Is RP's palate burned out?

WINE TALK
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At this point I really wish David Shildknecht was writing elsewhere. I’ve only ever had a print subscription and find myself
barely reading entire issues, California, Australia, Bordeaux. Burgundy coverage is appallingly irregular. He’s the only writer
there I enjoy reading and can rely upon.

Besides, isn’t this endless march of notes and scores model getting a little old? The tasting note has never really succeeded in actually doing what it is intended to do, but it’s a wonderful conceit. Like so many ideas that started out as solutions, over time they transition into problems. What was meant to guide consumers away from lousy wines has now been almost entirely co-opted into a marketing and sales tool.

Generations and times are changing, wine criticism needs to innovate, what worked in the 20th century has run its course.

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I think there is a genuine issue of palate burn out or overload, but I think it goes back a long, long way.

I first subscribed to WA in the early 80s and when I first began using the 100-point scale in my own notes, I consistently found my scores very close to Parker’s, particularly on Bordeaux and Rhones. I noticed the correlation dropping off in the late 80s, however, around the time that I started hearing from friends in the trade that he was tasting 50 and 70 wines at a sitting. It was also in that period that his palate started shifting noticeably toward power wines. It made completely sense. How the hell can you hope to appreciate anything subtle if it’s wedged into a flight of 50 wines?

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Welcome John!

I don’t necessarily agree with your post, but over here you’re entitled to your opinion. [berserker.gif]

My understanding is that Parker has tasted as many as 100 wines/day since the beginning.

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Ken, I have tasted numerous vintages oF Wines in Oak and some vintages are very tannic. I never approached 100 a day but in some years on the left bank 25-30 wines were the norm. I always had some palate shock after my week full of tastings. It is not as easy on the tongue as you might think.
[shrug.gif]

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I have tasted wines (not all) that RP has given big scores to and he said they would be at their peak drinking window down the road several years. When I’ve tried some of them young they were more enjoyable than they were 4 or 5 years later, some had turned into high alcohol prune juice. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Do you think they are aging as he said they would ? Of course I dont’ think he thought the whole market for these wines would have gone to hell in a hand basket either.

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John,

Good to see you here finally!

Carrie,

I think Parker’s reviews from 10+ years ago are very accurate for aging purposes, more recently, he suffers from “Jay Miller disease.”

Even Pierre Rovani said, during a Remoissenet seminar that I attended this year, “If the wine has concentration, it is a great wine.”

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At the risk of being labled an apologist (which I am not), the whole Parker bashing is tiresome. He is but one critic, and you either agree with him or you don’t. Some wines I find we line up very closely on. Others, not so much. It doesn’t mean that his palate is “burned out” or wrong, just that we like different things. Doesn’t seem so hard to understand.

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I don’t dispute that at all. I know even if I spit, I get palate fatigue after 20 or 30 wines max. I was only making the point that Parker’s regimen hasn’t changed over the years. He certainly doesn’t taste more wines in a day than he used to. It might even be less.

But RP is the Chuck Norris of wine tasting. The rules that apply to you and me do not apply to him! [dance2.gif]

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Is his palate burned out? Absolutely it is and it’s just natural that it would be. You can apply the following to anything physical we may be doing…

Bombarding your palate with hundreds of barrel samples, young wines, tannic, gigantic fruit bombs = stress, adaptation, resistance, exhaustion

Stress is a popular topic these days, the subject of innumerable magazine articles and a favorite at cocktail parties. Because stress is discussed so often in so many different circles, it’s bound to be misrepresented and misunderstood. For a precise definition I quote Hans Selye from his fantastic book The Stress of Life: Stress is the common denominator of all adaptive reactions in the body. Further on Selye gets more specific: Stress is manifested by a specific syndrome which consists of all the nonspecifically induced changes within a biologic system. That means that stress has specific characteristics and composition but no particular cause.

The human body is exposed to myriad stressors, or stress-producing agents, day in and day out. These include cold and hot weather, emotional stimuli, viral infections and muscular activity, just to mention a few. So, while all of these things can induce a state of stress, thus making causation nonspecific, the form it takes is always very specific.

The body’s specific reaction to stress Selye termed the general adaptation syndrome, or GAS. The GAS consists of three distinct stages: a general alarm reaction, a stage of resistance and, if the stress persists, a stage of exhaustion. Stress is present during all three of these stages, but its manifestations, or symptoms, change during the evolution of the syndrome. Most of the stressors that act upon us result in changes corresponding to the first and second stages of the GAS at first they alarm us and then we get used to them. Only very severe stress leads to exhaustion and, if prolonged, eventually death.

