Steve Plotnicki

Yes but if we were to analyze the difference when the two vintages were plotted, we would find the differences to be microscopic (a small pun.) It's the practice of reviewers awarding points to this difference that distorts how much is one and how much is the other and seems to place much more weight on the subjective component then is really the case. I guess I am saying that if wine was sold with a bunch of scientific data on the label, the types of arguments that often break out among wine collectors would be tempered to a certain extent. But when a reviewer like Robert Parker puts a 5 point difference to a .001 difference in residual sugar, it's a distortion of the data. It's as if he said, it's worth paying $50 more a bottle for .001 more sugar. In my experience, that is where the difference of opinion that Baphie raised occurs. And that is where wine appreciation switches from a science to an art.

Awbrig - I use that expression when it's appropriate and I only offer it as a high compliment. It has to do with the type of stature one exudes more then anything else. Like Caterine Deneuve dressed can appear as handsome but Audrey Hepburn was not likely to be described that way.

Marcus has said this all in a nice and simple manner (I wish I could do that.) How can there be better quality and wine be subjective at the same time? Those two concepts are in conflict. Once you accept the notion of quality, how does one insist that it is subjective?

Tommy - Actually in your desperation to make me just like you, you didn't read what I wrote. I asked her what would happen if we asked them to do that? We weren't really interested in having them do that and in fact Mrs. P was kicking me under the table to not have them do that. Now, if the waitress said something that piqued our interest we wouldn't have put it through a thorough discussion on the merits. But if we were really interested in a chef's menu, and she wasn't getting it, I assure you that I would have asserted myself to the point where I would have asked for a manager, or even Molto himself could come and discuss it with us. But you're welcome to your difficulties in these situations. Just try not to include me in your own mishegas. Nick - Please do not try and characterize my editorializing of the interaction as rudeness on my part or anyone elses. You have no idea what you are talking about. This was about the waitress not getting it. Maybe it's because they don't do that at Babbo. Or maybe because she was new. I took it to be that they have mechanized their process and this doesn't come up very often. Because when we were probing her, she had two ways to go. What she did was one choice, or she could have alerted a superior to come to our table and suss out what we were after. The difference goes to the level of service they offer there. One waiter's troublemaker is another waiter's discening diner. What would have made us all happy is if she had said to us, I'm not really understanding what you are asking me but if you explain it better I will be happy to see if we can do it for you. But that wasn't an arrow in her quiver. Now I'm not necessarily faulting the restaurant for it and that is why I didn't raise it in my original review. But since Tommy asked I relayed what happened. And I guess it is indicative of how much extra effort one has to go through to get them to cook you a special meal. I think in general they are too busy their and a bit overwhelmed to begin with. So the types of requests I am describing might not be viewed will great enthusiasm by the kitchen. Fat Guy - I can see the potential for having the best Italian meal in the U.S. there. But my underlying question is, what does that mean? It doesn't necessarily get you to "best or favorite restaurant in NYC" which is what you hear fairly often. As for USC, I was only comparing the lamb chops scottaditaa which is on the menu at both restaurants.

