Robert Parker and his 24-carat tastebuds

[Gifted Gourmet]

article from the London Review of Books

the wine world’s current Pooh-Bah, but, of all nations, has bowed down lowest in his presence. The ‘24-carat taste buds’ belong to Robert Parker, a 57-year-old former Baltimore lawyer, who started the bimonthly subscription-only Wine Advocate in 1978, and whose many books on the world’s wines ... even Parker’s enemies almost universally concede that he has an extraordinary palate. (He’s insured his olfactory sense for a modest million dollars.) There is wide agreement that his descriptive language is more standardised and less fanciful than most,

If we insist that wine descriptions be strictly and unambiguously referential, we won’t be able to say much at all. You can probably get most people to agree that sweet wines are sweet, and that, in the right circumstances, Gewürztraminer tastes of lychees, Cabernet Sauvignon of blackcurrants, Rioja of vanilla and muscat (uniquely) of grapes.

So, my question is this: Can you discern the various tastes in wine? Can you pick out things such as ‘wild, jammy, slightly risqué character’ in your wine glass?

[pam claughton]

article from the London Review of Books

the wine world’s current Pooh-Bah, but, of all nations, has bowed down lowest in his presence. The ‘24-carat taste buds’ belong to Robert Parker, a 57-year-old former Baltimore lawyer, who started the bimonthly subscription-only Wine Advocate in 1978, and whose many books on the world’s wines ... even Parker’s enemies almost universally concede that he has an extraordinary palate. (He’s insured his olfactory sense for a modest million dollars.) There is wide agreement that his descriptive language is more standardised and less fanciful than most,

If we insist that wine descriptions be strictly and unambiguously referential, we won’t be able to say much at all. You can probably get most people to agree that sweet wines are sweet, and that, in the right circumstances, Gewürztraminer tastes of lychees, Cabernet Sauvignon of blackcurrants, Rioja of vanilla and muscat (uniquely) of grapes.

So, my question is this: Can you discern the various tastes in wine? Can you pick out things such as ‘wild, jammy, slightly risqué character’ in your wine glass?

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Sometimes yes. But, sometimes, it just tastes like wine. With no discernible tastes. Usually, for me this also is wine that I don't like. I find that the ones I do usually have flavors and textures that I enjoy.

[Rebel Rose]

article from the London Review of Books

There is wide agreement that his descriptive language is more standardised and less fanciful than most,

Huh? He gave one of our syrahs an '89' and said "those who walk on the kinky side of life may rate it one or two points higher." And he described one of Linne Calodo's wines as "liquid Viagra for intellectuals." (I think he had a good time on his last vist here . . . )

But picking out varietal and production components in wine is often a matter of palate education as well as ability.

Practice, practice, practice, I always say!

[jayt90]

I have a problem with reviewers who lean too heavily on that circular rating scale (Is it Amerine and Singleton?) Parker is not too bad, bad many, including the tasting panel at my own liquor control board, apparently lookat the scale, or memorize it, and come up obscure comparisons, like brambleberries etc. which may or may not be accurate, or relevant.

[Yquem]

Having drunk a lot of wine ranging from inexpensive to trophy, I've come to the conclusion that there are generally only two kinds:

1) Fabulous nose, but the taste doesn't match up to expectation.

2) A wine that tastes better on the palate than your nose would lead you to expect.

Rarely, there are the 'great' wines where nose and palate are wonderful.

As for Parker, just like any other wine critic, his opinions are subjective. His exact flavour descriptions might not match yours. Sometimes I get he adjectives he describes, sometimes not. What's important is to find a reviewer who likes the same style as you. That way, you know you'll like his recommendations. For example, when I used to subscribe to the Wine Spectator, James Laube and Per-Henrik Mansson worked best for me.

[DTBarton]

I've found that I can taste many of the things reviewers say they taste. The various fruit flavors (other than grape!) seem to be the most easy to find. Fruity Burgundies often have a pronounced raspberry or strawberry aroma, Alsace wines often have pronounced apple or pear flavors, and California chardonnay has a lot of tropical fruit flavors like pineapple. Many lighter white wines have a pronounced citrus component.

I have detected the "jammy" thing, like sweetened fruit.

