William, part of Wine Berserker culture is inside jokes, of which this is an example. Eric once fell asleep next to Parker, and the image used to be his avatar.
Please try not to be so quick to take umbrage.
Yup.
And I didn’t fall asleep next to Neal, but I might have drooled on him a bit. There are no photographs though… 
It was actually Parker’s facial expression that made the picture worthwhile!
Good Advice, thanks, I’ll remember that.
I just respected the effort and sharing from some people and having absolutely no experience with social media…
anyway, thank you for explaining
william
I suspect the primary reason many (not just Brits) were offended by Parker wasn’t his “enthusiasm”, it was his perceived arrogance and “absolutism”. In addition to using words like “hedonistic” and “gobs of fruit” (and the extremely annoying “literally leaps from the glass” and “literally explodes form the glass”) he also used words like “knuckleheads” and “idiots” and “anti-flavor wine elites” to describe those who liked styles of wine he didn’t. He seemed to really believe that a “95 point wine” exists (separate and apart from his own tasting experience), and that the 95 points he awards is an objective indicator of the actual inherent “quality” of the wine (as opposed to simply an indicator of how much he likes it). His notes didn’t leave room for “YMMV” or make concessions that a particular wine might be appealing to a certain palate. In his mind a $9 Eric Soloman import from Spain which he awards 94 points is better than every Chianti Classico Riserva (or Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Franc) ever produced, because none of those wines ever rated so highly…
Not only no soup for you, no dessert either. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Very good point, !
I can see now with these views that have opened my eyes, that I was operating as a fishmonger for so long, we wizzed through lists pricing the Ahi by the color and fat or the wine by the Parker score… Its so ingrained a part of our lives, like using a ruler or thermometer a scale to weight the fish… to measure. Smith Haut Lafite 2009 Parker gave 100 pts we paid $200/bt, and in 2010 he only scored that 98 I think or 98+ so we paid $100/bt, we all lived that way. We had lists and the conveyer belt flowed… We all accepted it begrudgingly - well the gates have been flung open. And like all change - I do not welcome the change.
An unusually candid and welcome statement. I guess selling wine by the master’s points is far easier than, well, whatever the future holds. I am confident that you’ll adapt, and I suspect the wine world world will be a slightly better place for the change.
Yup, it sure helps to embrace change rather than to try to shake it off.
What would really help is if we had a few more players out there and, as regards Bordeaux, if the critics would take their finger out of their backside and look beyond the great growths.
Best regards,
Alex R.
[resizeableimage=400,225]http://wadebearden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/taylor-swift-shake-it-off-ballerina.png[/resizeableimage]
![http://wadebearden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/taylor-swift-shake-it-off-ballerina.png[/resizeableimage]](http://wadebearden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/taylor-swift-shake-it-off-ballerina.png%5B/resizeableimage%5D){kind=link}
Did somebody say “shake it off”?
RT
I don’t know how and if I’ll change, I’ll change along with the pack. I have to buy and sell along with the collective market demand.
I know that other markets, a fine wine shop for example in the U.K. can be much more what I think you are talking about.
He goes, he tastes, he makes an educated decision on his taste and then his customers stop into his shop and are interested and trust his educated recommendation. Maybe at the U.S. wines that are $15 - $45/bt you can do that.
I think (although i’ve never worked a day at retail) that bottles of $100, $200 and above are what the W.S. and W.A. scores say.
the sheer volume or mass of SKU’s we have to deal with, simply make it impossible to give the individual attention or the individuation that one particular wine deserves if you look at it from what a wine producer - family - invests from his time, heart and passion. We know not those details, it is a pity.
En Primeur week, next week in Bordeaux, I’m supposed to go and taste several hundred wines in 3 or 4 days, wines that have just gone through how much of their development? 2014 vintage, And make decisions of what they will be in 2.5 years development? Are you kidding? Even the brilliant Mr. Parker writes on a 1st Growth, tasting Barrel samples (91 - 93), then a year later in the bottle he says, oh, its a 95, and then a year or 2 later it is a 98. And the price goes up, way up,
what about the 20 cases of a 2nd growth with bottle scores of a 2008 Margaux we paid $235 that now Parker pooh poohed after 7 years, and it went from 93 down to 89 and we can barely get $135.
