Robert Parker, Wine Industry Hero
Jamie Goode has a piece defending Robert Parker that will surely be unpopular with wine bloggers. I’m personally skeptical of the implied precision of 100 point ratings; I just don’t believe that any wine critic can consistently judge the subjective experience of wine to what is, in effect, a 1% margin of error. (OK, 2%, since the scale is really 50 – 100 points.) But that’s a small-potatoes gripe in the grand scheme of things, and in the grand scheme of things Goode is correct that Parker has been an overwhelmingly positive influence on wine.
Parker’s most significant contribution? Goode puts it like this:
He has also acted as a king-maker: in the past, a winery would have to struggle to establish themselves over many years; high Parker scores can propel a relatively new venture onto the radar screens of collectors straight away.
“King-maker” is a little strong, but a good score from Parker can slingshot a wine to market success. That makes at least theoretically possible a quicker path to profitability for small, quality-oriented wineries, which in turn increases the availability of investment capital for those wineries. The possibility of a high rating has also encouraged a generation of garagiste winemakers to dream big and tug on their bootstraps.
The competitive pressure of wine ratings has lifted the overall quality of even bulk-produced wines. The wine being produced today is top-to-bottom the best wine in the history of mankind. Scientific winemaking, certainly, is the most important reason for that quality improvement, but Parker and his imitators deserve some credit, too. It is because of them that wine marketers have not been so able to hide bad wine behind attractive commercial imagery.
There are, of course, downsides to having a few critics with enormous power; wine styles will tend to congregate in a narrower range. And people routinely misuse the scores, cutting themselves off from excellent wines and excellent values by drawing arbitrary lines. (“I don’t drink any wine under 90 points!”) But those negatives, like my doubts about the precision of the scores, are less significant than the contribution Parker has made.
February 26th, 2010 at 10:34 PM
To paraphrase another writer, Matt Kramer, if you only drink wines based on scores you will miss a lot of really good wine!
February 27th, 2010 at 8:58 AM
Tom,
Can you define both “good” and “bad” wine?
Not being facetious, but those two words are as vague as the difference between 89 and 90.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:12 AM
Like the judge said, ” I know it when I see it.” I taste dozens of wines each week and I am constantly amazed at how much bad wine makes it to market. I am not talking about the sea of bland, ordinary, mediocre stuff. I’m talking about horrible chemical flavors, acids or tannins that render the wine undrinkable, dominant vegetal character that suggests the grapes were shipped elsewhere and the “wine” was made from the stems and leaves. These wines range from $2.99 Romanian plonk to $75 bottlings from the Cote d’Or. At some point in the process someone tasted the wine and yet they still went ahead with the expense of bottling, labeling and shipping the vile stuff. Amazing.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:40 AM
Yeah, I knew that good/bad thing was going to be a problem, wine being the subjective thing that it is. Wally’s “I know it when I see it” formulation works, but I’ll try harder because he already said that.
The short — and unsatisfying answer — is that good wine is wine I like and bad wine is wine I don’t. But even that self-centered definition isn’t satisfying because it’s not really how I look at wine. Interesting/uninteresting is part of it, too. The standard also changes in different contexts. It’s more demanding in a formal tasting, and in some contexts — the lobby bar at a concert intermission, for example — the standard drops to inoffensive/offensive.
Maybe it would be more useful to think of good/bad not as points, but as vectors. Heading toward something pleasing rather than heading away.
The larger point is that the presence of critics creates what economists call upward and downward pressure. While Parker’s dismissal of, say, Franzia white Zin in a box may not condemn the wine to oblivion, it creates downward pressure on the wine’s market possibilities. A good review creates upward pressure. Those pressures have had an influence on the wine business that is, I think, positive.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:51 AM
To me, Wally hits the4 nail when he says,
“I am not talking about the sea of bland, ordinary, mediocre stuff. I’m talking about horrible chemical flavors, acids or tannins that render the wine undrinkable, dominant vegetal character that suggests the grapes were shipped elsewhere and the “wine” was made from the stems and leaves.”
Bad can be determined technically, as can good. But subjectively, those two words have no place in the discussion…unless there is a subjective standard that I haven’t heard about yet.
Re: the “best wine in history,” stuff.
I’d agree, if I knew whether or not the wine throughout history met with the technological status of the time or failed to meet it.
Toyota just proved that with all the “best” technology, you can still fall short–and hundreds of wines each year come across my lips that simply fall short.