It gets dicier when they start with the non-fruit components. When you start hearing about tobacco and leather and such it's not as obvious. I think that's because those flavors are incorporated in the structure, or background of the wine whereas the fruit components are more up front. I have better luck with the non fruit things if I concentrate on aftertaste.

I do use Parker ratings for a few reasons. When I started buying wine about 10 years ago I tried a few different reviewers and found that Parker seemed to match my tastes more than the others. I found Wine Spectator to be inconsistent for me. Don't know if this is because they use more reviewers or they reward advertisers or what but I did not care for some wines they rated highly. Also, since I don't get the chance to taste many things before I buy and there's such a vast array to choose from it helps to become familiar with a reviewer whose taste seems to match yours. I've had pretty good success using the Parker rating/price ratio, trying to find wines Parker rated 89 - 92 or so for reasonable prices.

[jbonne]

So, my question is this: Can you discern the various tastes in wine? Can you pick out things such as ‘wild, jammy, slightly risqué character’ in your wine glass? 

←

Nope, but i can interpret the smells in my glass -- or rather what MWs and others gamely like to call "organoleptics."

Sometimes a scent jumps out at you, like the strawberry in many a decent glass of pinot noir or the briney note in lots of syrahs. Sometimes it's truly elusive, and I think the ticking-off of fruits can often be no more than a matter of subjective interpretation. And some people truly do have the nasal equivalent of photographic memories, able to immediately know what, say, fig -- or more a Platonic notion of "fig-ness" -- should taste like.

If we really wanted to certify these tastes, we could test the wine and see if all the various flavor compounds can be detected within. But I don't usually consider (or write) descriptions to be necessarily literal, I interpret them as impressions of a taster thought he or she could detect at the time, and his or her impression ("slightly risqué") of the wine's stature and definition.

To that end, adjectives like "jammy" or "brambly" have more meaning to me, as they help me know a wine's character when compared to its varietal typicity. (In other words, how close does it taste to my ideal of what a "syrah" should taste like?) I think one reason that the advice to taste, taste and taste some more is so good is that it takes a long time to know what a grape from a specific location really should taste like.

Ultimately, I view these as little snippets of poetry -- or maybe as a sort of wine haiku. Has the blurb offered me an objective description of what's in the glass? Probably not, and even if it did, who's to say my bottle will taste exactly like the review bottle? Has it given me effective insight into how the wine tastes, and what I'm likely to experience in the glass? An effective blurb will do that.

But I should note that I'm constantly revising my stance on this.

[KatieLoeb]

Huh?  He gave one of our syrahs an '89' and said "those who walk on the kinky side of life may rate it one or two points higher."  And he described one of Linne Calodo's wines as "liquid Viagra for intellectuals."    (I think he had a good time on his last vist here . . .   )

But picking out varietal and production components in wine is often a matter of palate education as well as ability. 

Practice, practice, practice, I always say! 

←

Just as many ordinary folks that have eaten a lot of apples would have no trouble discerning a Granny Smith apple from a Yellow Delicious from a Macintosh blindfolded, so it becomes with wines after enough exposure and dedication. I can usually pick the Pinot Noir from the Merlot from the Cabernet. I have a lot more practice than most people, but the apple analogy holds. And that ability makes neither myself nor Robert Parker a genius.

There are many olfactory components in wines that become familiar over time. The bright cherry scent in Pinot Noir, the aroma of freshly mowed grass in certain Sauvignon Blanc. But you have to be exposed to it enough times for it to seem familiar.

Practice, practice, practice!!! The lab work is hell, but someone has to do it...

edited for clarity

[Brad Ballinger]

Yes, I can smell and taste various aroma and flavor profiles in wines. So much of taste is interwoven with smell, that it can be difficult to separate the two. But I can be much more descriptive with aroma than with taste.

When you get into the science of molecular or chemical structure that is identical to the real McCoy, well that takes all the fun out of it. The descriptors one uses should really be taken as a "seems like" or "similar to" or "reminds me of" rather that "is unequivocally..."

[Capaneus]

So, my question is this: Can you discern the various tastes in wine? Can you pick out things such as ‘wild, jammy, slightly risqué character’ in your wine glass? 

