The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture (6 page)

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean you can buy from them. To regulate liquor sales more effectively after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, most states put in place laws requiring an intermediary, the wholesaler, between the producer of an alcoholic beverage and the retailer. These regulations were enacted at a time when the U.S. wine industry was moribund and few Americans had an interest in wine. It is a very different story now: the country has several thousand wineries and millions of wine enthusiasts, and with the advent of online shopping and the ease and affordability of long-distance shipping, the three-tier distribution system has become an absurdly outdated barrier to free trade and consumer choice. Most states now permit some form of direct-to-consumer shipping from wineries, but the wholesalers are a well-financed interest group and have used their political muscle to limit the scope of many direct-shipping bills and to keep the existing regulatory framework intact. And direct-to-consumer shipping from wineries is just one part of this battle. At present, only around a dozen states allow people to have wine shipped to them from out-of-state retailers. The direct shipping issue is a sad commentary on the state of American politics—for one thing, it underscores how irredeemably corrupt our campaign finance system is—and a source of endless frustration to wine enthusiasts.

These archaic laws have inhibited the growth of online wine buying, but there is still something to be said for the pleasure of browsing and buying in an actual store as opposed to a virtual one. When you're in a brick-and-mortar store, however, there is something you need to check the moment you set foot inside, before you even peruse the selection: Is the temperature relatively cool, or is the heat blasting? If the store is noticeably warm, you should perform an immediate about-face and leave. It doesn't matter how good the inventory is if the wines are not properly stored. I don't care if you see a bottle of 1945 Mouton Rothschild being offered for $200—if the shop is warm, head for the door (and if they're selling '45 Mouton at that price, it's probably a counterfeit bottle anyway). A cellar should be kept at around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and while a store doesn't need to be quite that cold, it certainly needs to be on the cooler side, and the bottles should be cool to the touch. One other piece of advice: as the saying goes, it pays to shop around, at least to the extent that you can, given our onerous shipping laws. There are sometimes significant price discrepancies between one store and the next, and you can save yourself a few dollars here and there by comparing prices. The best way to do that: use Wine-Searcher.com. It is a great service and can help you find bargains or at least avoid forking over more money than you need to spend.

S
HOULD
Y
OU
U
SE
“P
ROFESSIONAL”
W
INE
R
ATINGS?

I don't agree with people who contend that all rating scales are irredeemably flawed or who believe that comparative evaluations are somehow antithetical to the culture of wine. Since the beginning of wine, people have been making comparative assessments: I like wine X more than I like wine Y. The 1855 rankings in Bordeaux and the classification system in Burgundy are rooted in such judgments. It is human nature to compare and contrast, and frankly, it is part of the pleasure of wine. I think ratings are an inevitable aspect of wine appreciation, and I certainly haven't been able to resist the urge to keep score; I use letter grades instead of numbers, but it still amounts to scorekeeping.

However, the 100-point scale, popularized by Parker and used by the
Wine Spectator
and other publications, is a farce. It gives a pseudo-objective gloss to what is an almost wholly subjective exercise. I think that unless a critic can, tasting blind, reproduce the same results over and over, he or she has no business assigning a specific score to a wine—and I'm reasonably certain no one can do that. Wines show sufficient variability from bottle to bottle, and the human palate is sufficiently fickle, that that kind of consistency is just not possible. Some years ago, David Shaw of the
Los Angeles Times
, in an otherwise adulatory profile of Parker, tried to test the famed critic's consistency by having him blind-taste and score a group of wines twice over consecutive days. Parker wouldn't do it, telling Shaw, “I've got everything to lose and nothing to gain.” Give him 100 points for candor. In an interview with a Florida newspaper in 2007, Parker made another surprisingly frank admission that ought to have been the death knell of the 100-point scale. “I really think probably the only difference between a 96-, 97-, 98-, 99-, and 100-point wine,” he said, “is really the emotion of the moment.”