In short–how’s that for a segue–sweepingly grand statements about Parker or about wine make no sense.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:52 AM
Oh, I forgot to say: aesthetic criticism = Y-A-W-N!
February 27th, 2010 at 10:08 AM
That today’s wine is better, top-to-bottom, than wine in the past has nothing to do with “meeting the standard of the time.” I’m comfortable saying, for example, that even a bad dentist today is better than the best dentist of the Dark Ages, even though the former underperforms relative to his peers. Whatever your theoretical belief, which one would you chose to fill you next cavity?
The standard for wine in the time of Jefferson, about which I happen to know some stuff, was pretty low. The objective evidence of that is that wine was most prized when it was young and sweet, because it soured so quickly. Also, there were no shipping methods available that would meet a modern quality standard. Hence, the popularity of Madeira, which is already baked and only improved spending weeks in the hold of a ship traveling through the tropics.
If I’m understanding what you’re saying, it’s basically that there is no meaning to good or bad and thus there is no meaning to criticism. I disagree with that. However, even if you’re right about there being no real meaning to good or bad, criticism will still have an impact because so many people pay attention to it. For all practical purposes, Parker and the others could be choosing “good” wine by lottery and, from an economic standpoint, it would have the same effect.
February 27th, 2010 at 11:20 AM
Tom,
No, I didn’t say that there is no meaning to “bad” or “good” wine. I said that in order to claim a wine “bad” or “good” it must be measured against a standard of some sort–the personal palates of each individual is not a standard; it’s merely a preference.
Would you like my story of the wine that received accolades from a famous critic that was seen–twice, for separate vintages–fermenting on the retail shelves where I was forced to sell it?
Wines from that same producer often varied from drinkable to volatile, but they were given accolades anyway. Technically, the wines were generally “bad.”
From the standpoint of “good” or “bad” I’d say during TJ’s lifetime, maybe, but in the 20-21st century it’s a bad thing to have wines of accolades fermenting on retail shelves.
“…wine was most prized when it was young and sweet, because it soured so quickly.”
True, to an extent. The wines that were consumed before they turned sour were considered to have met the standard of the time and, I suppose, were considered to have lived up to expectations. We’d also have to explain why TJ laid some of his wines down, but anything we come up with would be conjecture.
PS: The story of Madeira in ships is suspect. If you want, we can discuss that offline, as it has nothing to do with “bad” or “good” wine and all to do with marketing.
February 27th, 2010 at 11:33 AM
Also, TJ praised Catawba from York, Pennsylvania–what does that say about the times???
February 27th, 2010 at 11:43 AM
include me in the Madeira discussion if you would. I’ve had Madeiras going back to 1861 and have always been intrigued with wine and food that is created by controlled spoilage.
February 27th, 2010 at 11:57 AM
Jefferson was an incurable optimist about American wine, as he was about America itself. He took Catawba and Scuppernong wine to France to impress the French, who were not impressed.
It is worth noting, per Catawba, that the first American wine to crack the European market was sparkling Catawba made in, of all places, Cincinnati. It was all the rage in France during the 1850s and ’60s, perhaps due to its own inherent qualities and perhaps because phylloxera had severely limited the supply of French wines.
February 27th, 2010 at 12:10 PM
Tom,
Sparkling Catawba was all the rage because, well, it was good
Have your read this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560258713/sr=8-1/qid=1144266645/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5056286-8868854?redirect=true&_encoding=UTF8
Wally,
Controlled spoilage indeed. There’s evidence that the wines of Madeira were produced under high heat well before the producers found a market in the Indies. The ship story was likely fabricated by a romantic wine salesman…
February 27th, 2010 at 1:16 PM
I haven’t read that book but I just ordered it. I’m not expecting much because I hear the author is kind of a jerk.
As for the Madeira evidence, there are numerous references to the use of Madeira as ballast that are more-or-less contemporary with Jefferson. That doesn’t mean its apocryphal, but I’m not sold on the salesman story yet, either. Maybe it’ll be in the book.
February 27th, 2010 at 2:44 PM
Tom,
Hint: page 122; Vinho do Sol.
Signed,
The Jerk
February 27th, 2010 at 6:04 PM
I look forward to it.
February 27th, 2010 at 6:27 PM
I also ordered the book. Had I thought to look at who the author was, I might not have ordered it through ABEbooks…
February 27th, 2010 at 8:11 PM
You know my thoughts on this guy!