Very dangerous game, I’m sick of losing money with this.
We used to do only Burgundy I had visited and tasted and Champagne, for about 10 years…
Only what I had tasted … So much for growth.
William,
There is a lot of truth in what you say.
The"en primeur" tastings take place too soon, but the ritual is so deeply ingrained that there is not much hope of changing it.
To my mind, by far the most important aspect of these tastings is the ability to network with château owners, Bordeaux négociants, and other members of the trade from all over the world.
There is no equivalent I know of anywhere else.
Best regards,
Alex R.
Hard to say if Martin will represent any real improvement over Parker, for very different reasons, but I suspect that he will in Bordeaux. I think that his Bordeaux palate is more traditional than Parker’s, which should be a plus. The bigger question is whether anybody really needs Bordeaux coverage at this late date. The buyer base among WA followers has shrunk, and we should all know by now what the best wines are. It is easy enough to go online and discover the relative quality of each vintage as well.
There are non-Bordeaux issues at play as well. Like Galloni before him, Martin is spread too thin and covering too many important wines, and that can be expected to take a toll on both his palate and his writing, as it did with Galloni. (Wine rags all cover far too many wines, mistaking quantity for quality and relevance, and WA and Vinous continue to move in the wrong direction on this. Super-sizing will prove a recipe for disaster in both fast food and wine reviewing. There are far more wines worthy of being ignored than trumpeted in the world today.) A third point is that his tasting notes are written from a thesaurus, not based upon what is in the glass. He is indeed a better writer than any of his WA peers, but that clears only a painfully low bar. (Schildknecht is actually a better writer, but is rarely read, due to his inability to self-edit.) For my taste, however, he tries too hard with his writing, and really strains to inject humor at times. (It is also hard to imagine that the WA subscriber base understands British humor to boot, as Monty Python Martin is not.) Lastly, he is a hard-core wine necrophiliac, and often gives absurdly high scores to mediocre, off-vintage wines simply because of old age. He is dangerous in Burgundy coverage for that reason…
Bill,
The Bordeaux market is international and hard to grasp.
The unquestionable disaffection on some countries is not the whole picture.
What is true in Peoria is not necessarily in Sinagpore.
The media circus at en primeur time has become a tradition. As you say, many people reject it, but many do not… It is good for Bordeaux because the international wine trade makes its way here and - for better or for worse - the media talk about Bordeaux. And you know the saying: “any publicity is good publicity”!
Few other regions have such cohesion and a specific time of year when world attention is focused on them.
It is hard for many people on this board - including myself - to abstract ourselves from a time when great Bordeaux (not Bordeaux, but classified growths) was far more afordable. It is thus difficult for us to put ourselves into the shoes of young people with lots of disposable income - yes, they do exist - who want wine from a wedding year, or a child’s birth year - who are in no rush and who are not interested in buying older wines from better vintages for less money!
Bordeaux is a very complicated reality and it is risky to generalize.
Best regards,
Alex R.
Bordeaux’s reality is complicated only for, and by, the Bordelais, Alex. The picture has been quite clear to consumers for decades now, and there is zero risk in generalizing. The best wines, are, virtually without exception and really, by definition, the first-growths and so-called “super seconds”. There have been underperforming wines from potentially strong wineries from time to time, all well-known and well-documented by now. Given the money, marketing and reputations at stake, we are not likely to ever see a legendary chateaux go to merde again, as we have in the past. Consumers are free to explore lesser Bordeaux to suit their pocketbooks, and free to choose favorites that wine reviewers do not always smile on. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” seems a pretty sad place for a region with Bordeaux’s history to arrive, but I agree that it has. Its near-term future will be fascinating to watch, however, in Parker’s absence and with no successor in sight, a string of mediocre vintages and interest in Bordeaux in its historically strongest markets still on the wane…
It is fatuous to say « Bordeaux’s reality is complicated only for, and by, the Bordelais».
How could it be otherwise with thousands of châteaux?
There is indeed a risk of generalizing. People who don’t know any better think Bordeaux is a closed book, but nothing could be further from the truth!
Your mention of « historically strongest markets » unfortunately smacks of navel gazing.
The world is a big place, you need to get out and around .
Best regards,
Alex R.
