God, I wish critics would stick to wines and not burden us with their musical preferences.

[Sarah_Kirschbaum]

And hardly a peep about scotch? A wine critic who doesn’t get scotch somehow gives me more pause than one who is indifferent to jazz.

I peeped!

[alan_weinberg]

maybe he just wanted to use the word aleatoric.

[Jayson_Cohen]

Turns out the article is available for free for those who are interested: Vinous | Explore All Things Wine

That’s what all this fuss is about???

Yup. Kinda what my reaction was too. He seems to equate free jazz (about which he and I agree)*/ with all jazz, which is uninformed, but I can’t imagine being worked up over it.


*/ Anyone who thinks Brubeck’s Time Out is aleatoric is missing something. Ornette? Absolutely. Kinda Blue? Not feeling it.

Ditto on all this.

Synopsis of gratuitous, disconnected intro to a piece on 1959 wine written in style of 6th grade essayist:

• I don’t like Jazz
• It doesn’t sound good to me (but I’ll use big words like aleatoric to say that so it sounds fancy and given I only have enough words in my piece to allocate 2 sentences to this topic)
• let me list famous jazz artists and which albums they were working on at that time because I like to make lists
• ok, now let’s talk about 1959 in wine. (Time to swoon everyone.)

[john_stimson]

And hardly a peep about scotch? A wine critic who doesn’t get scotch somehow gives me more pause than one who is indifferent to jazz.

I peeped!

You did, and I noticed!

[Bob_Hoelting]

I do wonder how many folks here who are trashing Neal for trashing jazz have ever, themselves, trashed heavy metal or rap/hip-hop …

Why, yes. Two Buck Chuck and Yellowtail deserve their own metaphors, too.

[dougwilder]

I usually create a mix tape on the iPhone for tasting and photography sessions and pipe it through a small set of speakers. Winemakers tell me they enjoy it. Since I am curtailing the one on one tastings for a while I haven’t been too crazy about music in the photo sessions in 2020. I understand that Neal Martin has a great love of music. He actually turned me on to a female vocalist I enjoy a lot. I’m beginning to accumulate short articles from those who have other passions outside of wine. I published one on surfing at Ocean Beach which is something I have never experienced but it was so well written and photographed I was pulled to it. I keep beating on the door of a guy who builds Porsche 356 from the ground up (but he has been a tough nut to crack) I hope nobody feels I’m burdening them with my winemaker portraits.

[Keith_Levenberg]

Neal Martin has always needed an editor, but this thread reminds me of the old quote about how Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

[Jayson_Cohen]

Neal Martin has always needed an editor, but this thread reminds me of the old quote about how Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

I have no skin in the game on Wagner but don’t you be dissing jazz, #%^*, I mean, mon ami.

[john_stimson]

Neal Martin has always needed an editor, but this thread reminds me of the old quote about how Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

Have always loved the various versions of this quote, originally by Edgar Wilson Nye.

[Brian_G_r_a_f_s_t_r_o_m]

I do wonder how many folks here who are trashing Neal for trashing jazz have ever, themselves, trashed heavy metal or rap/hip-hop …

Why, yes. Two Buck Chuck and Yellowtail deserve their own metaphors, too.

ok … funny … but only because I love you.

[Br1an_Th0rne]

maybe he just wanted to use the word aleatoric.

My money is on fecund.

[Dennis_Borczon]

My personal view is that jazz is this country’s greatest artistic contribution to the world. It pains me that it is not more broadly recognized as such

that is very well put, Neal.

and the horrible thing about it is that most of the individuals who created this legendary art
did so while being reminded every day that they were not only second-class citizens,
but second-class human beings as well

that is not to say that jazz is exclusively Black –
were it not for Ellington’s and Strayhorn’s affinity for the music of Debussy & Ravel
we would have jazz of an appreciably different nature

This, is jazz

Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby | Jazz Music

[Mark_Golodetz]

I may not like having Neal ‘s musical likes (and dislikes) being shoehorned into his articles, but he can certainly write. I just read his memorial to Harry Gill. Superb piece.

[C_Mc_Cart]

Hadn’t seen this thread originally, but reading through this immediately thought - I wonder the reactions if he was the reviewer who posted regularly on WB.

