How different folk see the same strokes

Among the wine drinking nations of the world, there appears to be a distinct difference in the desired taste in wine. For example, many of the French prefer their wines some what austere and earthy, we in Australia like ours full of fruit and in the US they seem to have a sweeter palate than we do in Australia. This divergence in taste has global implications in our global village.

There are an increasing number of wines made in Australia with the US export in mind. In many cases these wines are very sweet and are designed to please the newer wine drinker with a sweet tooth. Witness the popularity of Grenache that is exported. Most of it is NutraSweet alcoholic raspberry cordial although the occasional one is well made and balanced with good complexity, but these are the exception to the rule. Even some Champaign brands design specific cuvée with extra sweetness for the US market. This is not a matter of being right or wrong; it’s just a matter of fact.

Last week I tried the Thorn Clarke 2002 Shotfire Ridge Shiraz which has just been released. It was a nice enough wine, in fact it was very enjoyable and I would be happy to drink it anytime. In part, my tasting note is as follows “on the palate it’s a solid fruit driven very savoury wine with good intensity and fruit purity. The refreshing acid is youthful and the tannins which are relatively smooth are also dusty. It’s muscular in weight with savoury plum, rich chocolate and vanilla flavours which comes across in an unpretentious but honest fashion. It’s a very enjoyable fruit driven wine and well made to boot. Rated as Recommended with **** for value you can do a lot worse then spending your money on this glass staining wine.”

On the other hand the “worlds most influential” wine critic, Robert Parker rated the wine at 94 points and said “It boasts an inky/purple colour as well as a big, sweet, smoky, peppery, blackberry liqueur-scented nose followed by bold flavours of roasted meats, dried herbs, scorched earth, and spice. An incredible value, with huge body and massive fruit as well as glycerine, it is almost too good to be true.”

The key pointer in the differences of the tasting notes and the way we perceived the wines is that Parker was impressed with the “big, sweet, bold, huge, massive, glycerine” aspects. To my way of thinking, this is a perfect example of the big sweet tooth aspect stated previously.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so is taste. That does not mean that one person is right or that one person is wrong, they are just different. Recently Jeremy Oliver was unfairly attacked by Parker and many of his supporters on a number of Internet wine forums. In many ways the attack is the failure of a critic or of an individual to realise that there is nothing wrong with having different tastes to other people. Parker’s comments came across as a cheap shot and in many ways were based on differing personal tastes.

Later, in another comment on an unrelated subject Parker said “It would be fun to share this part of my job with all the other wine critics...but no such luck...so far.” Is it any wonder that other critics don’t want to “share” when you make negative comments about your fellow critics?

Parker also wrote “….hey tonight it's magnums of 90 La Conseillante,and 82 Latour and 82 Pichon-Lalande , and a 49 Climens.... which makes me wonder...how did the Bordelais know how to make "Parkerized" wines in 1982... or 19961, 1959, 1949, 1947, 1929, 1921, etc.... ummmmmmmmm?” Now to some extent that’s a very good question but the answer is extremely simple. Parker, like most people have more than one style of wine they like. Do you, the reader like all your wines to taste the same? Of course not! There are a number of Parker styles just as in the same way as you like your Shiraz in one style, your Chardonnay in a different style, your Cabernet Sauvignon in a third style and your Pinot in a fourth style. So when it comes to new world Shiraz, it is easy to “manufacture a Parker wine”.

Understanding a critic’s taste in each style is the basis of being able to use a critic’s recommendations to good effect. Being able to read between the lines and knowing the importance of what’s not said is frequently as important as the content of the stated text (just like reading an advert in the newspaper.)

One person may find a wine has character, a second may say the same wine is badly flawed and undrinkable due to Brett. A critic’s opinion is just one persons opinion on one day and the only palate that matters is your own.

As a nation we are doing very well out of exporting wine that many of us would find unattractive but then a lot of the French wine that the local French people love do not appeal to our tastes. Different stokes and all that!