All reviewers do is guess the spec from tasting the wines. If you read Burghound about Burgundy, you will see the above taken to its personification. A reviewer who is buried in the details of the specs and correlates them to what his palate detected. You don't get into subjectivity until you get into a range of acceptability. For example, Rovani trashed the '93 vintage and recently scored it a '68 because he thinks the wines are astringent and tough. And he likes the '97 vintage because the wines are so huge. I'm not sure of his vintage rating but let's call it 93 for arguments sake. Now if an oenologist were to plot out the vintages side by side according to spec, you would find different characteristics to the vintages. None of that is subjective. It only gets subjective when someone says, I prefer this level of sugar and another says I prefer a different level. But where it appears to be totally subjective is when someone says that the difference in residual sugar is worth a 25 point difference on the rating scale! If wine consumers were predominantly scientists, selling wine via an analytical approach through mass specing, that would have become the standard way of communicating greatness. But wine is a consumable with an aesthetic component so it is written of like it's a quasi commodity-quasi work of art. I find that the issue of drinking old world versus new world wines revoles around getting the opportunity to taste the seminal wines from various regions of the world. For me, I was fortunate to attend mass tastings where on difference occassions they served 1961 Latour, 1983 Cheval Blanc and 1990 Chave. Those wines were lynchpins in my palate development and they allowed me to search for wines that were derivitive of the characteristics they had shown. And this transformation is a never ending process as a bottle of 1978 Conterno Barolo Monfortino a year ago allowed me to gain an appreciation for Barolos that I never had before. I agree with you that diversity is good for a market. Unforttunately, quite often diversity ends up with a market that is even more limited then one that isn't diverse. See the California wine industry. Because while it is great that there are Ca. cult wines, they have obliterated the old school style of winemaking which turned out some very good wines over the years. I have some magnums of 1978 Mondavi cab reserve which are terrific to drink. But you can't get wine like that anymore because diversioty resulted in an efficient market and efficiency means redundancy. The Jayer at Craft was astounding but not particularly what wets my personal whistle. But it was one of the purest and most intense wines I have had in quite some time. I'm just not the biggest Echezeaux fan. I'd take a Bonnes Mares over an Echezeaux any day.

GFY Tommy. Actually we did that at the beginning of the meal. I asked the waitress what would happen if we just told them to cook for us. She thought this to mean that they could serve us the printed tasting menu. When we sort of grimaced at that suggestion, she then said that she would be happy to order our meal for us. At that point we dismissed her because she didn't get what we were talking about and they obviously do not have a tradition of doing that there. In the end it didn't really matter because we didn't really want to do it, but we wanted to find out how they would respond to the request. Later on before we ordered the waitress came back and asked how she did with her explanation and I told her "not good." This response on my part provoked a frown on her part but didn't provoke any inquisitiveness as to exactly what it was I was interested in. As someone said later, she reminded them of a cocktail waitress at a hotel in the midwest. Later on in the evening, Susan said that if we were known to Mario or the restaurant, there is no way we would have been served cold lamb chops. And she is probably right. And the funny thing is that as we were walking out and getting our coats, all of a sudden Molto Mario appeared at the Maitre 'd's stand literally standing three feet away from where we were. It was the first time we had seen him all evening. I have no way of verifying if this is true but, based on articles she has read about MM, he had come out specifically to see who had sent the lamb chops back. But none of this has anything to do with my original question which was I don't know what the fuss is all about? I would probably still be asking it if everything went perfectly. I can tell what those lamb chops would taste like if they chose the best cuts and cooked them to perfection. They would very good instead of being on the mediocre side. But they would certainly not make me consider Babbo to be an extraordinary place. At best, they are marginally better then the lamb chops scottaditta they serve at the Union Square Cafe. More interesting flavors and they are in sort of a Sicilian/North African marinade and spicing routine. But you could go to a Middle Eastern restaurant in one of the boroughs and by accident run across that marinade. Susan, keen observer that she is, thought that people's view of Babbo might be distorted by the fact that they like Italian food and the choices in NYC are so pisspoor and Babbo is definitely a cut or two above especially in terms of creativity.

And I used to enjoy eating at Po more then eating at Babbo. I can recall a great mixed sausage platter that had accompaniments of various mustards and relishes which were terrific. It was a great mix of Italian and modrn tastes. And while I see the potential for that at Babbo, I don't see where they deliver the finished goods.

I haven't eaten there personally since 1989 but, I always thought the steaks at Tratorria Sostanza on the via Porcelana were fantastic. It was a tip I picked up from R.W. Apple who wrote an article about great steaks for the Times in the early 80's. A few years later in 1986, he published a series of his articles in a fantastic book called "Apple's Guide to Europe." In Chapter IV titled "More Britain" article 5 is called "In a Pope's Eye" and is about the Champanny Inn which is a steakhouse outside of Edinburgh. In describing it Apple says; "the steak bears comparison with those of Christ Cella in Manhattan or Peter Lugar's in Brooklyn or Morton's in Chicago or Sostanza in Florence" Of course those were the days when Morton's was a single restaurant and not a chain. And we all mourn the demise of Christ Cella. But I thought that was a pretty high recommendation for Sostanza. It's an inexpensive place as well with people sitting at communal tables. The chicken breast fried in butter is well worth it too and I recall the Tuscan beans as being glorious. But as I said, I haven't been in over a dozen years but people I've sent within the last few years have come back with a report of excellent. As an aside, the Apple book is a fantastic book and well worth the effort to find a copy in the used book bins. It has terrific writing on eating on England as well as good short pieces on things like visiting Christopher Wren churches in London. It also has a great article on eating in Lyon and has a good review of traditional Paris bistros which were at the top of their game at the time.

