Good question, I realize I didn’t really address the “why”…
I think for Burgundy/CA, Galloni is too tolerant to very ripe and oaky wines. What’s worse is that I often find it hard to understand from his notes which wines fall into this category. Given two wines from the same producer, I usually agree with him which one is “better” or scores higher. But I find it difficult comparing two wines made in different styles based on his notes alone.
In Barolo/Nebbiolo, I believe his palate is a bit more traditional leaning, while he accepts some modern wines if they are very well made. That makes it more predictable to me and aligns quite well with what I like as well.
I’m no fan of Galloni’s in general, but I find it very strange that he seldom if ever mentions when a Barolo or Barbaresco shows new oak, which some do rather conspicuously. For a lot of us, that’s a crucial factor. This consistent omission is odd given that this was the region he focused on in his early days of wine writing.
Parker was writing before palate preferences became such a “political” issue (which happened in part because of him), so he was always very straightforward about his preference for lush hedonistic extracted wines. That was useful in understanding what you are getting. Now that preference is somewhat unfashionable, so critics tend to conceal it by giving lip service to other values like freshness or balance. I posted on the critical writing thread about how half the tasting notes nowadays feature a long list of descriptors of a lush, jammy wine but then hasten to assure you it is balanced and fresh and has great acidity. It actually makes it harder to figure out the person’s palate.
And then there’s Neal Martin. He is so artful, balanced, and diplomatic in his writing that I don’t have a great sense of what his actual preferences are, beyond “good wine”.
You’re right and I probably find him useful in Piedmont because I know what I like and use him more as a guideline, but really I usually buy the same producers and try a few new ones based on his or others recommendations.
Thinking about it a bit more generally, the reason I like Raynolds on Rhone/Beaujolais or Galloni on Piedmont is that I’m somewhat familiar with these regions and know what I usually like/buy. Raynolds underrates Lapierre or Metras and overrates Thivin and Coudert (for my palate) and I know that, so I can adjust. But really, for those regions, I don’t really rely on scores that much. However, the problem is regions I’m not familiar with, where someone else’s opinion (critic, CT, forum) is more valuable to me (and hence the thread).
I’m not subscribing to Gillman, but I get his scores through CT. I appreciate his “honesty”, but his scores alone are not reliable, especially for low scoring wines. E.g. he scores 01 and 88 Yquem at 90 or some Chaves in the 80s, which doesn’t make any sense to me…
FWIW, I recently looked at the correlation of my notes to some of the critics. It’s pretty much all over the place
For Burgundy I value William Kelley, Stephen Tanzer, and Neal Martin. I also subscribe to Meadows and I get value from his tasting notes and drinking windows but find his scores of limited value — he too tightly follows the AOC hierarchy.
I agree with the comment on Antonio Galloni. He is one of the better Piemonte critics but his tasting notes often fail to address the obvious questions such as ripeness or oak treatment.
John Gilman is the exact opposite: Amazing notes but his scores and opinions need to be taken with a grain of salt. I love the detail in his notes — I always learn something new — but his scores are all over the place. He often knocks old wines that don’t show exactly as he expects e.g. the Chave comment by AndyK.
For Galloni, I can’t remember where I heard it (I think it was one of the IDTT podcasts) but he said he tries to avoid flavor descriptors since everyone’s perceptions of these are different and focus more on the quality of the wine in terms of its structure. Whether perception of ripeness or oak is included in that I’m not sure.
For Gilman, in his IDTT interview he mentions his personal emphasis on typicity when reviewing a wine or giving scores.
I care only about Piedmont for the most part, and I find that I almost always agree with Galloni on his relative scoring of the wine, with the exception of a few wines where I don’t like the style but he doesnt seem to mind as much, i.e. some of the oakier wines like Domenico Clerico where he gave very high scores to the 99, 04, etc, and I don’t like those wines at all. I think he has done the best job of any critic I can tell of calling out some wineries where quality went down, even if they were ones he liked quite a lot and even if it has hurt his ability to taste those wines. For example, he’s clearly called out the drop in quality at Giacosa, which I unfortunately have to agree with having tasted a few of the post-2008 wines - in contrast, many other critics seem to be giving the exact same, very high scores to the Giacosa wines of recent vintages.