Selye goes on to illustrate activities that go through the three stages and concludes by saying, "Most human activities go through the three stages: We first have to get into the swing of things, then we get pretty good at them, but finally we tire of them."

The Nature of Adaptation

Most of us have had the experience of lying in the hot summer sun in order to get a tan. Though our reason for tanning is a cosmetic one, nature had something else in mind. The process of tanning is an example of adaptation designed to protect us from the stress to our tissues caused by ultraviolet light.

The adaptive process, then, is essentially defensive in nature. And the degree to which the adaptation is stimulated is directly proportional to the intensity of the stressor. Have you ever attempted to get a tan in the middle of winter? You can lie in the sun for hours on end with little or no response. This is because the sun is not overhead during the winter and hence not very intense. Even repeated exposures of long duration will stimulate little response.

What a difference exposure to the hot midsummer sun directly overhead makes. The body’s response is immediate and dramatic. Initially there is a reddening and inflammation of the skin. This, of course, corresponds to the alarm stage of Selye’s GAS. During the alarm stage the body gains time for the development and mobilization of specific adaptive phenomena in the directly affected region. In this case the body mobilizes its store of melanin, or skin pigment, in readiness for further exposure to the sun’s intense ultraviolet rays. If exposure is repeated, adaptation moves into the second stage, the stage of resistance. It’s during this stage that overcompensation in the form of a tan takes place. The energy involved in the adaptive process, or adaptation energy, as Selye refers to it, is limited. If we prolong exposure to the intense sun, we will swiftly enter the third stage of the GAS, exhaustion.

In the stage of exhaustion the body’s local reserves of adaptation energy are used up and the deep reserves of adaptation energy cannot be made available readily enough. Instead of overcompensation with a tan we decompensate and lose tissue as blisters develop, then burn. If exposure is of long enough duration, death will supervene. So, up to a very definite point in time, exposure to the stress of the sun will result in overcompensation in the form of a tan, and if exposure exceeds that point, the body loses its ability to overcompensate and heads instead in the other direction and decompensates. To stimulate the adaptive process, then, stress must be intense, but exposure to such stress must be brief and infrequent so as to not use up the reserves of the adaptation energy that allow for overcompensation.

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Max

You get that BS off of wkipedia?

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[good.gif]

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Dan you have been bashing Mao so much that you are starting to think and sound like him. [beee.gif]

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Bashing Mao or Max?

I like bashing Max, he can take it.

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Nope…from my days of Heavy Duty weight training with Mike Mentzer. He was a little nutty (probably steroids and losing to Arnold in the '80 Mr. Olympia) but his knowledge was always impressive.

I know…a little too deep for you…I’m sorry [1928_middle_finger.gif]

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No, particularly if you agree that one point makes a trend! :smiley: Drinking a 2001 Ridge Monte Bello for dinner tonight, very nice wine, RP 95+, and think it is rightfully in the ballpark of the score . . .

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Is he right on some wines sure. His scores of Ridge Monte Bello would be even more impressive if he tasted and reported on them regularly.
[foilhat.gif]

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In all fairness, find it interesting to drink wines knowing the Parker rating, and giving it a personal sanity check that it meets +/- 3 points of his rating. What specific wines do you think Parker has misrated +/- 3 points? Could probably come up with HUNDREDS from Wine Spectator, but Parker has a palate I personally respect and not a lot come to mind (with all due respect to the Berserker board). Your suggestions would be interesting so I could try them and report back? Always looking for an excuse to drink wine!! ha

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I think in bordeaux he can still do the trick, although he favours wines that seem over the top to me

I do not agree at all when it comes to the rhone valley, being it south or north

I do not taste california, nor do i have access nor interest, so no opinion on these

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Worked out with Mentzer?

He was always a bit out there - losing the rigged '80 Olympia just put him over the edge.

I tried the “Rest/Pause” method for a while - didn’t work for me.

Both him and his brother Ray passed away due to steroid related effects.



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The problem with giving anyone an unblemished mindset when tasting after reading their score is that you do not go into the wine with an open and unbiased mind. I rarely ever checked WA scores before I poured and drank my first glass. I found it interesting to compare what I found in the glass and what WA’s likely preferable sample scored. That may be why I am more critical of the “palate” than you. If you have blind faith in his or anyone’s judgment that will have a huge bearing on your own perception. There are too many wines to even try to account for more than +/-3 points in my view.
Napa, N and S Rhone, Aus and many right bank Bords come to mind