That Parker has preferences doesn't mean he doesn't employ a skillset based on objectivity when evalutaing wines. Like I have been trying to explain (and maybe doing a bad job of it,) having the ability to discern what type of oak a wine has been aged in and for how long is a skill. Preferring one type over the other including length of aging in those barrels is a preference providing the reason is a preference and not something else. If you were to speak to Parker/Rovani about this and ask them about what we will call "the house style," they say, and rightly so I might add, that along with over-extracted, highly oaked and highly alcoholic wines, they give many wines that don't fit that profile, like Barolos, very high scores. And that what is important to them isn't a certain style of winemaking, what is important is for a wine to be "packed" to the extent that it displays characteristics that makes them feel the wine will last a long time. They say that the more stuffing a wine has, logic says the wine will be better. So I think much of what people charcaterize as Parker's palate preference is really his objective assessment of the wines aging qualities (there's that word again.) Where subjectivity enters this issue is when should somebody drink a bottle of wine? What Parker has done, and this largely goes back to the neophyte issue, is to make drinking young wines popular. Prior to his emergence as the dominant critic, people laid wines away until they were mature and that was that. But along he comes, annoints a new style of winemaking as one that will produce great wines in the long term, gives them a drinkability window for the future but says they are also delicious to drink now. And this flys predominantly for the reason that tens of thousands of new collectors are developed from the 80's on. People are all first bulding cellars so they don't have any old wine to drink. And they all want to drink top wines so they are willing to drink these wines today. And new, clean, fresh tasting wine with lots of primary fruit is much easier to understand then mature wine with more unusal flavors that you need a skillset to appreciate.

Beachfan's post has good information. But the dal Forno is the Rolls Royce of Amarones. It retails in the U.S. for over $200 a bottle. None of the other producers make wine in that price range.

For the life of me I do not see what people think is so special about this restaurant. My meal tonight was barely acceptable. I had Manta, shrimp from the Adriatic that were split and grilled. It was mostly shell and despite it being advertised by our waitress as being easy to eat, I had to pretty much pick the sucker up and suck the meat out while holding the sharp edged shell. The savings grace was the exceptionally good chicory it was served with which was nice and crunchy. Then I had the Lamb Chops Scotta Ditta which were served cold and had to be sent back. In fact all three orders at our table were cold. And even after they heated them they were still on the tepid side. And while they weren't flavored badly, being marinated in what seemed like garlic, mint and green pepper, I assure everyone who is reading this that I make lamb chops at home that are ten times better. There were a few dishes at our table that others had which got good reviews. The lamb's tongue salad is always a winner. The beef cheek ravioli was a winner as well. But the squid in tomato sauce and the pig shin milanese got two thumbs down. Desserts were a saving grace. Well at least one of them was. I found the meal so unsatisfying that I actually ordered two desserts which is something I never do. The budino of Indian Pudding was really delicious and it was served with a creme fraiche ice cream. But the panna cotta was inedible. Blech. We drank pretty well though draining two bottles of 2001 Gini Soave La Frosca. Make a note if you are going that they have it for $36 and it is well worth it compared to the other white wines on the list. Then we drank a 1998 La Spinetta Stadari which was a little modern but has a nice future. This is the fourth time I've been to Babbo and if anything my opinion of it is getting worse. It's starting to look like the Italian version of the Union Square Cafe. Italian food that looks good on paper but tastes homogenized. As if it's been put through the New York City "upper middle" meat grinder. And the place is just mobbed. I truly don't get it. I would prefer to eat at Lupa anyday over this place. At least the pretension that you are eating something special has been removed.

