Publication Review: Parker - The Wine Advocate Issue 161 - Australia

 

Introduction

 

No matter what you think of Robert Parker, the man is the most influential wine critic in the world today and when he "blesses a wine” with a high score, it is almost guaranteed to sell out immediately; especially in the US where his influence at the top end of the market is enormous. So why is Parker so powerful?

 

The US is a wealthy marketplace where many individuals have a high standard of living and a very high disposable income, which is why the US market is so attractive to exporters. Wine consumption per head of population in the US is significantly lower than countries like Australia and the UK and whilst the US does have a small group of hardcore experienced wine drinkers, many of those interested in wine are fairly new to the subject. (Most alcohol drinkers consume beer, spirits or cocktails as their drink of choice, not wine.)

 

The US is also very much into paying consultants for advice, and the average person sees the use of consultants as a completely normal activity. Many of the wealthy wine consumers in the US feel they do not have the time, the inclination, or possibly the opportunity, to taste their own way through the myriad of available wines to find the wines they like, and see coughing up the US$60 for an annual subscription a small price to pay to have a consultant do the work for them.

 

Simply put, Parker is powerful because his customers have bestowed the power upon him; this is not a criticism of Parker or his work, it is a fact of life.

 

The world waits with bated breath for each edition of the Wine Advocate, because on one hand, a good review can make a winery’s selling job easy and on the other, consumers are "on the starting blocks" waiting to race out and buy the latest and greatest high-pointed, and best-value finds.

 

The introduction to the last year’s Australian edition of the Wine Advocate certainly stirred up some emotion and was rather controversial. This year’s introduction seems tame by comparison; over half the introduction is devoted to "A simplified guide to Australian wine regions." Whilst any sane person will realise it is hard to sum up all the wine regions of the country the size of Australia in three quarters of a page, at least Parker goes to great lengths to dispel the idiotic generalisation that all Australian wines taste the same.

 

In his regional guide, Parker states that the Barossa Valley “is the source of Australia's finest wines, including spectacular old vine Shiraz cuvées produced by Cimicky, Rick Burge, Elderton, Greenock Creek, Rockford, Veritas, Torbreck and Yalumba.”

 

On the Clare Valley Parker says, “Some surprisingly fine Rieslings emerge from this area, and don't discount the high-quality reds."

 

The Hunter Valley does not do as well; Parker says, "In spite of this region's renown, considerable quantities of mediocre, industrial swill emerge from both the ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ Hunter Valley.”

 

Parker's comments on Margaret River are “interesting.” He states, “Australian wine experts claim that Australia's most French-like Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnays come from this area, which produces wines with higher natural acidities.”  He then lists a number of the better producers. Notice, Parker does not tell us what he thinks of the area, he tells us “what our experts claim.” This is tantamount to damning the area by omission.

 

On McLaren Vale, Parker states, "The traditional fare for this hot area south of Adelaide was high-alcohol, thick, rich Grenache wines. This has all changed in the last five years with the advent of cold fermentations and the emergence of more serious producers.”

 

Grenache may have been of a major grape variety in McLaren Vale, but Shiraz has been the emerging grape variety in the area since we started moving away from fortified wines, and that was a lot more than five years ago. McLaren Vale has also been blessed with a number of “serious producers;”  the likes of d'Arenberg, Coriole, Hardys, Kays, Maxwell, Noon, Pirramimma, Scarpantoni, Tatachilla, Wirra Wirra and Woodstock; some of which who've been around for longer than Mr Parker has been on earth.

 

Parker has been seriously reviewing Australian wine for about a decade, which is a relatively short period of time, and has only travelled here a few times. His comments on McLaren Vale are in many ways indicative of his depth of knowledge of the Australian wine scene.

 

The comments on Coonawarra are reasonably positive but not so its nearby neighbour Padthaway. "Padthaway Vineyards have proven how easy it is to produce industrial quantities of uninspiring white and red wines. Among the brightest lights are the wines produced by Sparky and Sarah Marquis, and the efforts of importer Dan Phillips, all of whom admirably prove that quality and value can be married.”

 

As an aside, as I was researching the publication, I noticed that according to Parker's stated information, (with one exception,) the Marquis Phillips wines were in fact a blend of a Padthaway, McLaren Vale and Adelaide Hills fruit.

