I'm a long time lurker and occassionly but rare poster.
Like many of you, I do read the reviews / tasting notes / scores from various wine critics. What I have yet to do is understand the difference in preferences between the critics and come to an understanding which one(s) my personal preferences are aligned with.
So some questions for this group:
- Which wine critics are the best judges of quality wine in your opinion?
- How would you describes the differences in preferences of, say, Parker vs. Suckling?
I plan to do a blind tasting with my tasting group of wines where critics seemed to disagree on the quality of the wine. I imagine I'll need to some some extensive research to find representative samples.
- Are there any wines that come to mind where different critics rated them quite differently?
A good old wine-newsgroup topic. For historical interest (recommendations are not up to date), see last paragraph of a wine-newsgroup posting on the subject from before Parker, Tanzer, or Suckling were on the radar generally in the US. (This was on the wine newsgroup under its original name, net.wines. Created 24 years ago this month.)
news: snipped-for-privacy@ucbcad.UUCP
It's unlikely still to be on today's servers (very few of which existed then) so here's a current link to Google's archive of it:
I think that "understanding which one(s) [your] personal preferences are aligned with" is exactly what you should do. If you know of someone who likes the same things you do, you can buy what he recommends with confidence that you will probably like it too.
But those two questions don't seem to gibe with your statement above. If you want to find a critic whose tastes match yours, it shouldn't matter which ones anyone else thinks are best, or what the differences are between any two.
Here's a wine to try and see what YOU think: HdV, Chardonnay, Carneros, 2002. WS80, RP93 I had it at a trade tasting before I knew what the scores were. One taste, and I bought it.
NEVER taste wines. Wines are impossible (not difficult, IMPOSSIBLE) to evaluate outside of the context of a full meal. Wines that are great paired with a full meal often taste quite different when tasted alone, and often taste peculiar.
Tasting wines is in principle stupid. Whoever started this should be shot.
"John LaCour" in news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
There has been some serious and sophisticated study of this question. One survey of the subject that appeared online (five years ago?) was by a wine-enthusiast engineer, and used statistical methods to compare some popular US critics' rankings of the same wines over several years of thier publications. That study identified areas where they coincide closely, and others where systematic differences were evident. (I don't have the reference handy just now.)
I've heard of at least one other serious study, large and searching, conducted privately with considerable resource, but I don't think it was published.
Posted in the 1980s on the wine newsgroup were second-hand accounts of the pioneering 100-point-scale critic (Parker),both opining that small score differences were meaningful, and also giving specific wines score differences (very significant, according to the first comment) when he tasted it under conditions he did not control. However, Parker stresses right up front in his publication the primacy of the consumer's own palate in judging wines. (I wonder sometimes if all of his readers notice that advice.)
Sounds to me like an excellent and provocative basis for a tasting.
Blind tastings are how many good tasters developed their palates over the years. The blind format (carefully arranged to maximize the palate's sensitivity if possible) is essential (for wine as in other things) to exclude distracting or biasing influences. The University of California at Davis, near Sacramento is famous for its food-science program, wine being one specialty thereof (the famous "Davis" winemaking training, which several friends of mine completed, is a Master of Science program in Food Science with "E and V" specialization, enology and viticulture). That university offers weekend trainings to the public on sensory evaluation. After training, students are asked to take blind wine samples (technically matched for color and other cues) and sort them, blind, after randomization. (Those who can sort the blind samples consistently, a number of times, are then recruited as wine judges for agricultural fairs.) The ultimate point of wine for most people is to enjoy it with good food and/or company, obviously. Tasting wine critically and systematically, on its own, is a powerful tool along the way to that. It's how wine is made, for example.
Max,Ken and others make good points. Only you will be able to decide what critic is best for you. I'd also point out that one's tastes might sync well with a critic one area, and not another. Even more complicating is the fact that the bigger publications have multiple critics (WA is not just Parker, but now Rovani, Thomases, and David S. ; WS has a half-dozen critics).
I find FOR ME Parker is reasonably reliable for Medoc, so-so for CA cab & Right Bank, way off for Australia. Rovani is so-so for Germany and way off my tastes in Burgundy. But at WS I find Suckling maddeningly inconsistent. As for Laube, he's less a critic these days than a crusader for squeaky-clean "Davis" wines. I do find Claude Kolm (Fine Wine Review) and Allen Meadows (Burghound) fairly reliable for Burgundy FOR MY TASTES, yet I still disagree at least 20% of the time.
What Max writes is utter rubbish. Wines are not for 'tastsing' but for drinking, and can only be evaluated (if they have to be evaluated) in the context of a meal. Everything else is a complete waste of time. Why do wines have to be evaluated anyway? Are you obsessed with having something with more points? Why can't you just drink and enjoy? True connoisseurs do not engage in such lunacy. I don't care how many points my wine gets by any critic, and I NEVER have tastings, ever. I consider this some kind of sick joke.
So, how *do* you buy wine? By label? Cost? Shape of the pretty bottle?
I taste, and over 50 years of drinking wine, have found I can tell pretty much how a wine will "drink" with a particular style of food. But I'm not going to plunk down cash for a case of wine I haven't tasted, no matter what any critic says. Then after tasting, and deciding it suits my purpose, I'll buy and 'drink and enjoy'.
I seldom get a bad bottle. I buy based on past experience, the producer, and the recommendation of the wine shop owner. I experiment a lot. I never taste a wine before buying it, unless the wine shop owner happens to have a bottle open for sampling.
