In his entertaining new book Restaurant Man, Joe Bastianich (Babbo, Del Posto) has this (pp 149-150) to say, “Robert Parker is the emperor of wine. Is there anyone else who can even come close, any restaurant critics who can drive menus and concepts, or movie critics who can dictate next year’s releases the way the world makes wine for Robert Parker?.. He’s certainly not infallible, and his palate has a very particular bent to it, but a lot of people happen to like it… Parker is slowly handing over the reins to Antonio Galloni, the perfect successor, who will evolve the Wine Advocate, navigating the ship to a more old world heading”.
MrBigJ
I wonder if Jay meant his thread title this way, or he is just saying that Joe is endorsing the choice Parker has made. I don’t think Jay would think it is news that Parker anointed Antonio as his successor.
Also as Jay recently pointed out himself, he no longer has a proofreader.
I read it as Joe endorsing eBob’s choice of eTony as his heir, unless, of course, Joe has influence at WA we do not know about.
After reading those excerpts from his book, I do not think I would want to cross Joe. My scores for the Bastianich estate’s wines would be all 90+ so Joe doesn’t get angry and take it out on me in his next book, or send Mario and a few of his peeps over to “talk sense” to me.
Ken thank you, actually I do not mind being called a guinea, or a bastard. When I was a kid growing up, we had names, as you know, for almost every ethnicity (we considered Jews an ethnic group I guess). We had several for Italians, the least offensive being guinea. My problem, was I am only 1/4 guinea, and as a kid had blond hair, and blue eyes, so nobody ever called me a guinea. Every other kid in school or our gang could be called something, they had an identity, but not me, and we had no names for Scottish or Swedish, my other parts. So I was rarely called a name, I felt left out. Now and then if I told someone I was half Scottish, they might in their ignorance call me a Mick. It is ironic because when it comes to wine, food, music and women my Italian quarter seems to dominate everything else.
Your “friends” should have taken a page from Jack Woltz. There’s a scene in Godfather I where he uses an Italian slur toward Tom Hagen, who points out that he’s actually Irish. Without missing a beat, Woltz switches from Italian slurs to Irish ones. It kinda sets us up for later when we don’t feel too much sympathy for him or his horse.
So the thread was to quote an excerpt from a book endorsing/letting people know something that this entire board and the wine world in general already knew?
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