 

On the Yarra Valley, Parker pulls no punches stating, "This is Australia's most fashionable viticultural area as well as the darling of their wine press. Its proponents (the provincial Australian wine press) argue that the climate and resulting wines come closest in spirit to those of Bordeaux on Burgundy in France. I am not convinced….. there is much more ‘sizzle’ than substance for most wineries from Yarra Valley.”

 

To some extent, whether you agree with Parker's comments or not, this is not the first time that Parker has had either a subtle or not so subtle dig at the Australian wine press. In fact on a number of occasions, Parker has disparaged competitive journalists either individually or as a group, and frankly disparaging the opposition does nothing to build his own credibility.

 

The next section is titled "Current realities and myths surrounding Australian wines." Parker states that over the last five years many of the top producers have moved towards more subtle wood regimes and that the wines are better for it; I don't think any sane person would disagree with that comment.

 

On ageing of Australian wine, Parker states “One of the perennial criticisms of the South Australian wines is they are no more than one-dimensional fruit bombs that will fall apart with age.” Parker then goes on to mention that the same argument first surfaced with the introduction of Grange and that Grange has now proved itself to be a 30 year wine. Parker then goes on to state "going back and tasting through the 1995’s, 1996’s and the 1998’s that were bestowed high marks proves time and time again that these wines, while approachable and drinkable young, have the balance, concentration and material to age for 20 years or more.”

 

In some cases, Parker may be right, but in some cases he is just as equally wrong. Whilst there may be some validity in the comparison between the “new style” when Grange was first released, and the blockbuster wines of today, the comparison is somewhat simplistic and ignores some of the facts. Firstly, the early Granges were about 13% alcohol and today's blockbusters are frequently 16 and can be as high as 17% alcohol. Secondly, the viticultural and winemaking practices have changed and these changes may impact on the longevity of the wines.

 

For a wine to be capable of ageing it has to be in balance, and whilst it is possible to produce a high alcohol wine that is balanced, just because a wine is balanced, does not necessarily mean it will actually improve with age. Some of these high alcohol wines will probably age well, but some of them will not. As far as Parker's point that tasting through the 95’s, 96's and 98's proves his point I don't think this is necessarily the case.

 

The level of alcohol only started to climb around the mid 1990’s and many of the 95’s and 96’s in my cellar are around 14% alcohol, not 15 and 16%. As far as 1998 is concerned, it was reputed to be “the vintage of the century” by many pundits and if that is the case, many of the better wines should be capable of excellent longevity and should improve as they get older. If you ask many of the highly talented winemakers, who Parker obviously respects, what they think about the longevity of the 98 vintage, many of them would disagree with his conclusions.

 

During my last trip to the Barossa Reid Bosward of Kaesler Wines and I discussed the characteristics of various vintages.  Here is the extract from the Tour Diary. ‘It was very interesting to hear Reid's comments on 1998, which in short he described as a flashy year. “Here we are seven years into it, and the great wines should be shut down and sleeping; instead many are drinking fantastically well but they will peter out when they are still relatively young.” ‘

 

So who is better qualified to know how these wines will last, the respected and highly talented winemakers who are making the wine, or the critic who is reviewing them? My money is on the winemakers, as well as my own palate and experience.

 

It is interesting to note that in the previous Australian issue of the Wine Advocate, as well as previous tasting notes I have read on Australian wines by Parker, he predicted what I thought were ludicrously long drinking windows for many of the blockbuster Australian wines. Whilst I was reading the latest issue, it seemed to me that many of his projected drinking windows have been scaled back. Where previously Parker was talking 20 and 25 years he is now talking 15 to 20. I noticed that many of the wines from the SA 2003 vintage had recommended drinking windows of 12 to 15 years; 8 to 12 years would be more accurate to my way of thinking. It is still my opinion that in many cases the size of the wine directly relates to Parker's prediction of longevity and that many of his drinking windows are still too generous.

 

Parker's next subject for commentary is a good one. He states "Another myth about Australian wines is that they will taste alike. Of course there is plenty of industrial crap that I wasted days tasting through, but the top-notch wines are dramatically different, even within the same viticultural regions. However, trying to portray Australia as some sort of monolithic wine producing region is a knucklehead attitude, and completely ignores the reality of actually tasting the wines, especially in view of the diversity of Australian wine styles, even within the same region.”

 

Putting aside his “industrial crap” comment for the moment, because I will have more to say about this later, the general thrust of his comment is an excellent one. One of the most common, and ignorant comments you see on the overseas wine forums is “all Australian wines taste the same” but unfortunately that "knucklehead attitude” is unlikely to change, as the change would require people to actually think about what they are drinking and do a little bit of work looking for wines that are a little bit different from the stereotypical South Australian fruit bombs.

