Thanks John and sorry for forgetting another old AOL buddy!
Roy I loved everything you said, always appreciate your objectivity and “telling it like it is”, but feel compelled to jump in here on these 2 points.
A. to understand what is in the bottle, the wine, the juice itself, I don’t need to be anywhere but in front of a glass. I have never been to Australia but feel my TNs on Grange convey what those bottles of Grange have to offer. Ditto Sauternes. To publish a WINE tasting note, I don’t need to visit. People, history, vineyards are nice stories, and give you a DIFFERENT understanding, but it doesn’t change that you are being asked to evaluate the juice in the bottle.
A.1. if I accepted your premise, then your note would be useless to anyone that didn’t visit and meet the same people, learn the same history and walk the same vineyards. So I’m not allowed to buy a bottle of Taylor based on your note because I could not possibly understand it and your notes without having been there myself??? ![[foilhat.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/4156862bd5dc986048e5ebd4ef8fb6b10c738e94.gif "foilhat"){kind=small}
B. I would say you just made a SUPER case for me sitting in my kitchen with a bunch of unlabelled bottles, numbered by someone else with the master matching list. Visiting Fonseca, and doing “blind” barrel samples is impossible. I KNOW I’m at Fonseca. Ditto Haut Brion, Harlan, whatever. To claim to be tasting blind but to be sitting in the winery is just silly. Yeah you may not know if it is 1994 or 1997 they poured, or their top wine or a middle level bottle but you know you’re drinking THEIR wines. I think Parker’s orgasmic notes on Chapoutier are influenced by his love of Chapoutier. I’ve never tasted Parker truly blind to see if he still whips out the 100pts every time, but…
I love visiting places, I love talking to winemakers, vineyard custodians, et al. It gives me a great sense of the place. Great stories as I open bottles. And super memories that I hope to keep until the day I die. But it doesn’t mean I enjoy those wines more or less, or score them any differently, than wines made in places I’ve never been. i just have more things to say that aren’t about the juice but about the place.
A reviewer with a TN needs to tell me about the juice. What do I get if I buy that bottle they just reviewed. And it isn’t a sit down in the winemakers kitchen.
Jeff,
You make salient points. Some are spot on, others misconstrued. I’ll elaborate.
I can grasp exactly what you are saying about purely expressing the organoleptic characteristics of wine and how they impact your senses. That is a given and anybody who puts a score to a TN can do that with different shades of expertise. Do you think that knowing the difference in growing conditions in 2000 vs. 2003 in Bordeaux entered into Parker’s views of what he tasted? Does knowing the soil type of an area or the altitude of a vineyard have a reviewer looking for telltale signs in a wine? I am not saying that Parker or anyone else can not evaluate a wine without having visited. But it certainly helps to round out the picture. Maybe it is just me. I can taste the beauty of HOG which I happen to love and have owned quite a bit of over the years. But I would sure love to visit someday to see if there are actually eucalyptus trees there that give the aromatics the nuance which I enjoy so much, or if it is just the oak treatment (which I doubt). These things matter to me; but I do get your point!
Visiting Fonseca, and doing “blind” barrel samples is impossible. I KNOW I’m at Fonseca. Ditto Haut Brion, Harlan, whatever. To claim to be tasting blind but to be sitting in the winery is just silly. Yeah you may not know if it is 1994 or 1997 they poured, or their top wine or a middle level bottle but you know you’re drinking THEIR wines. I think Parker’s orgasmic notes on Chapoutier are influenced by his love of Chapoutier. I’ve never tasted Parker truly blind to see if he still whips out the 100pts every time, but…
Here is why I said “misconstrued.”
I never said anything about blind tasting at a winery? Forget knowing where you are which is obviously defeating the point of blind tasting unless you are playing guessing games with vintages, but tasting in front of an owner/winemaker/managing director does not lend itself to a constructive tasting atmosphere. I don’t think you have ever read one of my Vintage Port forecasts. I have a very regimented way of tasting blind for a new vintage assessment. It is done at home. I have dozens of bottles in my cellar from the vintage and my wife goes down and bags them and removes the corks, and my daughter decants them. I usually taste them at the same time each day, six bottles – four hours apart – three times the first day, at least twice the second day and only if necessary a third day is added. Then the bags come off. If/when anything varies, it is written about in my report.
I typically have at least 5 distinct notes on each wine and up to seven impressions depending on the nature of the tannins. Often times the wines show best on day two or three … but either way, there is a lot to be learned from how these change over that time frame.
So, we are in total agreement. Tasting blind at a winery is pointless, but more importantly, one needs to spend time with a young Vintage Port. A snapshot view is pointless. Especially when broaching the insane task of going out on the limb to try to predict a drinking window … that is much harder than the scoring, when it comes to a cask or just bottled sample of VP.
Email me if you would like me to send you a past report where it delineates my tasting regimen in approaching the undertaking of a VP eval session.
I guess one thing I was not clear on re: my comment about ERP, and that is … considering he has visited the Rhone, Bdx., Napa/'Noma and all of the other places he’s rated, dozens of times at that … then why never take the time to visit a region that only had coverage about 3x per decade? If it wasn’t important enough … then he shouldn’t have bothered to rate the region’s wines. We can discuss this semantic until the cows come home, but that is just my take on this specific situation.
Again, I put up the same hypothetical question: What if Mr. Parker had never visited Bordeaux … would anyone have taken him seriously for so many years?
And to lighten things up …
The good news is: Rovani is not going to touch the 2007 VPs. ![[shrug.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/48636ebda2a440a43ad8d24c83be20ac20c53420.gif "shrug"){kind=small}
The better news is: There is a new Port reviewer in town, Mr. Jay S. Miller and we will soon learn his style of writing when it comes to Port and what he likes and does not like in terms of producer’s styles and this new vintage in particular.
Personally, I can’t wait!
And what are you hoping for?
Hoping?
I am hoping to get to try close to 60 of the 2007 VPs.
If you meant, “hoping” in terms of JSM’s reviews … I hope he will provide another unbiased voice into the mix of VP reviews. I hope that like those whose opinions I respect most, he can overlook his own stylistic preferences and be as objective to the VPs that might come from styles he personally likes less.
Fair enough?
Perfect.
NO, most likely not, and a point well illustrated with this sentence. For a major critic never to visit an area of wines they review is irresponsible IMO and doesn’t give them the credibility they should have. You can only learn so much about how things are made, the environment, soils, micro climates, vinification, etc. from books. There is no substitute for actually being there, seeing how things are done first hand, and talking to those that have lived there all their lives. We could argue that all day, but that is my belief…again, we’re just talking about professional wine reviewers here.