Panos and Chris,
Thank you for chiming in as you are two actual critics who I respect and listen to intently and appreciate the professional feedback. Panos, I respect your guarded approach to scoring as well as the “beta” you provide in your scoring distributions. Chris, I also enjoy reading your scores as you provide a decidedly different spin on many of the wines that are traditionaly categorized in the normative hierarchy and your palate has consistently shown a classical approach to wines, eschewing manipulation, a trait I highly cherish.
If I offended your work by calling the corpus of barrel scores “BS”, I sincerely apologize. That was not my intent and perhaps shock factor was an intrinsic part of my rhetoric.
I’d like to retort a few points though:
-I am indeed a firm believer of the importance and prominence of terroir. Once Bordeaux comes to maturity, a lot of the make-up and dressing that can obfuscate your view on a wine in its youth is usually stripped. If the wine is of substance and retains harmony and balance, I believe the terroir comes through very clearly. Panos, I can distinctly reminisce on the singular smoke quality of that 78 Haut Brion, or the exuberance of the olive component seen in the infantile 98 Figeac and the ethereal aged 82 Figeac. I’ve had a handful of 61 Bordeaux and while Domaine de Cheavlier’s was very nice, it didn’t quite stackup to some of the prodigious efforts of the vintage which I’ve been fortunate enough to taste. There is no doubt, the top wines produce ageworthy splendors that often vindicate their status over time. These are the wines I want to focus on drinking. I open young Bordeaux of substance mostly for the academic experience, to attempt to understand how the wine fits into its family lineage and when it will progress to an optimal drinking window.
However, when we taste barrel samples, which I admit not to have a wide breadth of experience with, can we truly taste the terroir of Latour versus GPL? I tend to find that extremely hard. I can sense concentration, balance and purity, some basic complexity…but not much else. As such, when we taste barrels, do we consistently rate Latour higher than GPL because of what’s in the glass or is it our pre-conceived notion that Latour will be amazing in 30 years? I think the later factor is a huge component in how barrel sample scores come out for most of the professional critics. It is almost a direct threat to their credibility to rate the lesser growth higher than the firsts, because in time, that terroir will likely shine making their objectivity look foolish…but is the critic being honest with his or her evaluation of what’s truly in the glass? As it is never done blind, I don’t think we can make that statement, and that was the point I was attempting to drive the most.
Cheers to you both and do keep up the good work,
Faryan