 

Parker's next point is interesting, He states, “Australia has been at the forefront of industrial viticulture, which does actually work and can provide consumers with tasty, fruit-driven wines that are required to be drunk during their first several years of life. This report summarises some of the best values, some of which are undeniably industrial wines, but they are the finest industrial quality wines being made in the world today.”

 

Whilst that looks positive, in the introduction Parker states, "Of course, over 70% of the wines I tasted for this report were not included because they were over-oaked, diluted, innocuous, or uninteresting offerings that represent nothing more than industrial swill.”

 

So you can have good industrial swill and bad industrial swill; fair enough!

 

Parker's final point in the opening section is an eye-opener. "Perhaps the biggest surprise of Australia is how good the dry Rieslings are. Another surprise is the unoaked Chardonnays, which are delicious at the top level. Despite their enthusiastic acceptance by (local) wine consumers, they have not caught on in other parts of the New World, which seems unusual to this taster.”

 

Whilst this may come as a surprise to Parker, it certainly doesn't come as a surprise to the locals who have known how good these two varietals can be. Whilst Parker's comments may be positive, I'm not sure if those positive comments flow through to the scores. He tasted 18 white wines from Clare for an average score of 88.4. He tasted 22 whites from W.A. for an average score of 88.0.

 

A Look at the Numbers

 

In last year's Australian edition of the Wine Advocate, Parker reviewed 795 wines and they equated to 30% of the total Australian wines that he had tasted (which means he tasted about 2,650 wines in total.) In this year's edition, he tasted at 3,230 wines and has recommended 952, which also happens to be around 30%. Of the 952 wines recommended, approximately 90 of them were fortified wines and many of these gained deservedly very high scores.

 

According to my calculations, of the 831 non fortified wines reviewed, 664 of them, or 80% were from South Australia. Only 11.7% were from Victoria and 5.9% were from Western Australia.

 

In terms of red versus white, 161 or 19.4% were either white or rosé and the other 80% were red. It is interesting to note, that Parker tasted almost twice as many white wines from the Barossa than he did from Western Australia.

 

Clearly, Parker has a preference for tasting wines from the Barossa/Eden Valley area and the McLaren Vale/Langhorne Creek area. These two areas represent 57.5% of the total wines tasted. The average scores for all red wines tasted from the various areas are as follows:-

 

Area Barossa/Eden Valley McLaren Vale/Langhorne Creek Clare Coonawarra/Padthaway/Mt Benson SA Blends Victoria WA

Average Points 91.5 91.0 90.2 89.1 88.7 89.9 88.6

 

I don't know if it's my imagination or not, but initially glancing through this edition there seemed to be less highly-pointed wines than in the previous Australian edition. For the hell of it, I threw the numbers into a spreadsheet to get an accurate picture and for the 552 South Australian wines the break up is as follows:

 

Bracket 84 or less Barely above average 85 – 89 Above average to very good 90 – 95 Outstanding wine 96 – 100 Extraordinary wine

Number/Percentage 8 / 1% 180 / 33% 323 / 58% 41 / 7%

 

It looks like my original feeling may have been incorrect, but to be fair to Parker, these are the best 30% of the wines he tasted. Even then, about 14% of the total wines tasted would rate as either Outstanding or Extraordinary (90 points and above.)

 

One thing I did notice that is definitely not my imagination, in most of the tasting notes for wines that are 95 and above a number of words are consistently used. They are: powerful, dense, intense, blockbuster, full-throttle, tremendous thickness, amazingly intense, super-concentrated etc. In many ways, it seems that wines with these characteristics gain extra points. At the other end of the scale, many wines of the more elegant do not seem to do as well.

 

Last year Parker made negative comments about the Australian wine press, and whilst this year the comments are not as inflammatory, he still had a couple of big swipes at them. In both last year and this year's editions, Parker has mentioned “industrial swill” on a number of occasions, although in this year's edition some of the comments relating to industrial wines can be seen as positive.

 

Last year Southcorp took a bucketing they are unlikely to forget. Penfolds only had four wines that made the grade and they ranged from 87 points for the 2001 RWT, Bin 707 and Magill whilst the 99 Grange received 92 points. The points would have been a concern but Southcorp would have been more concerned with Parkers scathing criticism. Amongst other things, he said, “These are formulaic wines where acid levels appear to be so unnaturally high as to compress the texture and kill the aromatics, making the wines taste like something from a surreal chemistry class.”  