Alex, this thread is about Neal Martin. You have posted essentially the post above dozens of times here now, and there are no takers. The Bordelais have soiled their own nest with crass commercialism, insane pricing and the negociant system. And I have no doubt seen a good deal more of the world than you have, but if not, my world view at least extends far beyond the vineyards of Bordeaux. Yours never has on this board. The cheerleading that you and Leve do falls upon deaf ears these days. Do understand, however, that Americans and Europeans have no reason to give a damn about how much Bordeaux the Chinese and Russians drink, unless it impacts price and/or availability of wines that they want. At the moment, that is not much of a concern, and as you well understand, when it was a problem, buyers turned away from Bordeaux in droves and bought other rationally priced wines. That does not define Bordeaux’s future, but it does define its immediate past and present…
Bill,
This thread is indeed about Neal Martin, but you seem to have taken advantage of it to reveal yet again your tired, hackneyed and, in my most humble opinion, erroneous statements. Saying that there are “no takers” on my point of view is quite pompous of your part. Internet boards are for discussion. We disagree about something I happen to know a lot more about than you do, so please live with it.
Statements such at “the Bordelais have soiled their nest with crass commercialism” shows your bias there in the Italian countryside. If you are well travelled, this is difficult to reconcile with your narrow-mindedness.
You are totally wrong on yet another front – I love the wines of the world and spent a week visiting nearly 20 domaines in Burgundy earlier this month. I post on wines other than Bordeaux – even if it is the best wine in the world .
I find your posts smug, misinformed, and your presuming to know who I am annoying.
Your greatest error is, like a broken record, to misuse the word Bordeaux. There would be an element of truth in what you say if your referred to the great growths. Because there is a f*ck of a lot of Bordeaux other than those wines. Like 95%.
Alex R.
But that was later. Initially he wasn’t like that. He was more like some of the people who start blogs today - he liked wine, didn’t trust the marketing, and simply rated them as he saw them. He simply barged in and started playing in the sandbox, bringing nothing but his own palate and experience. No years of working at an auction house, or being a sommelier, or passing some exam, or being part of the old boy’s club.
I think all those things you raise are valid, but he had already started going off the deep end a few years ago. His rating cheap wines highly wasn’t in itself a problem because we all know that price and quality are not necessarily tightly correlated.
But then little by little, when he was probably at his peak of influence, it was revealed that he wasn’t tasting blind in spite of his claims to do so, and consequently he wasn’t really tasting a $9 wine next to a $90 wine. In addition he had favored importers - he once said something to the effect of “no need to taste non-imported wines because the importers have already picked up everything worth importing”. And of course Eric Solomon was one of his favorite importers. And then the whole question of what he was tasting vs what was being sold came up - Solomon himself admitted that there was a lot of variation between the different lots of some of his wines.
As each of those things came out, Parker got increasingly defensive rather than remain humble. Then he started lashing out at anyone who disagreed rather than simply going about his business.
And the wine market had matured. So people knew a lot more about many areas than he did, but he had been used to deference for so long, he couldn’t accept that. He got a medal from the King of Spain and he’d only visited the country like two or three times, one of them as a student before he started writing about wine. He was amazed that they had highways! But he had handed out a lot of high scores and they appreciated that so they gave him a medal. Nobody in the wine business took it for anything other than what it was.
That stuff ended up damaging credibility with his core audience - i.e. people who trusted him. People were disappointed and felt they’d been played. Nobody likes that. But the Brits never appreciated his arrival in the first place and I’m sure there’s some schadenfreude these days.
Parker assumed a role that fate, talent (believe it or not) and good old fashioned capitalism conspired to elevate to supernatural levels. After years of questions regarding various states of undress, RMP is headed to the bench and Neal is faced with a cavernous pair of shoes…oversized, beyond the point of clownishness, thanks to good old fashioned tradition and marketing.
Interesting times ahead for Neal. The Asians are rumored to be on hiatus? After a long absence, here come the Americans…cautiously stepping back to the EP table…armed with the strongest dollar in a decade and hungry for “bargains”. Perhaps a little wiser?
Who will tell the Americans (and others) where the deals are? Will the market makers embrace Neal or just a cool kiss? Will American EP buyers believe? And more importantly, what about their customers?
RT