Reprinted from Paul Gregutt's Sept. 26 column in the Seattle Times,
The numbers game
The Aug. 31 edition of Robert Parker's highly influential Wine Advocate newsletter was greeted with a rousing chorus of hoorays from almost everyone who makes, sells or markets Washington wines. I'm as happy as anyone when Washington wines get the recognition they deserve, and some of the wines cited are indeed among this state's best.
However, apart from the high scores, which the Advocate handed out like free candy on Halloween, the article lacked any semblance of meaningful analysis. This set of reviews was written by Jay Miller, a longtime drinking buddy of Parker, who named him the successor to Pierre Rovani, who had previously covered the Pacific Northwest.
Miller has scored big points of his own, simply by putting up big numbers. "A record-breaking number of 90-plus scores for Washington State wines," trumpeted one industry press release; "164 Washington wines 90 points or higher."
Let's face it, the wine trade is hooked — as in addicted — on scores, especially those that emanate from Parker. Never mind that it was Jay Miller, not Robert Parker, who tasted and rated these wines. Look around and you'll see plenty of people quoting the reviews, and I'll bet that they all use Parker's name.
A close reading of the text shows it to be loaded with misstatements, mangled facts, excessive hype and careless repetitive criticism. Miller says much of Washington's syrah is coming out of the Walla Walla AVA; in fact, very little is grown there. He gives exemplary scores and reviews to barrel samples — barrel samples! — from a number of brand new, unproven wineries, then dismisses the entire output of Columbia Winery ("I found only two wines that I could recommend") with a final zinger: "This 200,000 case winery has been underachieving for at least the past 20 years."
Many other excellent wineries are either ignored (where are Beresan, Fielding Hills, Hedges, K Vintners, Rulo, Saviah, Syncline, Waters, virtually all the Spokane wineries and most of Red Mountain?) or given short shrift. Of Cadence, Miller says, "Of the five wines I tasted, two merited recommendations." Two? Implying that the other three were not worth even a mundane 85-point score?
When important national critics visit this state, they routinely taste through hundreds of wines in a few days. There are a few — very few — who can successfully evaluate young wines under such rapid-fire conditions. Robert Parker can. Pierre Rovani can. Stephen Tanzer can. A few others, such as the Wine Spectator's Harvey Steiman and Wine & Spirits' Patrick Comiskey, do a creditable job because they come up here frequently, and have for years. They know the region. Miller readily admits that he has been here exactly once before, in 1990.
Without the Parker name attached to his stardust numerology, how important would his scattershot impressions really be?
The high scores will sell some wine, and don't get me wrong, many of these wines are excellent. The big numbers provide a jolt of sales fertilizer but little in the way of real nourishment for an industry that is desperately in need of informed, objective criticism.
In Walla Walla County, where I spend half of each month, many vineyards are being renovated from decades of farming that relied completely on chemicals to grow crops. The soils are dead. It takes many years to restore them to biodiversity and organic balance. A wine industry that feeds so voraciously on nothing but numbers is in danger, I fear, of a similar fate.