Off the top of my head, it appears that your correlation with Galloni may simply be due to the fact that you’re both generous scorers. I count only two AG scores under 90 in this data set, and very few 90s and 92s. If I’m reading the chart right, your scores are similar. You’d probably need to somehow normalize each person’s score to get a more meaningful correlation.
Who’s the other person you correlate with, DS? Schildknecht?
I don’t pay attention to most of them. But you might want to see how our friend Eric Guido is doing. He’s a careful taster and at least you’ll know his thoughts on a wine.
Same with Mark Squires. He’s a very careful taster and he actually seems to enjoy a fairly broad variety of wines.
Michael Shachner used to do a pretty good job with Spain although I haven’t read much by him for a long time.
Overall though, I haven’t paid close enough attention to any of them to characterize them by a single sentence. Could be fun though - Light and fruity, lean and mean, heavy and clumsy . . .
I do score generously, but this is also only a subset of wines where I could find matching scores from at least one critic in addition to CT. Also note that critics and I give full points, so the fact that CT has so many data points is because they are averages, making the cluster look bigger.
But anyway, I think all this chart adds to the conversation, is that correlation in general is not great (looking at points only).
It’s ironic to me that, at a time when we need less of them, there is actually more of them. The democratization of the world of wine has been here for quite some time, with so much incredible information on the Internet, where access to information is no longer through these once-gatekeepers. Until William became a member of our community and a known quantum, I have not subscribed to any of the major services for 15+ years. I think this website alone offers so much, almost more than I need. At the risk of leaving off some influential tasters that I pay attention to, when you read notes from Berserkers like Mark G and Keith L on Bordeaux, Jayson on Beaujolais and Riesling, John Morris, Alan R, Greg K and Fu on Rhône - and sheez, just about anything A So writes - and gosh I hope I don’t offend by not mentioning some folks whose opinions I truly value - it begs the question regarding how much more info you really need.
But, I do read some critics and wine influencers. I tease Leve quite a bit, but his website on Bordeaux is the best reference on the web, and his notes tell you what you need to know about the wine. Panos’ postings on Bordeaux are always a worthy read. Gilman is quirky but damn is he spot on with Chinon and Bordeaux. JLL is excellent on Northern Rhône. My palate seems to align pretty well with William across the board, especially in Beaujolais, though he does like 2018 a lot more than I do.
Now all that said, when I get recos from Neal, Howard, Julian, Mark G on Bordeaux, I buy it. Don’t even blink an eye. Which goes back to my central theme, we have found, and built, a special place here.
The thing about Galloni is that he seems to like well made wines regardless of style, and so he does not say much about style. This makes it very hard to tell if a 96 from Galloni is going to be a wine I like, or a wine I hate. I will know that he likes it, but not much else.
As for palate alignment, I agree almost 100% with David Schildknecht. I can’t understand why I do, because I cannot comprehend his notes, but if he gives a 95 I will definitely like the wine for some reason.
For Burgundy there was no one better than good old Clive Coates. Parker himself was all things considered not bad either. Even the late great Charles Rousseau was in praise of him calling his follow-up Rovani “Un Petit Parker”. Of course we know what sort of wines Parker prefered. Very concentraded and dark extracted wines. I much prefer NEIL MARTIN however. Alan Meadows is very comprehensive but his writing style is a bit boring to read. And for a Burgundy fanatic like me Steen Öhman and Sarah Marsh are also worth considering. William Kelley is very good but then again Wine Advocate tries to promote all the wines in the world. Far too many non-interesting articles for me and too little on Burgundy… So I stopped subscribing.
Thanks for the kind words, though I’d query whether we publish too little on Burgundy! I author around 4,000 reviews per year, in around a dozen articles. In Q1 of 2021, Burgundy tasting notes made up 50% of everything we published. And I am regularly visiting new producers who haven’t been reviewed before, focussing on regions and appellations that have been neglected, etc.
