When Parker does his regional tastings, for instance, the Vintner’s Association requests wineries send their samples to one location when Parker is in town, he has a staff of Somm’s open every bottle and check if they are ok. Then he barrels through them, hundreds, and moves on. After he’s gone, winery personal are allowed to go to this location and taste all the open wines submitted, so the wines to not go to waste.
He’s usually in the Central Coast during Hospice du Rhone week, and does this tasting during this time.
Then he decides who and which wineries he will visit personally. Those tend to be the lucky and fortunate when that issue comes out.
I think a great critic is one who is willing to be impartial (to a point) in trying to describe as accurately as possible the look, smell, and taste of a wine. Being able to provide a comprehensive tasting note that tells you what the wine is truly like makes a critic invaluable.
BUT, I do not expect a critic to be 100% impartial, either. Clearly, when you get into the business of assigning points, you are saying that Wine A is better than Wine B. That statement depends, at least in part, on personal preference and experience, as well as whether the wine is being evaluated by itself or in the context of food.
Gordon,
Could you elaborate on that? IMO, it would be very positive to see the WS show greater appreciation for more classically styled Pinot, but I haven’t seen evidence of that to date.
I just finished reading this thread and would like to point out a few things (and ask some questions)-
First, tasting blind will not eliminate personal preferences for experienced tasters. In fact when it comes to style most professional tasters (winemakers and critics) that I know are quite confident that they can evaluate a wine similarly in blind or non-blind context. Reviewing non-blind allows for past experience (tasting from barrel, or aging history) to be used to formulate a more informed critique. That said, the technique really has nothing to do with style preferences. The styles I like, I like blind and the styles I don’t like, I don’t like blind. Taster’s preferences are at play regardless of tasting methodology.
Second, regarding Allen Meadow’s dislike of high alcohol in Pinot, it’s important to note that Allen’s dislikes warmth or lack of balance in Pinot has nothing to do with numbers. In fact, he noted some warmth in one of our wines that is only 13.3%.
My question is - What constitutes an “agenda” and what constitutes a personal preference? I do understand Brian’s decision that Burghound might not enjoy his style of wine but meanwhile, I am very hesitant to submit wines to the Wine Spectator as I know that Jim Laube prefers very ripe, fruit-forward, early drinking, low structure wines and that is not what we want to make. I think he very honestly enjoys those wines so is best described as a personal preference or an “agenda”?
I think that Allen’s preference for more traditional style pinots and Jim’s (possible) preference for richer styled new world pinots are just that, personal preference. When a critic like Allen (sorry to keep picking on Allen ) publishes an open letter advising pinot producers on what to do, then it becomes an agenda. To me. IMHO. And I begin to wonder how impartial that reviewer will be when faced with wines that go contrary to his stated, public opinion on what is and isn’t appropriate or “best”.
Of course, all critics could have similar agendas, but just keep them private. And maybe someone like Jim or Steve or RMP is actually less impartial than someone who made their gripe/beef/petpeeve public. But it seems to me that if someone felt strongly enough to go public, it must be a pretty strong belief. I don’t like entering a game with a (potentially) unfair handicap. Whether real or imagined
Parker used to speak out rather forcefully against filtration, high yields, etc.
Wouldn’t you agree that, in those instances, he was attempting to advise producers what to do?
“very ripe, fruit-forward, early drinking, low structure wines”
Brian’s wines are fruit forward, but I don’t get low structure wines!!!
I am not a mailing list customer of Brian and I don’t drink much Pinot, but the structure of his wines is just fine. I though that his 07 Clos Pepe was superb and quite structured. I actually bought out the inventory at SDWC and I don’t even care for Pinot.
Sure, you can say that I like wines full of fruit, but I just don’t get the low structure part.
It seems to me that popular wine critics tend to develop, over time, the need to pontificate on aspects of technical winemaking that they are manifestly unqualified to pontificate about. It’s one thing to say that so-and-so winery has a Brett or TCA problem - critics owe it to the public to publicize the fact that a winery is putting out manifestly flawed product. But to start laying down the law, from a position of prominence with no scientific or practical background, about practices around which there is no consensus - like filtration, clonal selection, etc. - is wrong.
You’re fooling yourself if you think there’s any real difference between an agenda (publicly stated preference) and a preference (not stated). In fact, I think you’re better off with Allen’s approach since it’s transparent - everyone knows how he feels. The unstated preference still has the same effect on reviews, but neither the wineries nor the readers know it aside from what the can intuit by reading a lot of reviews. let’s face it, You want to submit to people who are more likely to give you favorable reviews. That’s an understandable, even wise, business decision, but it’s not inherently more principled than a wine reviewer stating their preferences.