 

This year Parker was generally very complimentary about the Penfolds wines.  Here is what I simply do not understand. How is it possible that a last year, a large line up of wines from Penfolds spanning multiple vintages were considered to be “formulaic wines … taste like something from a surreal chemistry class” and this year an equally large line up of Penfolds wines, also spanning multiple vintages do not have the same problems? Was the previous tasting just an unfortunate coincidence where Penfolds somehow managed to presented all their formulaic, acidic wines for review and this year they presented the good ones? Or did some miracle take place which changed all the “chemistry class wines” (most of which had already been finished and bottled) that changed these wines into acceptable drops? Or is there another reason?

 

From my perspective, I do not see how so many of the Penfolds labels could suddenly improve so much in one year.

 

Those that have tried the last two releases of Grange will be interested in Parkers scores. Last year he awarded the 1999 Grange 92 points, this year he awarded the 2000 Grange 93 points. To the best of my knowledge, that makes Parker the only professional taster that has rated the 2000 higher than the 1999.

 

This year it was someone else's turn to take a bucketing.

 

Although Mount Mary did not submit wines for review, Parker decided to do his own thing. He said, "The proprietor of Mount Mary has never wanted me to taste his wines, which are revered by some segments of the Australian press, but with some stealth work, I was able to secure a few vintages. In addition to the 2001 Quintet, I was able to taste the 1998, 1997, 1995 and 1994. For my taste, only the 2001 merited a score higher than 80 points. The attempt appears to be to emulate our Bordeaux petite chateau, but none were as fine, being lean, high in acid, austere and meagrely endowed. They will not improve the age. The 2001 has slightly more to it than the older vintages. It is difficult to understand what merit these wines possess."

 

Once again, Parker is having a subtle dig at the Australian press, which is entirely unnecessary. No matter what one thinks of Mount Mary, there are many Australian wine lovers who love these wines. If they didn't, the prices commanded would not be anywhere near as high.

 

I have used this example to outline an important point in regard to Parker's work. Understanding this attitude is the key to understanding Parker's palate. Firstly, the guy is a prodigious taster and has a phenomenally consistent palate. However, we all don't have the same tastes and it is important for wine lovers to try and find reviewers and critics who they can align their palates too. Clearly, Parker loves blockbuster Australian wines and is not as enamoured with those that are more subtle and sedate. That's fine, as long as people understand Parker's personal palate preferences.

 

If you add one and one together you can get two or eleven, depending on which way you look at things. If you consider Parkers continual barbs and disparagement of the wine press, and then add in his bucketing of Penfolds last year (and Mount Mary this year,) and whilst there may be some truth in his comments, one could be forgiven for concluding there is a “bit of showmanship” going on, but then maybe I am getting eleven instead of two, or am I?

 

As I was typing this up, although the Wine Advocate had only just come out, I received a large number of self congratulatory e-mails from wineries and their agents hailing their personal successes. The e-mails from Australian retailers using Parker points to try and flog their inventory have also already begun.

 

In an exchange of e-mails from a producer who (deservedly) did rather well, they said, ….. “Mmmmm lots of sour grapes from some who did not get a listing. Someone has just claimed that it is "totally impossible" to get higher than 90 for wine made from young vines.

 

No one has told him in plain English; the low scores he has been receiving lately from a number of reviewers, might be due to the quality of the wine produced; and that you need more than just having a wine that has some old vine content. Now he isn't even rated. Instead of keeping quiet he is busy mowing down tall poppies. Ah wine business don't you just love it?”

 

Post Script: Some reprobate Americans were given access to this story a day or so in advance. One of them posted a new topic, with a link to this story, on Squires' Forum (which is hosted on the Parker website). The link to this story was deleted and Squires is reputed to have said to the author of the post "I'm sorry but this guy has been a basher of this site for a long time. I just can't allow a link to him." And then later "he is a banned board member and has made it his position in life to slam me, Bob etc. I just can't give him PR for his website like this... Issues can still be discussed as issues without names...I mean, it's not like he's a professional critic who himself makes the news."

 

Readers can make up their own mind if I am bashing Parker or just providing an balanced look at his latest issue of the Wine Advocate. The thread, which has got pretty heated can be found here and makes interesting reading.