2020 being a relatively bad vintage is likely. smoke taint or not.
some consensus there is still unlikely because shitting on a vintage is bad form and people don’t like broad statements as they ignore their anecotal one-offs/exceptions which disprove the rule.
i’m buying some 2020s but i will be the first person to say it was a far lesser year compared to some of its neighbors.
Go read post #56, which is the root of what Kirk was responding to. As I had said, the AG’s and LPB’s tasting notes on the Rudd wines are not remotely comparable. The likeliest explanation for the vast difference is that AG’s bottles were flawed.
Ian, first & foremost, I’m really appreciative that you offered the caveat. I’d like to think that I’m not so fragile that my ego can’t handle a one sentence statement I made being challenged by a thoughtful and well articulated view, would be offensive to me in some way. Second, I absolutely agree with what you shared above. My comment was meant to be read as tongue in cheek. What I appreciate about Galloni’s reviews, and why I give them more weight than say Suckling, Laube, or Dunnuk is that I think he calls out things that others do not, opting for professional opinion rather than an echo chamber.
Not arguing with you, as you make some really good points that I agree with, but 2017 and 2020 get labeled as “smoke taint vintages” writ large, so now everyone gets labeled as having tainted wines? I had some really excellent 2017s, and wish I had more money at the time to buy what I wanted (my wife was out of work for most of 2020, like so many), and there were none of the astringent characteristics that Galloni references in the wines he found that were affected.
I get the double edged sword argument, but I honestly think that the “announcing” of these wines is really only heard in a vacuum…like Wine Berserkers.
I just didn’t want you to think I was picking on what you said, it was just the last post where I saw it, and it was a simple post that helped me get my point across, nothing more.
You and I seem to agree, you have to call things out when you think something isn’t right. That’s one of the biggest reasons I like Antonio as a critic (plus I tend to agree with him way more than others outside of Vinous).
As someone else noted, he tasted and reviewed 8 wines at Rudd, so if he tasted 8 bad bottles/samples, there’s something way more wrong going on at Rudd than what Antonio’s notes provided. Antonio also posted this caveat with his reviews, which speaks to his disappointment in what he tasted.
“Leslie Rudd was one of the first people I met in Napa Valley. I did charity events at his Press restaurant during my early days of covering Napa wines and tasted with him frequently over the years. Clearly, things have been in transition at Rudd Estate since his passing in 2018. It’s not easy to publish these reviews, but the reality is that the 2018s and 2019s here are off the mark. The wines are light and lacking in complexity across the board. My hope is that Rudd’s daughter, Samantha, will be able to make the necessary adjustments in time.”
If I’m not mistaken, sounds like he’s sick of “recipe” or “protocol” wines regardless of what the vintage delivers to some winemakers. If yes then kudos to him.
I’m struggling to follow your response about “prevalent style.” I don’t really get your point or points. There is obviously a disparity in style between high end and low end purely on account of cost. If I sell at 12 dollars a bottle, I’m not likely going to have spectacular grapes and new french oak to play with. Roy Piper released an excel spreadsheet showing his costs and expenses for making his really nice cabs. It costs a lot to make good wine. If my production is so small I make one barrel, I’m going to have less of an ability to consistently blend to a house targeted style. But if we’re talking about well made, high quality wines, I absolutely think there is a prevalent style, whether $80 or $150 or $250. There may be a gradation in quality, but quality and style are two different things, assuming a relatively level playing field. Obviously I’m not comparing Apothic Red to Screaming Eagle…If I wanted to compare cheap wines with residual sugar, I’d compare Apothic to Caymus.
I don’t think my self-defined prevalent style is limited to high end. I think it’s prevalent for most high quality producers though. Even so I’ve clearly built in a range and recognize that there is a sliding scale within the prevalent style. That should be expected. It would be like saying men’s suits are trimmer fit now than they were in 1995, and allowing that while some pant lengths, pant legs, and jackets may be shorter or tighter than others, generally speaking, the prevalent style is a much trimmer fit. That variation within the prevalent style does not contradict the fact that there is very obviously a prevalent style for men’s suits that is much trimmer than that in 1995.
