Last week I talked about the greed of some of our wine producers, this week I am going to cover some of the sheer and utter stupidity that is helping to fuel that greed.

If I mentioned the names Huon Hooke, James Halliday, Len Evans or Jeremy Oliver they may be familiar to you.  If I mentioned the name Robert J. Parker, unless you're American wine buyer or Australian wine geek chances are his name won't mean a thing to you, yet he has a bigger impact on some of our top shelf wines then the familiar Australian names.

Parker is regarded as the guru of American wine writers and like any guru has thousands of mindless sheep that slavishly hang onto his every word and accept his pronouncements as though they were gospel and delivered from upon high. (Its not Parker's fault that he is successful and I don't begrudge his success for one second.) To make matters worse many of the mindless sheep have more money than brains, and are not wine connoisseurs, merely trophy hunting collectors.

When Parker releases his wine reviews, just like James Halliday he provides tasting notes and a score. Parker rated wines out of 100 and it is the scoring system that is the crux of our problem.  Any wine that is rated 95 or over instantly becomes a cult status wine and is hunted down by the trophy hunters regardless of cost or effort. 

Why do they do that you well may ask? The answer is best described as "urinal bragging rights" (or to put it more crudely, a rich boys pissing contest.) This is all about being unable to pull out a bottle of wine at a yuppie dinner party and impress your guests by saying "this wine must be fantastic, it's a Parker 98 pointer and cost me US$250 ($500 Australian.)  The fact that the wine originally sold in Australia for about $40 or $50 a few months before is immaterial. The additional amount paid is a small price to enable the host to proudly boast of the trophy catch. The wine being served could be an average bottle of $20 Shiraz from the guests would never know difference, but the quality of the wine doesn't matter, it’s the points and associated bragging rights that are important.

So if you wonder why it hard to obtain wines like; Veritas, Kays Block 6 Shiraz, Fox Creek Reserves Shiraz, Greenock Creek, Rockfords, etc, the answer is simple.  They may have just been rated highly by Mr. Parker.  If you see wines like Fox Creek JSM sitting in bottle shops at $59.95 a bottle (when it was $23 on releases a few months ago) and wonder why it’s at that stupid price, the answer is simple.  It's going to be sold to the trophy hunting sheep.

The 96 Penfolds Grange is just about the best wine that I have ever tasted, yet Parker “only” gave it a 92+, so the trophy hunters in the US will leave it on the shelves gathering dust whilst they chase the higher point wines. Parker as good as he is, is only one man and his opinion is only one man’s opinion, and being a man, he is not god, but judging by some of his followers reactions, you could be forgiven for thinking he is a wine god.

Don’t be a sheep, learn to make up your own mind why you like or dislike a wine, its much more rewarding.

Cheers

Ric