Cabby - I'm uncomfortable but I'll do it for you . The base meal was $130. We had bay scallops, tuna, hamachi, spanish mackeral, a squid salad along with chick peas and a mache salad. Then we had the veal/foie gras terrine, straight foie gras, duck ham, braised leeks (really delicious,) beet salad and celeriac. Then the diver scallops and red snapper both with jullienned truffles, mashed potatoes and parsnips. Then the venison with the Jersusalem artichokes and a plate with four types of roasted mushrooms. Cheese and we were so stuffed we passed on the desert course except for the ice cream and sorbet trays. It was tons of food. Then the trufffle supplement was $30. And the corkage is the same price per bottle and we had seven bottles. Do the math.

Ballast - I would love to hear your reports on other restaurants and I'm sure others feel the same. As for your age, I have to say that when I turned 40 restaurants started treating me much better then they did when I was younger.

In Australia dukka is very popular as a condiment used with olive oil. They pour some olive oil on a plate and then sprinkle dukka in it. Then people dip bread in the dukka'd oil. I know this because a Bahamian friend of mine spent a lot of time in Australia and brought me back a pack of dukka as a gift.

Baphie - You misunderstood what I said. Robert Parker uses a certain methodology to assess a wine. It's the same methodology that everyone else uses and it is objective in nature. That he might like wine that is aged in new oak casks as opposed to aged in old oak is a palate preference. That part is subjective (to a point). But the way he assesses what type of oak isn't. Understand? As for divergance, Parker represents an entire style of wine appreciation that is divergant from the traditional style. How divergant it is differs depending on the region. Because '99 is a great vintage. Some people say the best one in the second half of the 20th century. And the La Tache is perfect. I read your list. When I first started collecting wines I used to enjoy drinking those wines. Now I hate them. Why is hard to explain but it has to do with how my palate developed based on getting the chance to drink the semenal wines from each region of the world. Britcook - My point more than accusing you of making a political statement is that the issue of money is sort of a minefield and if you aren't perfectly clear about what you mean, it's easy for things to go a bit haywire. But as to your question, for the average person the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly. The average person usually can't tell a good wine from a great wine. I have trouble doing it myself all the time. But in general I find that the extra high notes are usually worth it if they are high enough. Maybe the best way to answer your question as to my own preferences is to say that I used to aspire to drink wine everyday. But wines that were priced in that range didn't do it for me. So I decided to drink a few times a week at a higher price point because the wines are more interesting. So for my money, I'd rather drink a great wine once a week then a case of wine that adds up to the same money spent. But I'm not sure what you mean about a "cleverly veiled insult." But I think Stone has nailed the issue. And once again it comes down to what you offered the point for. Lesley and Tighe - You should increase that price point. You guys deserve it. The suits too!

Baphie - Robert Parker just uses different criteria then the sommeliers you mentioned. But he still approaches it objectively. Where he diverges is in what the criteria should be. For example, he might like a wine that is typically 10% more extracted then a traditonalists viewpoint. Or he might like wines to be aged in American oak barrels instead of French oak. But just because he has a different criteria of what is right and what is wrong, doesn't mean that his methodology for analyzing a wine is different then anyone elses. In fact it is exactly the same. As for quality driving price, well I didn't say it was the only thing driving price. It is quality plus supply and demand. But in reality, there are very few things that are priced high unless they start out as being items of quality, or at least being perceived as such. 1999 La Tache costs $700 a bottle both because the wine is supposed to be an historic La Tache, and because everyone wants to own it. If it was just historic without the demand, it would be priced more in line with other top wines from the same vintage which would be around $250 a bottle. If I could describe my experience with wine publications, and the following applies to me as well when I first started collecting, the Wine Spectator is a publication for neophytes who are usually spoon fed American wine as a way to train their palates. With time (how much varies depending on the person,) they switch to the Wine Advocate because it is more comprehensive and there is actually a logic to what they are talking about. But eventually they depart the WA because in reality, it is really a publication for a more highly evolved neophyte. And most people I know give it up in large part after about 5 years of serious collecting. Of course that isn't to say that they aren't useful in many ways. I still recieve and log the Parker scores in the regions that interest me. And it's a great resource if you like and collect Bordeaux. But I have to tell you that I find its usefullness waning. And I hope you take it the right way when I say that hopefully that will happen to you to. Because you will drink a lot better and for a lot less money when that happens.