←

Usually. Whether I'd choose to use those exact terms is another matter. Personally, I find the palate isn't so much the limiting factor in my wine expertise. It is my memory that often fails me; and I find that while accurately describing a wine is relatively easy, the ability to put those perceptions in context is really the challenge. So while I could handily pick out strawberry/cherry notes in a wine, I don't think I could differentiate between different vintages, or different producers, of Burgundy. Broader distinctions, yes, but I don't have the sort of meticulous memory it takes to go much beyond that. Nor do I cultivate it: my academic experience has taught me that the dissected object is most often killed in the process.

[budrichard]

I've drunk and collected vintage wine for 30+ years. The wine reviews from people like Parker use the pshcological premise, that if an expert tasted this and found these tastes, then I should be able to also. In fact, the reviews are actually literary exercises and not extremely helpful. Look at the posts on wine in this forum. I really don't think that the people posting these tomes, really experience these things but want to impress. I don't read the reviews at all anymore. I purchase after tasting or in some cases futures for Bordeaux and Sauterne. For German wine, I have my importer obtain the wine from growers/vineyards that i know the quality and have a long standing relationship with. -Dick

[Gifted Gourmet]

Look at the posts on wine in this forum. I really don't think that the people posting these tomes, really experience these things but want to impress.

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I beg to differ with you widely on this statement, budrichard.

The people who have commented here are a knowledgeable, experienced group of experts in this field and I, for one, am always confounded by the depth of their opinions which, I believe, are well-grounded and solid.

Many of these people are eGullet forum hosts in their respective areas of expertise.

[Brad Ballinger]

I've drunk and collected vintage wine for 30+ years. The wine reviews from people like Parker use the pshcological premise, that if an expert tasted this and found these tastes, then I should be able to also. In fact, the reviews are actually literary exercises and not extremely helpful. Look at the posts on wine in this forum. I really don't think that the people posting these tomes, really experience these things but want to impress. I don't read the reviews at all anymore. I purchase after tasting or in some cases futures for Bordeaux and Sauterne. For German wine, I have my importer obtain the wine from  growers/vineyards  that i know the quality and have a long standing relationship with. -Dick

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I can agree with some of this. If I use a precise flavor or aroma descriptor, I better be damn certain that's what I'm getting. Usually, though, I just stay more broad (mineral, fruit, etc.). What I'd really like to know is how many people who use the word gooseberry to describe a sauvignon blanc wine have actually eaten a gooseberry. Personally, I've had fresh and cooked green and pink gooseberries (the green ones are much more tart), gooseberry jam, gooseberry yogurt, and some gooseberry confections. But I'm positive there are people who use the word gooseberry because they think they should even though they wouldn't know a gooseberry from a Thompson seedless grape.

[jbonne]

If I use a precise flavor or aroma descriptor, I better be damn certain that's what I'm getting.  Usually, though, I just stay more broad (mineral, fruit, etc.).  What I'd really like to know is how many people who use the word gooseberry to describe a sauvignon blanc wine have actually eaten a gooseberry.

←

totally agree. as i was looking over some tasting notes i collected from my intrepid panel for a recent piece, i realized that my tasters -- friends and acquaintances at all levels of knowledge about wine -- were picking up different and sometimes contradictory tastes in the same bottle. one noted "chocolate covered cherries," while another got "vanilla, medicine," and a third got a "creamy" sensation but otherwise no nose at all. i got "thin fruit, a bit of tobacco on the side."

were any of us right? wrong? crazy? possibly, on all three. but this is why i find that, like you, broad descriptions of the specific tastes -- the inner circle of the Davis aroma wheel, if you like -- can be as useful to the average reader as beelining for a specific taste or smell (unless that taste/smell is overwhelming). i don't happen to believe there's one sensation of "cherry" or "leather." these are colored by personal experience, memory and even geography. (how many of you could, blindfolded, detect a Bing cherry from a Lambert? cherry farmers excluded.)

what's more important to me are descriptions of a wine's quality and structure. how big and how well integrated are tannins? what's the taste of the wine built around -- the fruit extraction, the acid, the tannin? is it integrated? does the taste of oak dominate? these are subjective too, as a movie review is subjective. but that's why i believe people come to trust certain reviewers' palates and follow their guidance.

so what think: are specific aroma descriptors more important, or are the general terms that help describe why a wine is good or bad?

