Jeff - the '78 La Louviere has been a very controversial wine with Parker followers for many years. I’ve boughten and sold it commercially over the years many times, and it, like many of the '78 Graves/Pessac-Leognan wines was hard core right from the start. Also because the '79 was absolutely delicious right out of the shoot, many considered it a superior wine (as did I at the time). In 20 years, people will be waxing poetic about the '78 La Mission as one of the great wines of the vintage, but it’s still hard as nails today. The '78 Haut Brion was always lacking something to me.
The '78 La Louviere always had the stuffing, it just needed to grow up. I still have quite a few half bottles left, and it’s drinking like chocolate milk today.
The only thing that makes sense is that “in decline” was confused / interchanged with “shut down”, but a professional like Parker wouldn’t make that mistake, right?
Dennis - it’s extremely hard to tell the difference between shut down and “in decline” or drying out. In the mid 1980s while a retailer in Chicago - I dumped a whole bunch of '78 Bordeaux because I thought they were drying out. Canon-La Gaffeliere, Batailly, Nenin and Lynch Bages were just a few of them. At seven years of age, they were thin, with little to no bouquet, I would have bet the farm they were all going down fast. I still cringe with every single tasting note I read of how those wines have blossomed over the years.
I agreed with you, and just bolded the relevant sentence. I remember you and that excellent magnum of 1970 Giscours which you disliked. I gave up on you then.
I will be having (assuming it’s not corked) one of the “superstars of the vintage” per Mr. P, the Domaine de Chevalier 78 this weekend. For whatever reason, he liked this a lot more than the Louviere.
I have had a few bottles like this (usually wines plucked cheaply off of winebid) and my results have been similar to yours. The way I have viewed it is this: Many if not most well made Bordeaux wines improve with age (or the score increases with age if you want to put it that way).
An 83 point wine is a good wine, and therefore well made. It should improve with age, and it doesn’t surprise me that it is still good, maybe even better, decades after it was predicted to be ‘in decline’.
It makes it nice and cheap to pick up these same bottles from winebid. Heaven forbid RMP retested it and scored it 90 points or something. You’d have to pay 4 times the price to get it.
I have really liked the DDCs from that era, and had many delightful 78s and 81s, which even recently were not hugely expensive. Thank goodness that “superstars of the vintage” regularly received less than 95 points from the once not so generous Mr. P.
Robert Parker is to wine as Jordan is to basketball - historically the most important person ever to his respective endeavor. I’m sure there’s some history buff who will argue without this Pope or that country’s leader, wine would have never have been made in France. Still, shitting on one Parker review is like shitting on one of Jordan’s shots or one of his bad games. Who liked watching Jordan play for Washington? Almost no one. So what if Parker MAY not have the chops he once had. He’s still the greatest most important person in the (modern) history of wine. Teach me something and tell me how I’m wrong. This isn’t a critique of the OP, just of Parker-hating in general.
There was no Parker hating in my post or throwing shade on his legacy. I think you misread it. I said he was off on this one. There is a difference, no?
It seems that in this thread as in a lot of others only a black and white sight is possible.
Parker was the most influential voice in the wine scene of the last 25 years. No doubt. He was a talented taster. No doubt. But he was not perfect. Nobody is. And it´s no sacrilege to name it.
He startet his professional career in 1978. In 1984 he thought the then slim 1978 La Louviere is in decline. He was wrong and I guess due to a lack of experience. Experience is very important when it comes to the longevity and aging curve of wine. He could´t know anything after 6 years in business. That is totally understandable and logic IMO.
There is certainly some truth in talking about the importance of Parker, and his biggest contribution was demystifying wine, and bringing it to a much wider audience. But there are crucial differences to the analogy to Michael Jordan. Jordan may have stretched the boundaries but operated within the game, Parker changed the wine game, and for some time, it was played very much to the Parker’s rules. Some things were beneficial, popularizing wine and making it easy to understand, urging cleanliness in cellars, bringing down some of the higher yields etc. But some were not; and the wines he championed, were bigger, more alcoholic, sweeter and formulaic.
This became even more pronounced in the late 1990s, and I think it is fair to say, the wines were increasingly made to his formula, not surprising, as the economics of his point system made it worthwhile. St. Emilion and Chateauneuf du Pape are good examples of regions that have suffered as a result.
So yes, he is incredibly important, but whereas Jordan contribution made the game far greater, I think Parker’s legacy is more mixed.
He started writing in 1978 but he fell in love with wine long before. Beside six year is sufficient to have the good basis. The drinking window is always tricky and often very subjective.
I really loved what you wrote , but could you elaborate on what you mean here? I’m not certain I agree …I have no problem moving CdP’s or St. Emilion wines currently
here I have a different view. A wine that´s in decline 1984 should certainly be completely dead in 2016 and not consumable anymore. So this is not only a matter of different preferences.
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