Gracchus

Well, as I was telling my customers last year- you'd better buy all the '97 Brunellos you can, 'cause WS says it's the best EVER, so it's all downhill from here! Andre pegged it- WS is like Men's Health or Cosmo for wines...every month it's rock-hard abs, better sex, and blockbuster wine. And RP is over the top. Anyone read the new issue? The reviews of Alois Kraacher's dessert "wines" are a hoot! "More like a gelatinous fluid than wine...butterscotch squares whipped into condensed milk...a diabetic's nightmare...400g residual sugar/ liter" (I'm quoting from memory-you must read it!)

Jeez Craig, your tale rings too true. Look at the price increases for La Spinetta's Starderi barb over the past three years. We're looking at $130-140 retail for a wine that we had at $55 two years ago. Some producers (Opus One, Silver Oak, etc.) aren't in the wine-making business; they're minting money!

All weekend I was thinking I need some Italian; Italian in Chicago sounds really good. I felt a bit of smug satisfaction reading that sommelier Balter dissuades people from ordering the Santa Margherita. I steer my customers away from it for the same reason- there are simply better pinot grigio values out there. For five bucks less (retail) than S. Margherita, I recommend the fresh apple and spice in Abazzia di Novacella's pinot grigio; for five bucks more, there's the range of Schiopetto's gorgeous, elegant whites. Compared to either of these wines, S. Margherita is waaay overpriced.

Picking up where you left off, John, are you familiar with Terry Theise? The passionate madman and importer of small estate German wines and grower-made (RC) Champagnes? He has many inspired things to say about wine and the trade, but I especially love his remarks on Tasting vs. Drinking: " I really do not enjoy sitting in some chillingly well-lighted room in a row with many other people as if we were taking the written segment of a driver’s test, with ten glasses in geometric patterns on the table in front of me, little bitty bits of wine in each glass, sippin’ and spittin’ and combing my mind for adjectives. I don’t enjoy it because I think it’s a waste of wine, and even worse it is a sin against the spirit of wine, and I would just as soon not participate. Give me any one or two of those mature vintages, along with a mellow evening, a rack of lamb, and the company of people I’m fond of, and I am a very happy man. A great old wine is such a gift of providence that it begs to be savored, to soak into your heart. Sitting in some creepy banquet room and “tasting” fifty old wines not only dilutes the aesthetic experience, it’s a macho snub of the nose to the angels. Apart from which I respect the hard work of the vintner. If he knew his/her wine would end up, fifty years later, being opened in a “tasting” alongside forty nine other wines for a bunch of earnestly scribbling geeks, he’d probably hurl a grenade at the winery and run away sobbing. I have enough on my poor conscience without contributing to that."

Craig, Thanks for another thoughtful and well-written article. As a "retail wine steward", I see everyday the influence that RP and WS exert over the retail market. Americans seem to shop for wines with the same dispassionate energy they search out the best washing machines. (They often buy both at the same place, too.) I have my own scoring system that I encourage my customers to consider: Would you rather have one bottle of that, two of those, or five of these? In my opinion, taste and perception are affected by so many variables that precise digital scoring is nearly meaningless. Digital scores implicitly suggest that a shiraz scoring a '94' is somehow 'better' than a shiraz scoring a '93'. This is absurd. No matter how scientific RP, WS, or anyone else tries to make their evaluation, it cannot be that precise. Furthermore, the factors most crucial to the enjoyment of wine are completely omitted from the evaluation! When customers come to me lamenting that "the wine tasted so much better in Italy", I have to remind them that everything was better when they were in Italy. I am convinced that context is at least half of our appreciation of food and wine. Glorious occasions and the company of family and good friends can lift our enjoyment of a simple meal and a modest wine into the realm of personal mythology. More than once, I myself have been served a rare and impossibly expensive wine that I have been unable even to taste because the pressure and expectation were so high, or the company so insufferable. I especially deplore the pervasiveness of the RP 'style'. Parker's preference for heavily oaked, alcohol-laden, full-bore fruit-bomb extractions drives not only the consumer market for these hyperbolic monsters, but also affects production, as winemakers strive to emulate the RP 'style' in an effort to capture his praise and to profit from his market. As you point out, the result is the loss of regional styles and wines with individual character.