I’m reminded of the audio critics who, when they joined Stereophile (an audiophile mag) would do short columns about what they listened to, their listening rooms, their preferences, etc. One guy was very honest that he listed to mostly chamber music, mostly small ensembles. So, while he would put on other things to test bass, he valued midrange fidelity and the ability to delineate where instuments were in space far more. He’d have reviewed components the same had he never written that column, but reading it gave us some insight into how to interpret his reviews. In many ways I wish more wine critics would do this and stop pretending to be Olympian arbiters of what is Good Wine.
Kevin - Seeing the label influences the review. i’ve always felt that i’d like to see the note from a blind tasting and then let the reviewer see the wine and comment on that if needed. What I mean is that it can be hard to make a judgement about how a wine will age from just one taste but an experience taster can sometimes say “oh, well, when I’ve tasted Chateau X and it’s been like this young it usually ages like…”. However, seeing the label WILL influence the taster - there’s really no disputing that and what you’ll end up with is a wine that, blind might be 89 being given the benefit of the doubt if it’s a well known label and getting a 92 (for example). That’s a problem. Now, do I care? No, because I think all scores are BS and the people who believe that scores are objective are deluding themselves. But in the real world of selling wines, an 89 from Parker or the WS won’t move wine, whereas a 92 might so these things have real impact.
I disagree. Being confident means zero. I’ve seen experienced tasters bet riduculous things that they were right just to be proven totally wrong. Same with professional tasters. You just won’t ever see them advertise how wrong they were. Blind evens it out. Reviewing non-blind does allow for past experience to be used to form a critique. Whether that is a more informed opinion or a more biased opinion is up for debate. I would think the latter.
Would you agree, then, that it would be preferable for a critic to be tasting double blind (in the sense that he or she has no idea whatsoever about the identities of the wines being presented)?
I think it can be interesting (can the critic tell OR Pinot from russian river from Burgundy) but it’s not really practical. Critics typically have themes for issues (2009 Red Burg, etc) so they know that a tasting is all of those wines. That’s just part of the nature of the business.
Thanks for the response.
Your comment is well taken, but it addresses more the mechanics of putting together an issue of a critic’s publication. I was talking about the possible introduction of bias in a single blind tasting, where a critic knows what types of wines are being served.
Bruce, not sure. Parker always says the only thing that counts is what is in the bottle or some such thing. So if you take that at face value then sure, double blind would be great. And if that happened I would think most professional tasters would be out of business very quickly. That would be one tough road. I think blind tasting in a peer group allows for a more even and informed opinion while still eliminating some of the label bias.
Thanks for the reply.
I’m pretty much in agreement.
I understand the value of a critic’s informed opinion, but I think it also important to understand that no critic (at least one that I know of) is operating in a way that fully minimizes freedom from bias.
I realized that… but if the tasting can’t be done in reality it’s just a thought experiment. I’d agree with Paul’s reply, but since I don’t see any practical way to do a doubel blind tasting given te realities of publishing thematic issues…
I read most of Laube’s blogs on WS online. He is slowly starting to comment on wines produced from super ripe grapes, and is slowly starting to denounce many of those style wines. that is, of course, in his blogs. Time will tell if those statements start to show up in his ratings!
For those speaking of the “recycled bottles”. I have an importer friend that knows Suckling well. Suckling supposingly has a rather magnificent cellar full of “second bottles” of wines submitted for review, that went home with him. With close to 30 years in Europe doing Bdx and Italy, a nice way to build a stellar cellar at no cost!
Any of you CA guys ever been in Laube’s home cellar?
I don’t see how that would help. A decent critic ought to be able to work out over the course of the tasting what it is that he’s tasting, but that doesn’t exactly put all the wines on an even footing; it just means that on the later wines he has more information than at first.
Critics are human, just like us. I’ve seen Oz Clarke attempt to identify all 13 of the permitted Chateauneuf du Pape grape types blind in one pass and he got maybe 4 right. At least he had the stones to try.
) publishes an open letter advising pinot producers on what to do, then it becomes an agenda. To me. IMHO. And I begin to wonder how impartial that reviewer will be when faced with wines that go contrary to his stated, public opinion on what is and isn’t appropriate or “best”.![[whistle.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/87d24eb81ec6dc01d84f3d6c19fa9a357e90218e.gif "whistle"){kind=small}
