Perhaps inadvertently, you touched on what I believe to have been the biggest problem. You referred to his inability to “take opposition kindly.” It is a shame that it took the form of “opposition” and not merely disagreement, but I think you captured it. It is a shame that he came out gunning in stating his opinion, and it is a shame (although perhaps predictable) that people reacted by coming at him with guns blazing. They trolled each other mercilessly to the point that the board became a disagreeable place to visit.
But he and Mark were responsible for WB, perhaps in the same way Stalin was responsible for NATO. So all’s well, huh?
I will never forget his post about Valtellina wines. Robert Rogness sent him a case of wines from Wine Expo. Wines that I have had before, and for the record, I love Valtellina. I wish I had the quote, but he basically trashed every wine and in a very unkind way. He did use the phrase “bat shit” to describe one of the wines. It was shocking at the time and I wondered, “why so angry”?
It was not long after that when I stopped by Roberto’s shop while I was in California on business. I had him create a “similar” case to what he had provided to Parker. A couple of the wines Bob got were not available.
I opened several of them while on my trip, and they were 50/50 of delicious and utter garbage. I checked six for my flight home, and tasted them over the next several months. Results were similar - some wonderful and some disgusting or at best puzzling. I should try to find my old notes.
Was he actually thin skinned? Or got he tired due to the daily attacks he faced on the board he financed? I guess it is difficult to separate the one from the other. His tone was a bit aggressive sometimes. But one thing is crystal clear – he was not alone in this manner.
BTW: if memory serves me well he dreamed of a house in the CDP area? Does he own one? At least he has the money to do so.
Neal had it right. There were a lot of people who disagreed with him about wine, and he seemed to take it personally. Look above at Greg’s note about his response to Roberto. One might also note his shameful revenge review of Edmond St. Johns, which was essentially just a nyah, nyah to all the people who had praised the wine on the board. Yes, I would say he was thin skinned, and, in the last couple of years, imperious, dismissive and ill-tempered quite frequently.
For the record, I was a subscriber from the late 80s to the early 00s, when, by slow degrees I found either I no longer shared his tastes or his tastes had changed (or perhaps a bit of both). I really wasn’t bothered by the fact that I could no longer follow his reviews. There are lots of reviewers of all kinds I don’t particularly listen to. That’s why it’s good to have a lot of different reviewers. And I was never kicked off his board until it expelled non-subscribers–self evidently to create an homogeneous discourse, justified, as it always is, by the claim that this will create a more civil discourse. So I don’t have the animus some here have toward him. Indeed, my original post was justifying why he could well be warm and charming in person and not come across that way in his postings.
I live five months a year in a town close to CDP, which I visit regularly to buy wine. I have not heard that Parker is living there now. Of course, he isn’t a usual topic of conversation, so I might not.
Yes, the ESJ notes were pretty clearly a reaction to people praising Steve’s wines vs some of the big bruisers Parker was championing. It seemed very petty- while WA had a policy of not publishing scores under 85, he gave a couple of 83s or 84s. Just for the record I had my last bottle of the '04 Rocks and Gravel ("low brow version of a French Cotes du Rhone) a couple years ago and it was delicious, A bottle of '05 Wylie-Fenaughty (“like a declassified N. Rhone” “little weight or depth, and virtually no finish”) a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it (especially the long classy finish).
A little birdie told me he went on vacation with Manfred Krankl…Bob has a bad back and Mannfred was recovering from his motorcycle injury. That was a year ago.
I may not have agreed with his palate post mid nineties, but I would never have thought of him doing something intellectually dishonest. I always found him to be a straight shooter, and the low scores suggest that he just did not get the wines.