Please register a vote for BobDylan “I started off in Burgundy and soon hit the harder stuff.”
Forgive a question from a Burgundy ignoramus. One does not hear talk of Parkerization and high!y influential oenologists miitating for that style of wine there. First, is that the case? Second, if it is, is it because the vignerons kicked Parker out early on, the audience for Burgundy just always didn’t share his taste, some combination of those two or something else entirely?
My sense is that Pierre Rovani had some influence in having some producers making overoaked, high alcohol wines in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also pushed what ultimately were less successful vintages like 1997 over better vintages like 2001, which he trashed. I think that a lot of Burgundy producers and consumers ultimately rejected these wines. Plus, I think it was huge that there became an alternate very influential voice in Burgundy reviewing in Allen Meadows who praised more classic wines from Burgundy. I rather liked when Rovani was reviewing Burgundy as some of better producers stayed under the radar and their wines sold for reasonable prices. Unfortunately, these producers are no longer under the radar and their wines no longer sell at reasonable prices, at least in the US.
Ultimately, of interest, Rovani has had a lot of success running an estate in Burgundy. I am happy for him - while I did not agree with a lot of his reviews at the WA, I liked him when he worked at retail in DC at MacArthur Beverages (prior to his time at the WA) and he recommended some very good wines to me while he was there.
At around the same time, there was a very influential person working with wineries named Guy Accad, who was recommending “newer” winemaking techniques. My sense is a lot of his winemaking recommendations were ultimately rejected although I think some of his recommendations on grape growing are still respected.
I was aware of controversy over Rovani in Burgundy. And, of course, the rise of Allen Meadows was visible on the boards. I didn’t know about Accad. But the question is why did Rovani and Accad not have the influence Parker did and Rolland does (or why only for a short period) and why was Meadows welcomed with open arms? There does seem to be something else at play.
I think it has something to do with Burgundy drinkers. The following is not universally true but tends to be more true than not. There are a lot of California wine lovers and Bordeaux wine lovers who tend to be either newer wine lovers or people who just like richer, bigger wines. These people tend to gravitate to the types of big, rich wines supplied by Rolland and loved by Parker. Ask virtually anyone who drinks wines and who is not on this board or otherwise a wine geek what is most important to them in wine and they will say body or richness or something else connoting bigger is better.
While there are a lot of people who like more classic wines from California or Bordeaux, esp. with respect to more experienced wine lovers like you find on this board (including me), I think we are overwhelmed in numbers by the bigger is better crowd, making wine regions like these more receptive to the types of wines made by Rolland and pushed by Parker. These are large regions and they tend to go where the most customers are.
By contrast, Burgundy is a smaller region and my guess is that few beginners start buying wines from Burgundy. While the number of experienced wine lovers who love say Bordeaux still probably is much larger than the number who like Burgundy, Bordeaux cannot live on just wine geeks while Burgundy can and really has to do so. Certainly, every once in a while there is a vintage like 2005 or 2015 that draws more casual wine drinkers into buying Burgundy, for the most part in most vintages Burgundy has to be sold to Burgundy nuts, and Burgundy nuts can sustain a lot of really top notch small estates because these estates produce such little amounts of wine. Also, so much of Burgundy is still small family-owned properties, and not banks and insurance companies, so there are a lot of people who can make wines the way they want to make wines, sell all of them with ease and not really have to worry about how to sell large amounts of wine.
I would add that when I started there was a dearth of information, and Burgundy was always an expensive and difficult wine to learn about. It took about 8 years for those who were going to become Burgundy geeks to really learn about the wines, and start becoming serious buyers. Nowadays that number has gone way down; huge amount of information available and the internet has made meeting like minded people easier. Interestingly if you figure the Chinese started buying Bordeaux heavily in 2010, there was a strong gravitation towards Burgundy five years later.
As for Parker, most Burgundy lovers self select, and what they are looking for, is the absolute opposite of Parker’s preferred taste profile.
I agree with you Mark that there’s a lot more Burg info around these days. Easier to learn than it was…but it’s still laborious and IMHO requires years of tasting, research and study to develop anything close to a “broad understanding”. I very much wonder how many of today’s buyers understand the region and have developed a passion for its nuances/intricacies as opposed to gravitating towards the “prestige” and/or “investment”.
RT
I also think that the lower production levels in Burgundy may have something to do with it. In Bordeaux they have a lot more wine to move so the wider audience that Parker provided made more of a difference.
But I still shudder to remember some of those overoaked North Berkeley imports that they pushed some producers into making.
You can’t win with that scenario.
Well played, my friend.
Your last name isn’t E. Coyote by any chance, is it?
Live long and prosper.