Those are the lesse rcuvees. You can buy Sagesse or Sierra di Sud for those prices. But if you want their top wines like La Meme, I've seen them cost as much as $40.

Yes but how do you feel about Armani suits? It's a good thing that the Domaine Gramenon wines max out at about $40 .

What does this mean? How does one you value their palate? Does Lloyd's insure it? And why is how much you would spend to keep it amused about wine and not about you? Isn't that irrelevent in a food chat room? If the point of this thread was to offer the advice to the people who post here that they don't need to pay $500 for a top sauternes but they can pay $100 instead, now that's valuable information. But if the point is to say that people who pay $500 are idiotic and have more money then sense, well I don't think that's an appropriate comment for you to make because you are talking about people and not wine. This forum is called "Wine" not "Rich People." Therein lies what you call my agenda. I fight hard for the accurate information to be disclosed as a fuction of quality (there's that word again) and not as a function of class. And you can post things that are percieved as being informative, or you can post things that are percieved as reverse snobbism. What's been going on here over the last few days is a display of the latter. People with more experience and better opinions were derided and belittled and were called names when all they wanted to do was to get the correct information out in the marketplace of ideas. Which by the way was always offered as friendly advice so the reverse-snobbists could learn something. Then you raised the money issue. Why did you need to do that? Nobody cares about it. If you read the NY board and look at the thread I just started about Craft, five of us at a single dinner drank wines that probaly equal the annual wine budget of some other posters here. So what? Nobody did it because the wines costs a lot, they did it because they love wine. In fact during the dinner nobody raised the issue of what the wines cost once (except I busted the chops of our cheapskate importer friend .) And there was somebody who brought a bottle that sells for more then $1000. We are all well advised to leave money out of the discussions. It's only relevant in terms of consumer advice when it is used as a way to illustrate comparative quality. Yes the d'Yqeeeeem is worth the money, no it's not. It is because I can't find anything that is near the requisite quality or it isn't because I can get 95% of the quality for 20% of the price. Anything else, even if it's not intended and just perceived the wrong way, is going to start a fight.

Had dinner with a bunch of my old wine buddies last night and Craft laid out their usualy terrific chef's tasting menu for our table. And while the stalwarts like Hamachi and Terrine of Veal and Foie Gras (or was it rabbit last night?) were as good as usual, a couple of things warrant special mention. The raw Novia Scotia bay scallops were even better then they were a few months back. Like popping small pieces of candy in your mouth. That's how sweet they were. But the best thing in the meal was diver scallops the size of golf balls that were studded with jullienned black truffle that just came in from France. They were really dense and firm and packed with flavor. They were probably the best sea scallops I've had in this country and they were almost to the point of rivaling the ones I had at Arpege last January. And the truffles were surprisingly good considering how young the season is. Good crunch to them and lots of aromatics. They also served us some terrific and beautifully rare venison that was showered with fresh huckleberries from Washington State. And a bowl of Jerusalem Artichokes that were roasted until shriveled on the outside which made the skin a little chewy, but were completely soft and melt in your mouth inside were great. For the wine curious among you we drank; 1967 Hugel Riesling V.T. 1983 Weinbach Gewurztraminer Capucines V.T. $15 Botrysized Loire rose that a world famous wine importer brought 1990 Raveneau Chablis Valmur 1978 Roumier Bonnes Mares 1993 Henri Jayer Echezeaux 1953 Leoville Poyferre And then we went to Bar Demi where we somehow managed to drink a 1990 Clos des Papes Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Not a bad wine in the bunch. In fact they were all right on the money. And every wine seemed young. Even the '53 and '78 seemed like they had years and years left to them. Fortunately my hangover wasn't too bad this morning.

