.)
P.S. Glad this was appreciated. I must have had a slow day at work.
Aside from the obvious different reviewer, I’ve felt Parker gave extra points to huge, heavy wines in their youth but then subtracted those points in retrospective tastings as the wine evolved and lost weight. John’s spreadsheet seems to provide the actual evidence for what I only guessed at. FWIW, I didn’t consider this a Parker failing, it was just the way he did it, he seemed to consistently do this.
I will make a general response to the thread. I distribute Bevan Cellars in Michigan and was just in California for some supplier visits and what not. While tasting with Victoria Bevan I was gobsmacked to hear her say some of their wines are crafted to be enjoyed young. I myself have tasted several vintages of Tench Vineyard and personally like the younger ones better.
If you all haven’t had a chance to try their no fine/filtration Chardonnay you are missing out.