Do old school style producers tend to get much lower scores on their wines? Tough to say. Kapscandy has made some 13%ers over the years and some 14.1s that got extremely high scores. Their richer wines have too. Which producers are you talking about? Ridge Monte Bello and Dominus pretty much always got monster scores, even as their styles got slightly more modern. Screaming Eagle is way more traditional in flavor profile, with its bright red cherry fruit, than Hundred Acre with its black currant, plum, and date. Even so, it gets great scores. If someone rolled out a 12.5% abv Napa cab with big tannins and high acid, I think it would get panned. No one is making that wine in Bordeaux anymore either. Even so, there has been a contraction in size. At the end of last decade, my range probably would have been 14.7-15.4% abv as the norm.
Re Laube…when was Laube god of Napa? Late 80s through mid-90s? After that Robert Parker was much more influential. Laube didn’t give much of anything over a 92 during the height of his reign, and 92 point wines were typically sensational. He lost credibility and following as his scores crept up and he matriculated to higher octane wines. I think that Laube may have been the man now if he’d remained Allan Meadows-esque in his scores. A Laube 92 certainly meant more than a Parker 92, just like a Suckling 94 for a burg means less than a Meadows 94.
I think the likelihood that all 8 bottles were flawed, and that a professional wine critic could not identify that they were flawed, especially when comparing them to 300 other bottles of wine, is hard to imagine. How would they be flawed? 8 corked bottles? If that’s the case, huge red flag. Assuming that isn’t the case, what flaw makes the wine lack depth? Heat would not make the wines light and simple. It would have turned the wines figgy and sappy. I just am not following how “flawed bottles” logically fits.
Flawed taster? Sure. Virus, illness, allergies, too much of mama’s marinara. All might fit better than 8 flawed bottles.
I do often wonder how tasters like Galloni and Laube and Parker and LPB and others who taste 200 wines in a day or 50 2oz pours in a sitting can really give a consistent assessment of quality in blind settings. At even 20 wine blind events I’ve participated in, a wine that is clearly not the highest quality can sometimes win “best of” simply because it is different than the other wines. I saw a 2007 napa cab blind tasting play out that way. 19 brings that were all within a similar profile of fruit, complexity, smoothness, structure. And one stylistic outlier that was more rough hewn. Alone it was not that exciting and not of particularly high quality. But that made it unique and so different and interesting. It was the speed bump on a long straightaway.
On the flip side, can’t really want critics to taste non-blind like many do. Confirmation bias, brand bias, etc. are all extremely real. Even more frequently at blind tastings an outrageously expensive wine is second to a lesser priced wine. After the reveal, the 3x more expensive wine magically begins to “open up and really strut its stuff with air,” eventually rallying to “now that it’s opened up, this is my WOTN.”
I’d start with wanting to know which wineries invite him to their place to entertain, feed etc and which ones only send him their wines, and then look at which ones got the sub 80s and which ones didn’t. I’ve always believed the schmooze factor and personal connection dilemma exists to some extent in the wine critic/publication industry and probably makes it one of the most difficult parts of the job.
Wait - are you suggesting that wine critics are incorruptible? That they wield the power to bestow financial success or ruin with the stroke of their pen, but they are immune to influence?
I’m not saying that anybody is or isn’t doing anything of that sort, but it’s somewhat basic human nature to respond to such incentives. There is an ocean of money driven by critic scores, and not a lot of money comparatively to be made by being a simple and honest wine taster.
So if you ask if it’s possible, my answer would be “I’m 100 points on that.”
Sorry, I’m probably the least in the loop here about any “conspiracies” in this industry and have never paid for any critic’s subscription.
I suppose I’d be a horrible wine critic. If a high end Napa winery like the ones noted in this thread invited me to their estate for an afternoon lunch, wine etc, or were friends from previous visits, I wouldn’t be throwing any 80s at them. I couldn’t say the same for a wine I received in the mail by someone I had never met. I don’t think that line of thinking is unreasonable.