Dr Vino's wine blog

If [wine writers] are beholden to wine producers for the wines they taste, they are not likely to fault them…

While it is important to maintain a professional relationship with the trade, I believe the independent stance required of a consumer advocate, often not surprisingly, results in an adversarial relationship with the wine trade. It can be no other way. In order to pursue independence effectively, it is imperative to keep one’s distance from the trade. While this attitude may be interpreted as aloofness, such independence guarantees hard-hitting, candid, and uninfluenced commentary.

That’s from the boiler plate material on ethics that appears at the beginning of each edition of Parker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide, now in the seventh edition. Robert Parker set an admirable standard long ago. Read more…

It’s time for bluff the reader! To those at Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, bear in mind that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. One of these tasting notes and author combinations below is true, the others are false. Hit the comments with the right answer!

A) “Acrid aroma of seared steak, hot metal and welding fumes.” -Gary Vaynerchuk’s description of a cabernet franc from Gary, Indiana.

B) “Imagine having to choose between your ideal fantasy sexual partner and this wine–-and you choose [the wine]! That’s how good it is.” -Antonio Galloni on the $2,500-a-bottle Krug Clos d’Ambonnay.

C) “Usefully light. Not heavy. Not tired. Go for it! In private, of course.” -Jancis Robinson on Gallo Family Vineyard Moscato.

D) “Tastes like the urine of Satan after a hefty portion of asparagus.” -HoseMaster of Wine in a roundup tasting of California sauvignon blancs.

Answers to follow…

In today’s NYT, Eric Asimov writes about their tasting panel’s assessment of Chenin Blanc from South Africa (“A Wine That Isn’t What It Used to Be”). He says they found little to like, perhaps because of “difficult” vintages of 2010 and 2011, high yields or the unforgiving nature of screw caps. This is a change from five years ago when he found several wines in the category worth recommending.

Even though the story is in today’s print paper, it went online last Thursday. Last Friday, James Molesworth, who reviews South Africa wines (among others, including the Loire) for Wine Spectator, challenged Asimov’s findings on Twitter, saying, “You missed a lot of wines. A 20 wine sample every 5 years to make a sweeping statement on? Weak.” They went back and forth a few times (though Asimov’s July 13 tweets have oddly disappeared from his feed). Molesworth tastes and reviews many more than 20 chenin blancs from South Africa every year as he adopts a more comprehensive approach.

It’s rare to see wine critics disagree publicly. What do you think led to their different views of the category, their methodology or taste preferences? While the Time’s sampling strategy may miss some good wines in any given column, this seems to be a matter of taste. One of the wines that Asimov mentioned in the column, the 2009 FMC from Ken Forrester, wasn’t recommended since he (and the panelists?) found it “so sweet, oaky, unbalanced and fatiguing.” In reviewing the same wine, Molesworth gave it 93 points, calling it “Ripe and lush, with delicious creamed pear, ginger, heather and fig kept honest by fresh acidity that’s well-embedded on the toasty finish…Gorgeous.” So it seems like different strokes for different folks. Which is fine. Because even if scores seem to impart a sense of objectivity to a wine, wine tasting and enjoyment remain exercises in subjectivity. Which, of course, makes for good discussion.

Read more…

“Dad’s reading a comic book!”

My kids thought it hilarious to see me reading Drops of God, the Japanese manga sensation that swept through Asia. Its alluring powers were even on display on the beach where my younger son wanted to me to read it to him though eventually he wandered off and resumed building sand castles. But if you are old enough to enjoy wine, the innovative, enthralling, soap opera for wine geeks will lure you in no matter if you’ve just cracked your first moscato or if you were weaned on Meursault. And it is perfect beach reading (as I can testify having selflessly read it in situ on your behalf).

The story’s protagonist, the young Shizuku Kanzaki, embarks on a quest laid out in his father’s will: to correctly identify twelve “apostles,” or heavenly wines that are the “drops of God” in title. Shizuku turned his back wine while his father was alive, rebuffing the beverage that made his father into a legend of the wine world as a critic as well as a fortune (he bought a lot en primeur and consulted to wineries, neither of which damaged his reputation as a critic, apparently). But his father always offered him things to smell and taste, which honed his sensory perception for his quest. Or contest, more aptly: Shizuku is pitted against Issei Tomine, just the sort of young, suave, arrogant, know-it-all who makes the perfect rival for Shizuku’s more passionate approach as he evolves swiftly from wine newbie to master. At stake, is the entire collection that the elder Kanzaki amassed over a lifetime, as well as the family’s grand house.

Along the way, wines are praised rapturously, both in two-page illustrated spreads as well as with lavish descriptions. Consider this one for the first of the “twelve apostles:”

I wander deep within a forest thick with pristine primeval growths,
As the humid scent of life wafts from the moss-covered trees,
I walk toward the heart of the forest in search of solace.
The bounteous blessing of nature suits a virgin forest unsullied by human hands
Ah, behold, a pair of violet butterflies, tangling in flight!
Perhaps this little spring is your Holy Land.

The two contestants parse the words and embark on a method of arriving at an answer to the riddle. Shizuku’s approach is more fun as he discusses it with friends, finagles ways to taste rarified wines, closing in on the region and village to ultimately make his pick. Along the way, he helps a woman with amnesia recover her past through a glass of wine, gets a tutorial from an eccentric wine expert who literally stores rarefied Burgundy in a hole in the ground, and squares off with a business rival in a blind tasting.

