Before I started my own business, I worked for a distributor that represented Pedroncelli Winery. I really loved both the wines and the people. In the early ‘80s, I conducted a tasting outside of Baltimore with Jim Pedroncelli and Robert Parker. Recent events had me take a look back at Pedroncelli and I came across this:
The 1980 basic Zinfandel reviewed below was in the tasting; I didn’t know that Parker had retasted it almost a decade later.
Here’s the review. I do not include his score. I invite board members to guess what the number might have been, based on the verbiage. Of course subscribers can look it up, but that’s not the point.
“There is a natural tendency to suspect that the soft, forward style of Pedroncelli’s Zinfandels will not age as well as that of the tannic blockbuster Zins. Deeper in color than Pedroncelli’s 1990, with an intense, surprisingly complex bouquet of earth, sweet red fruits, herbs, and spices, this medium to full-bodied Zinfandel offers exciting levels of fruit, plenty of glycerin, and a ripe, heady, lush finish. Additional complexity has clearly emerged in the wine’s evolution. Drink this Zin over the next 4-5 years.”
solid 87 pointer back in the day. Just watched a vid on u tube where a somm? recently tasted a 1980 La Mission Haut Brion that on release Parker felt was “thin and watery”. He gave it a 72 and said drink by 1989. Well here it is 2025 and the wine was nowhere dead, actually had a lovely nose, but was light with a short finish, almost pinot like. Probably most of the AFWE would like it. Rating by the taster…89 points.
There was a mythology that grew up around Bob in the day that he was some sort of superhuman taster with extreme ability to predict wines evolution. I now think more and more he was right guy, right place, right time. Spearheaded a trend toward cleaner, riper wines with fewer obvious flaws. Good for him, hope he enjoys the fruits of his retirement but in retrospect anyone with lots of practice and a decent palate could probably get the same kind of fame. Is William Kelley or Neil Martin any way inferior to Parker? I doubt it…
It is so true that scores are inflated. FWIW, more than often than not I score wines that I drink - I think it is helpful if you have multiple bottles of wine that you intend to age to give it a score as well as an indication of readiness to drink. But it seems like so many of the pundits are off the charts with scores - a 93 or 94 is the kiss of death! The other side of the coin is warmer vintages in general gives winemakers more flexibility than ever to make wines for their audience.
So in the OP it says that the tasting was held in the early 80s but in the tasting note there is reference to a 1990 Pedroncelli? Is there a typo? When was the tasting and how old was the 1980 when tasted?
If the tasting is from the early 90s and the wine was 10+ years old when tasted I’d guess the score was 88-89 points, a pretty good score for the old Parker
I’ll go with 87. When I started reading Parker in the late 80s, 87 was a score for a very good wine. 90 and 91 was a score for a wine that he thought was more than excellent. Scores above 95 were perishingly rare.