Well I might as well take advantage of my resident expert/wine snob status and say the following. I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't sound insulting but, these conversations always remind me of the conversations with people who don't understand foreign films telling people who do that they are crap and have nothing to them. That might not be the best analogy but it's as close as I can come at eight in the morning after a wine blowout (to be reported on later) at Craft last night. And for some reason it gets even more adversarial when the people who understand foreign films try to explain it and they say to those who don't, try and view it in the following manner the next time you do it. Invariably they get all bent out of shape as if you attacked their dignity. There are people who taste wine for a living. Not that I do it or anyone else here that I've seen, but there are all sorts of people from sommellers to reviewers to buyers to masters of wine who have palates that are trained to detect the various characteristics in a wine through the process of tasting. I assure you they do not do their jobs subjectively. They have very objective criteria they impose on a wine when they taste it. Then there are an entire bevy of wine consumers, whether they be collectors or restaurants or anyone else who mimic what the professionals do and calibrate their own palates along the same objective scale. And indeed among these people there are amatuer tasters who are every bit as good as professionals and possibly better in certain circumstances. For some reason unbeknownst to me, there is an entire group of people who reject that tasting wine is a matter of a skillset that needs to be practiced. They insist that all palates are equal, and that their annointment of what constitues quality wine is just as good an opinion as anybody elses. The ultimate proclamation of this point of view is the "I know what I like" or an "X is in the eye of the beholder" statement. And what's strange about it is that the same exact people wouldn't ever dream of taking that position about other things. Would someone say they are a good opera singer when they can't sing? Or a good potter? Or as good an art critic as a professional? Never in a million years. So inevitably on Intenet chat rooms or bulletin boards, these two groups of people clash. What happened in this thread is the personification of the dispute. Having seen this happen doezens of times there isn't much to say about it other then people shouldn't get defensive when people with more experience assert their opinion about things like quality. And I know that isn't always an easy thing to do. I have been guilty of the same behavior myself. It's hard to hear your expertise challenged when you have a personal investment in it. But I know for a fact that those who argued so vehemently to defend the Guigal will one day themselves be more experienced and they will conclude the same thing we concluded. I've seen it happen 100 times before. The other thing that gets people worked up is the topic of money. And it isn't that money doesn't have a place in the discussion, but it's just the case that quality and money have nothing to do with each other. Yes, price is a good indicator of quality. But things aren't better because they cost more, things cost more because they are better. And I've often see questions asked by people about price and QPR (quality price ratio) that are really surrogates for justifying the price of wine they can afford. Invariably when that happens a fight breaks out. Because The simple fact is that the difference in price between d'Yqueeem and Guirard is only an inidicator of the amount of money people who can afford to will pay for the incremental increase in quality. But the relative quality of one wine compared to another resides outside the world of economics. Money has nothing to do with quality. Finally as to personal attacks, there is no room for them because they are against the rules and for a good reason. Quite often when people feel their dignity has been attacked as I described above, and the details of the conversation goes to a level they don't really understand, they become abusive. And while it helps to get steam off their chest, it certainly doesn't advance the conversation any. And this goes for the type of tirade that went on yesterday, or Britcook's comment about my spelling. Because clearly no matter hopw puurly I spell it doesn't impact on the way a bottle of wine tastes. And that is what the conversation is supposed to be about. But I'll gladly join anyone who wants to go to eSpelling.com for some fun. Oraklet - After they press the grapes the wine goes into tanks where it ferments. There is more then grape juice in there. There are all sort of bits and pieces from the grapes in there with the wine like the skins, pulp, etc. When you leave these pieces in along with the juice, the wine is extracting what the OED describes as; So when someone says a wine is over-extracted they are meaning to say the winemaker allowed this process to go on too long and the wine doesn't taste right. And within wine there is a big argument on what proper extraction is. For example, Robert Parker is a modernist and he loves highly extracted wines. Traditionalists think the same wines are flawed because they are over-extracted.

"Vin Jaune" is yellow wine. It comes from a few places in France which are are in the region between Burgundy, Alsace and the Swiss border. Here's a link to explain it; Vin Jaune Orik - Sorry to hear about your meal. Since on my 3 visits in the last year the veggies were so stellar, maybe they were suffering from seasonality. But nobody can take issue with your griping about prices.

It was an affectionate short hand for wine snob.

Huh?