Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [78]
What appears to lure consumers into the shops are the adjectives describing fruit—whether it is tropical fruit and melons for Australian chardonnay, blackcurrants for claret from the Médoc and especially from cabernet sauvignons from the New World, or dark cherries from an Italian Valpolicella—as well as vanilla from heavily oaked wines. What often happens is that the scents on the nose seldom translate directly into tastes in the mouth. Some do, of course, particularly the aggressively fruity New World wines. However, perhaps we should be thankful that leather, pencil shavings, rubber, stone, and compost seldom do. One of the more interesting disjunctures can happen with dry Alsace or German rieslings of some age, when the honey on the nose does not appear as sweetness in the mouth; a similar experience can happen with an Alsace gewurztraminer, when the rose petals, Turkish Delight, or lychees on the nose cannot be tasted, more’s the pity. Indeed, these experiences demonstrate why anyone drinking wine should sniff before sipping: the pleasure is doubled. In short, winespeak can take you only so far: after that it is up to you—unless, of course, you always follow your guru, no matter where he leads.
Must you have a guru?
IN THE WORLD of wine, both amateur and professional, there is probably no stronger source of conflict than the rating and ranking of wines. Professional reputations are involved, as are the livelihoods of producers, brokers and wine merchants in various parts of the world. There are a variety of systems, some of which claim an objectivity and precision that supporters of other systems deride as impossible. There is certainly a split between the United States and Europe, which is exacerbated by the scorn occasionally poured on each side by the other. The poor consumer, who is looking for guidance, is left confused.
Undoubtedly the most influential wine taster in the world is Robert Parker, whose The Wine Advocate has a readership of thousands. His driving motive was indeed to help the poor consumer to find out more about a wine than could be gleaned from reading the label. His approach is to buy his own bottles or to taste from the barrels, sniff, sip, slosh it around his mouth, and quickly reach his verdict. His method is preeminently by snap-shot, and while he often returns and retastes a wine a year or two later, it is usually too late for any change in his opinion to have much effect on the market. His tasting abilities are almost universally acknowledged to be phenomenal, but the perception is that he homes in on certain types of wine: heavily extracted, alcoholic, less acidic, and with “gobs of fruit”—what one female sommelier has referred to as “penis wines.” He is accused of having driven many wine producers to skew their winemaking methods in order to create so-called Parker wines, wines that he is likely to rate highly and which as a result will be swept up by eager customers.
Parker’s scoring system—used by American schools and colleges—is based on a maximum of 100 points. However, the scoring effectively begins at 50: as one fellow taster said, a wine gets 50 points “just for showing up.” Thereafter:
50–64: to be avoided
65–74: average
75–79: above average
80–89: very good
90–95: outstanding
96–100: extraordinary
Parker has always insisted that customers should look at his tasting notes, not merely at the numbers, but the extent to which most of them do so is questionable. The thing is, for Americans, these numbers trigger off deeply held memories: at school, 90–100 was an A to A+, 80–89 a B, 70–79 a C, 60–69 a D, and then you fell off the cliff and your parents either yelled at you or, worse, looked deeply disappointed. In short, many Americans respond to the simplicity and familiarity and, convinced by Parker’s rock-hard certainty that he is accurate, place their wine bets on his choices. Presumably they also follow him because they like the wines he praises.
In Britain, the situation is very different. Granted that British universities also give marks out of 100,