Why not? Barberas, for instance, taste quite astringent by themselves, and anyone who would try one in a tasting would probably think it's bad. But put that wine in its proper context, with a Piedmontese dish, and it tastes quite different. Tasting is quite useless, and therefore a foolish waste of time.
R> > What Max writes is utter rubbish. Wines are not for 'tastsing' but for
I don't mean to be argumentative, but from what you wrote, I read as your accepting the taste of a critic, (your wine shop owner - which I also do, but my owner upped and retired, so I'm looking for a new one - not an easy task) and tasting (having a bottle open for sampling - most wine shops here (Portland Oregon) have three or four open every Friday and Saturday. Past experience I have come to rely on less as winemakers change (Kenwood's SB gets 91 points by the new winemaker adding a healthy dose of Chardonnay - I liked the old style much better. Ken Wright making monster PN in the late
90's, but I'm not happy with the early 0X's) and I'm always looking for something new - I never would have discovered Greco di Tufo if I relied solely on past experience.
As I said, over time I've gotten to have an idea of what a wine will taste like with certain foods. For instance, I wouldn't buy a fat, soft nebbiolo for a tomato sauced dish, but look for a leaner, more acidic nebbiolo. I think it neither foolish, useless, nor a waste of time to taste before I choose.
Roger's recommendations are not based on 'tastings', at least not alone, but on drinking or the recommendation of the wholesaler, I suppose.
The very methodolgy of tasting is IN PRINCIPLE incorrect. Wines that are superb with meals often taste terrible alone. There is a DRASTIC(!!!!!!!), HUGE (!!!!!!!) difference between the way a wine tastes by itself and the way it tastes in a meal.
I drink Italian wines exclusively, so I have gotten to know almost all of the basic types pretty well, and am familiar with many producers. I do try a lot of different wines from time to time, but I do also expect a certain degree of consistency from Argiolas, D'Angelo, Mastroberardino, Lungarotti, Cerretto, Cavollotto, Taurino, Santadi, Chiarlo, etc. I'm not in the least worried about what any 'critic' thinks, nor in anyone else's opinions of the wines. I and a buddy give Italian regional dinner parties from time to time, and we usually set out an assortment of wines, based on the dishes. The last one we had (Jan 28th, 12 people) featured dishes from all over Italy, so we had wines from all over Italy: Vino Nobile, Primitivo, Valtellina, etc. No-one asked about what the wine critics thought, and no-one had anything but praise for our cooking and our wines, none of which was cheap. Whether a different bottle of any of our choices would have registered a point or two higher was the fartherst thing from our minds. Wines are made to be enjoyed. Generally speaking, you get what you pay for. If you expect a $10 wine to be as good as a $35 one, you're usually going to be disappointed.
A troll tries to consistently inflame discourse, and resorts eventually to strong verbal abuse, as you did recently. This alone does not make you a troll.
Generally speaking, by ignoring trolls, one makes them disappear after a short while. For this reason alone, I don't think you are a troll, but a rare variation thereof, a mutated troll. Everything else fits. Troll indeed may not be the right word. There is a consensus building up that other terms may be applicable. So please take "troll" as a compliment.
I appreciate your rare show of restraint. My point, and it is a valid one, is that enjoyment of the wine is the primary objective. Simple tasting is only one tool, and in many cases, a misleading one. MOST people cannot evaluate a dinner wine from a simple tasting. In fact, the VAST MAJORITY cannot do so. I know, from personal experience, that a wine which tastes quite astringent and bitter when I first taste it without food (for example, Barbera or Nebbiolo, Taurasi, Primitivo, Patrigliano, or any big red for that matter) will change quite markedly once I start eating food with it.
Only wine producers and wine experts (and I DON'T include Parker in that class) have the capacity to evaluate a wine based on tasting alone. The number who qualify as 'experts' is VERY, VERY small. I'm taling about people who buy and sell and produce wine for a living, not dilletantes and dabblers.
The wine producer, who shepherds the wine from grape to aged bottle, understands at each stage what the wine should taste like, because he has done it thousands of times, and this knowldege has been passed down from his father and grandfather before him. Someone who works in an office and reads a review of a wine in the Wine Spectator will get NOTHING from tasting a wine outside of the context of a full meal. I was in a wine shop when a haufarus came in gushing that she wanted a bunch of different bottlings of Pinot Grigio to have a 'wine-tasting party'. What utter rubbish. This is merely some fad that has arisen among the Nouveau Riche who THINK they know what they're doing, but DON'T.
When we have our dinners, we frequently open several bottles of different wines, and a few of us will note the differences among them. It is pointless, however, to evaluate the wines beyond that point. That's not why we drink the wine and have the dinners. We drink the wine and have the dinners for the sheer PLEASURE of doing so. It is a complete waste of time to sit around and assign points.
The way to buy wine is to take a few bottles home and see what you like, after having them with a dinner, not just tasting them in isolation. If you like them, buy more of them.
The most reliable guide to buying wine is the knowledge of the producer's style. I buy mixed cases. I never buy a case of one type of wine. In my cellar are a variety of wines, seldom more than two or three of any one bottling of anything.
I stopped buying Vietti wines when every bottle I tried was disappointing. That's also when I stopped paying attention to wine reviews. Vietti wines have been consistently given high marks by the wine press, but I have never had a good bottle. It could be a problem with shipping or storage, but I don't care. I'm not buying any more Vietti wine!
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