It’s easy to see how the books drove wine sales across Asia more than any wine critic who merely assigns anodyne point scores to wines. Drops of God succeeds at the highest level: not only does it inform and engage the reader through the narrative and illustrations, it makes you yearn to start your own quest, to research regions and producers while pulling some corks on fine bottles to share with friends.

Drops of God, Volumes 1 – 4, now available on Amazon in English. (aff link)

Robert Parker and Antonio Galloni are organizing a lunch of 1982 Bordeaux from Parker’s cellar. Yes, the same passive cellar where he brought Charlie Rose and the 60 Minutes cameras in 2001.

For $12,000, attendees will be treated to a lunch at Restaurant Daniel and about 25 wines that Parker says he bought on release. Fully $6,000 per head will go to a charity, which is laudable. The other $6,000 per head, net of the restaurant’s, charges, will go to the self-proclaimed hedonist of wine and life. Since he told Charlie Rose he had 12,000 bottles in the cellar, it remains to be seen if this event will be the first of many. Full details on ’82 Bordeaux after the jump.

In other Wine Advocate news, Parker published a Napa Cabernet 2002 retrospective that included 17 wines that received 100 points. Read more…

Last week, Pancho Campo resigned from the Institute of Masters of Wine. An email from the Institute’s executive director said that “in light of his move into more sports and music events and away from wine, he has decided to resign his membership of the Institute of Masters of Wine, effective immediately.” The Institute had commissioned an independent investigation–the findings of that report were about to be released.

A couple of weeks ago, Robert Parker released his own investigation into the Campo/Miller tours of Spain (For a backgrounder, read “No Jay, no pay.”). The summary report stated that no actual impropriety occurred yet suggested revisions to the ethics statement to apply to all Wine Advocate contributors, not just Parker. The report prompted a lengthy thread on eRobertParker.com, including a stunning intervention that laid out a chronology of some of the events and said that the “decent and classy” thing to do would be to apologize to Jim Budd, who had reported on each development of the scandal on his blog and had documented cooperated with Parker’s lawyers despite Parker’s insistence to the contrary.

The conversation there shifted to the topic of whether Antonio Galloni should have attended an importer’s lavish dinner in the company of producers from Burgundy, California, and Italy whose wines he reviews as well as some big-time collectors, including a member of the Forbes billionaire list. After responding to some questions, Galloni accused his questioners of having an “agenda” and complained of how tiresome it is to attend dinners and constantly field questions about “wines, vintages, producers, the WA etc.”

Yesterday, Jay Miller posted a comment on eBob arguing that since 2006 (when he was hired) all Wine Advocate contributors should have been employees, not “independent contractors,” been banned from schmoozing with the trade, and have any outside activities pre-approved by Parker.

Robert Parker long ago laid down an admirable set of standards for wine writers. If those are no longer tenable for the Wine Advocate, they should be altered. If they are still tenable, they should be applied to all contributors at the publication.

Related: “Does the Wine Advocate buy over $700,000 worth of wine a year?“

With little fanfare, the FTC released updated guidelines for endorsement disclosure on blogs. Diannej.com has a good run-down. Wineries and wine blogs are both affected but the guidelines are a jumble and the FTC has said they have not been getting complaints, they will not fine bloggers (if anything, they would target advertisers), and they are not monitoring blogs.

The crux of the matter remains sponsored posts and paid reviews, which look like editorial but are really ads. Fortunately, we don’t see much of those in wine writing and magazines tend to flag advertorial as such. But given the high cost of wine and low rates of journalistic pay, virtually every wine writer from a magazine to a newsletter to a blog evaluates wines received for free. This constitutes an “arrangement” between the writer and the advertiser, according to the FTC. Yet the guidelines state that bloggers, not newspapers or magazines, should disclose that each and every time a wine is reviewed. While transparency is essential, it’s a double standard not applying this to all forms of wine writing and evaluation, no matter the medium. Further, wine blogs don’t hold lavish consumer events, as some magazines do, profiting from ticket sales while wineries whose wines could be featured in future editorial pour their wines for free. This seems a little higher stakes than some chump change from amazon affiliate revenue.

In the end, it’s probably people in the trade who will be most affected by these updated guidelines, particularly on social media. The FTC is insisting on enhanced disclosure, saying that commercial tweets should be identified as such, adding something like “#paid” or #ad” to tweets with a relationship to the product. In related news, the FTC is performing a review of how 14 alcohol brands engage their audience on Twitter.

In all, these relatively toothless revised guidelines will probably see those with nothing to hide adding more cumbersome disclosure language. Even if there’s little enforcement, it’s better for writers to err on the side of transparency, not for the FTC, but for credibility with readers.

Last week, NewYorker.com engaged its readers by asking which words should be eliminated from the English language. The surprising winner was “moist.”

Now that they’ve jettisoned moist, it’s time for us to have our fun. Wine tasting notes are all-to-often laden with obscure, sometimes overly precious, redundant or otherwise silly words or phrases. We started circulating a few on Twitter yesterday with the hashtag #sillywinetastingterms. A few that came up were: “dusty minerals,” “a hint of clean earth,” “vinous,” “melted asphalt,” “hedonistic” and…”liquid Viagra.”

So, have your say: which wine tasting term is officially the most useless and worthy of expulsion from our vernacular?