[Glenn_P1]

I have been on this web site a few years and am amazed sometimes at the egos displayed. To hear all the critiques of Robert Parker is laughable. He was truly the first wine critic who was fiercely independent of the wine industry and fiercely loyal to the only group he cared about…his readers! You may not agree with his taste but it was consistent and enough people agreed with him that he literally changed wines…so much for the better. The French feared him and thus the libel lawsuit in Burgundy when he was certain he was getting wines that were Grand Cru and he was told they were the lesser cru so they would sell better.
He was truly an “idiot savant” when it came to tasting and he would taste 75-100 wines every Wednesday and Friday, blind!! If he gave a wine a score and tasted the same wine say 3 months later he would score the wine within 1 point either way 99% of the time. He was very confident of his rating consistency.
I had the good fortune to taste wines with him over a half dozen times and, my goodness, it was impressive. I wrote a letter about an itinerary for our wine and food weekend that was quite long and then at the end in a PS I told him I had won a reconditioned 1900 Margaux and how should I serve it. He responded with a short “the itinerary is fine” and then proceeded with 4-5 paragraphs on how to serve the Margaux!
That weekend he also related two incidents with the French. One, he was at a Chateau with many big names and was served a wine blind that he knew he had never had before. He was asked by the host if he could identify the wine. He used deductive reasoning and concluded that the wine was a 1921 Calon Segur! He was correct!
Another time, the French version of the Larry King show came to interview him and without warning asked him if he could identify 12 wines blind! Well, this hadn’t been discussed prior but he said what the heck and nailed every wine! The show refused to show that segment!
My point with this post is everyone has their own palate but trust me, Bob’s was better than everyone’s!!

[Tom_G_l_a_s_g_o_w]

I have been on this web site a few years and am amazed sometimes at the egos displayed. To hear all the critiques of Robert Parker is laughable. He was truly the first wine critic who was fiercely independent of the wine industry and fiercely loyal to the only group he cared about…his readers! You may not agree with his taste but it was consistent and enough people agreed with him that he literally changed wines…so much for the better. The French feared him and thus the libel lawsuit in Burgundy when he was certain he was getting wines that were Grand Cru and he was told they were the lesser cru so they would sell better.
He was truly an “idiot savant” when it came to tasting and he would taste 75-100 wines every Wednesday and Friday, blind!! If he gave a wine a score and tasted the same wine say 3 months later he would score the wine within 1 point either way 99% of the time. He was very confident of his rating consistency.
I had the good fortune to taste wines with him over a half dozen times and, my goodness, it was impressive. I wrote a letter about an itinerary for our wine and food weekend that was quite long and then at the end in a PS I told him I had won a reconditioned 1900 Margaux and how should I serve it. He responded with a short “the itinerary is fine” and then proceeded with 4-5 paragraphs on how to serve the Margaux!
That weekend he also related two incidents with the French. One, he was at a Chateau with many big names and was served a wine blind that he knew he had never had before. He was asked by the host if he could identify the wine. He used deductive reasoning and concluded that the wine was a 1921 Calon Segur! He was correct!
Another time, the French version of the Larry King show came to interview him and without warning asked him if he could identify 12 wines blind! Well, this hadn’t been discussed prior but he said what the heck and nailed every wine! The show refused to show that segment!
My point with this post is everyone has their own palate but trust me, Bob’s was better than everyone’s!!

Until it wasn’t.

[Anton_D]

Parker used to write about Neil Young et al constantly, and now it’s Neal Martin. Actually he has been doing this for some time, but it just got to be a little annoying. His just completed article on the glorious 1959 vintage has just been published by Vinous. Let me say up front, that unlike Parker, Neal is an excellent writer, but why on earth should anybody care what he thinks about jazz?

This gem
“ Where’s the melody? The aleatoric nature of jazz, zigzagging like a fly trapped in a jar, keeps me at arms length. I completely understand why others are fanatical, obsessive about this musical form, but I must accept that just like single malt whiskey and golf, jazz ain’t for me.”

Jazz is not really an aleatory exercise.

I wonder how he feels about poetry that doesn’t rhyme.

[Anton_D]

My point with this post is everyone has their own palate but trust me, Bob’s was better than everyone’s!!

Man, that is a tough one. I understand and appreciate precision in identification, but what he liked is a bit alien to me, in the big picture.

I see what you mean about skills, but not about “appreciation.”

I hope that didn’t sound too argumentative or personal (I don’t know the guy,) just chatting about palates.