[edited to add rhetorical question]

Edited February 10, 2005 by jbonne (log)

[chefzadi]

Parker needs to keep writing about wine. So if he used the same metaphors or tropes all the time his readership would get bored. For instance if said ripe fruit, his readers might ask which fruit?

Also what tastes like peach to me, might taste like nectarine or plum to someone else. It depends on the quality of the fruit that one is accustomed than the "poetry" comes in pinning it down with a comparison.

And yes, the aromas of wood, tobacco, leather, pear, peach, honey, minerals... exist in wine.

Look, smell and taste.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Robert Parker is at this moment a guest on PBS' Charlie Rose Show, which, hopefully, will be repeated ... he is marvelous to listen to and learn from.

[KatieLoeb]

Robert Parker is at this moment a guest on PBS' Charlie Rose Show, which, hopefully, will be repeated ... he is marvelous to listen to and learn from.

←

Just finished watching it. It was quite interesting.

[MaxH]

"[Chambolle-Musigny] is said to smell of raspberries, as Echézeaux is said to do of truffles and Clos Vougeot of violets, but I must have an insensitive nose as I never catch these nuances; good wines of these communes just seem to me to have a lovely vinuous bouquet, with Echézeaux the most pronounced."

...

"The great white wines of Meursault rank only after the Montrachet group and Corton-Charlemagne. They are very dry, yet ingratiatingly soft. Some ascribe to them a taste of oatmeal, but I don’t eat much oatmeal, fortunately, so am no judge. Others speak of their flavour of peaches, and here for once I am with them, for I can detect this ..."

H[arold] W[aldo] Yoxall, The Wines of Burgundy, first edition (IW&FS), 1968, Penguin paperback ISBN 0140462007. Also in the second edition, 1978, ISBN 0812860918.

Edit to mention: That was one writer's take on the taste-language issue that GG asked about at the start of this thread. (Yoxall, who was a soldier in the first world war, and wrote his very popular book on Burgundies 50 years later, and it's filled with flippant quips about things, from Siamese Cats to "nonsense about God and trousers.")

Edited February 17, 2005 by MaxH (log)

[jayt90]

"[Chambolle-Musigny] is said to smell of raspberries, as Echézeaux is said to do of truffles and Clos Vougeot of violets, but I must have an insensitive nose as I never catch these nuances; good wines of these communes just seem to me to have a lovely vinuous bouquet, with Echézeaux the most pronounced."

...

"The great white wines of Meursault rank only after the Montrachet group and Corton-Charlemagne.  They are very dry, yet ingratiatingly soft.  Some ascribe to them a taste of oatmeal, but I don’t eat much oatmeal, fortunately, so am no judge.  Others speak of their flavour of peaches, and here for once I am with them, for I can detect this ..."

H[arold] W[aldo] Yoxall, The Wines of Burgundy, first edition (IW&FS), 1968, Penguin paperback  ISBN 0140462007.  Also in the second edition, 1978, ISBN 0812860918.

Edit to mention: That was one writer's take on the taste-language issue that GG asked about at the start of this thread.  (Yoxall, who was a soldier in the first world war, and wrote his very popular book on Burgundies 50 years later, and it's filled with flippant quips about things, from Siamese Cats to "nonsense about God and trousers.")

←

Thanks for reminding me how good this book is, though long out of print. I have tended to ignore Burgundy, and Yoxall, in recent years because of price increrases. But it is time to revisit, now that good cheaper wines are made away from the grand cru areas, and a new breed of vintners has supplanted much of the old guard.

[MaxH]

Thanks for reminding me how good [Yoxall's classic book on Burgundy] is, though long out of print.  ...

Out of print, but not off the market. No! On the recent "French Burgundy" thread here, where I recommended Yoxall for reading pleasure, I mentioned used copies starting at $1.90 on amazon.com if I recall right. (Internet commerce has done amazing things to the former concept of "out of print" -- sometimes the "out of print" and used books can be got faster than the new.)

The "French Burgundy" thread is the right place for any more on that particular author. He had a particular angle on the question of this current thread, about "picking out things like wild, jammy, slightly risqué character." (Or raspberries, truffles, violets, and oatmeal.)

By the way I do eat oatmeal, and I smell it in Meursaults.