[Mark_Golodetz]

I have been on this web site a few years and am amazed sometimes at the egos displayed. To hear all the critiques of Robert Parker is laughable. He was truly the first wine critic who was fiercely independent of the wine industry and fiercely loyal to the only group he cared about…his readers! You may not agree with his taste but it was consistent and enough people agreed with him that he literally changed wines…so much for the better. The French feared him and thus the libel lawsuit in Burgundy when he was certain he was getting wines that were Grand Cru and he was told they were the lesser cru so they would sell better.
He was truly an “idiot savant” when it came to tasting and he would taste 75-100 wines every Wednesday and Friday, blind!! If he gave a wine a score and tasted the same wine say 3 months later he would score the wine within 1 point either way 99% of the time. He was very confident of his rating consistency.
I had the good fortune to taste wines with him over a half dozen times and, my goodness, it was impressive. I wrote a letter about an itinerary for our wine and food weekend that was quite long and then at the end in a PS I told him I had won a reconditioned 1900 Margaux and how should I serve it. He responded with a short “the itinerary is fine” and then proceeded with 4-5 paragraphs on how to serve the Margaux!
That weekend he also related two incidents with the French. One, he was at a Chateau with many big names and was served a wine blind that he knew he had never had before. He was asked by the host if he could identify the wine. He used deductive reasoning and concluded that the wine was a 1921 Calon Segur! He was correct!
Another time, the French version of the Larry King show came to interview him and without warning asked him if he could identify 12 wines blind! Well, this hadn’t been discussed prior but he said what the heck and nailed every wine! The show refused to show that segment!
My point with this post is everyone has their own palate but trust me, Bob’s was better than everyone’s!!

This thread was not intended to be about Parker’s ability as a blind taster. It was about the random and unnecessary digression by critics who insist on writing about their musical pleasures. Who gives a damn?

But since you launched a very spirited defense of Mr. P, I will respond. I am sure the blind tasting skills were impressive, but I have also heard tales of a tasting of a single vintage Bordeaux with EWS (I cannot remember which) where he was horribly wrong most of the time.

Like many others, I came to wine with the 1982 vintage, and read Parker avidly, before I lost faith as his palate which seemed to go nuts in the mid to late nineties. So, no, I don’t think he was “consistent” and his legacy has suffered because of it.

But he did fundamentally change the way we look at wines, and for some years the type of wine produced to appeal to his palate. A huge innovator, he took away much of the class snobbery associated with wine. But he also dumbed it down, and as I said in another thread, the 100 point scale is “pretty useless” and arguably because it has been taken as something it isn’t, does more harm than good.

[Marshall_Manning]

I have been on this web site a few years and am amazed sometimes at the egos displayed. To hear all the critiques of Robert Parker is laughable. He was truly the first wine critic who was fiercely independent of the wine industry and fiercely loyal to the only group he cared about…his readers! You may not agree with his taste but it was consistent and enough people agreed with him that he literally changed wines…so much for the better. The French feared him and thus the libel lawsuit in Burgundy when he was certain he was getting wines that were Grand Cru and he was told they were the lesser cru so they would sell better.
He was truly an “idiot savant” when it came to tasting and he would taste 75-100 wines every Wednesday and Friday, blind!! If he gave a wine a score and tasted the same wine say 3 months later he would score the wine within 1 point either way 99% of the time. He was very confident of his rating consistency.
I had the good fortune to taste wines with him over a half dozen times and, my goodness, it was impressive. I wrote a letter about an itinerary for our wine and food weekend that was quite long and then at the end in a PS I told him I had won a reconditioned 1900 Margaux and how should I serve it. He responded with a short “the itinerary is fine” and then proceeded with 4-5 paragraphs on how to serve the Margaux!
That weekend he also related two incidents with the French. One, he was at a Chateau with many big names and was served a wine blind that he knew he had never had before. He was asked by the host if he could identify the wine. He used deductive reasoning and concluded that the wine was a 1921 Calon Segur! He was correct!
Another time, the French version of the Larry King show came to interview him and without warning asked him if he could identify 12 wines blind! Well, this hadn’t been discussed prior but he said what the heck and nailed every wine! The show refused to show that segment!
My point with this post is everyone has their own palate but trust me, Bob’s was better than everyone’s!!

Is this Parker under a pseudonym?