That comment didn't sink the 100-point approach, but the scale may be dying now for another reason: grade inflation. Nowadays critics have powerful incentives to bump up their scores. High scores are catnip for retailers, who use them to flog wines via shelf talkers and e-mail offers. In turn, those citations are excellent free publicity for critics. In a crowded marketplace for wine information, big numbers can help a critic to stand out, and I don't think there is any doubt that score inflation has become rampant. Just look at Parker himself: for the 2010 and 2009 vintages in the northern Rhône Valley of France, he gave out seventeen 100-point ratings. This came not long after he awarded nineteen 100-point ratings to the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux and eighteen 100-point scores during a retrospective tasting of the 2002 Napa vintage. In a ten-month span, Parker gave out fifty-three 100-point ratings. Who knew perfection was so pervasive? When every wine these days seems to get 90 points just for showing up and scores in the mid- and high 90s are given out like candy on Halloween, it is hard to assign much credibility to ratings—and it appears that fewer and fewer consumers and merchants are taking them seriously (a growing number of wine stores nationwide are now point-free zones).

Does that mean you should never trust ratings? No. If you can find a critic whose taste in wine more or less aligns with yours, then by all means use his or her scores. If two or three critics agree that a particular wine is brilliant, there's probably some wisdom in that crowd. But just recognize that grade inflation is everywhere these days, and just because Parker or the
Spectator
gushes about a wine, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to gush about it. Caveat emptor, as they say.

V
INTAGE:
D
OES
I
T
M
ATTER?

If you carry around a vintage chart in your wallet, here's a suggestion: throw it out. For one thing, vintage summaries are easily found on smartphones and tablets, so there's no need to keep cluttering up your wallet. More importantly, vintage charts are now meaningless. It used to be that there were good vintages and bad ones. These days, it seems, there are only good vintages and better ones. Thanks to improvements in winemaking and warmer, more consistent growing seasons, it now takes something truly cataclysmic—think biblical, think locusts and frogs—to ruin an entire harvest. Short of that, almost no vintage is without good wines. Yet as the qualitative differences between vintages have narrowed, the buzz over certain vintages has grown cacophonous. This seems to be a particularly American phenomenon. While Americans are arguably the savviest wine drinkers on the planet these days, we do have a tendency to fall prey to the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome—to swoon over extravagantly hyped vintages and to shun those that are not as highly touted.

Sure, some extraordinary vintages deserve the hype they generate. In 2005, Bordeaux and Burgundy both produced incredible wines, two of the finest vintages that these regions have ever had. The most acclaimed wines were amazingly good, and not surprisingly, they were staggeringly expensive. (Case in point: in the early 2000s, I was able to buy Domaine Mugnier's Musigny, a fabulous
grand cru
red Burgundy, for around $80 a bottle in France; when the 2005 Mugnier Musigny was released, its price instantly soared to $5,000 a bottle. Needless to say, I'm no longer a buyer of Monsieur Mugnier's Musigny.) But 2005 yielded great wines at all price points, and fabulous Burgundies and Bordeaux were to be had for $25 and $30 a bottle. In the case of the 2005 vintage, it paid to believe the hype.

But not all highly touted vintages merit the acclaim. For instance, the
Wine Spectator
gave the 2000 vintage in Italy's Piedmont region a 100-point rating. But among Barolo and Barbaresco producers and collectors, the
Spectator
's rating was considered a bit of a joke. Yes, some excellent wines were produced in 2000, but it was widely agreed that 1996 and 2001 were much stronger vintages (and the
Spectator
has since downgraded the 2000 Piedmont vintage, now rating it 93 points). Just as critics have lots of incentive to give out high scores for individual wines, they also have incentive to hype every promising vintage that comes along, and that's because buzz sells. But the hype isn't always justified. How do you find out when it is and when it isn't? That's tough. A trusted retailer can help. Following the chatter on a wine discussion board such as wineberserkers.com can also help. But the most reliable way of determining whether a vintage is overhyped or appropriately hyped is simply to taste some of the wines yourself.

Here's something else to keep in mind. All the buzz over vintage obscures an essential point: the producer matters more than the vintage, and great producers make excellent wines pretty much every year. Even under the most favorable conditions, a middling producer is not likely to make a brilliant wine. By contrast, a gifted vintner can turn out compelling wines even under the most challenging conditions—and it is often those wines that they are most proud of. If you were a producer in Burgundy who failed to make a fabulous wine in 2005, when the conditions could not have been more favorable, you should probably be in another line of work. In contrast, 2008 was a very challenging year, with lots of rain and rot in the vineyards, but the finest producers in Burgundy still managed to craft excellent wines—not as strong as their '05s, to be sure, but delicious wines in their own right, and much more attractively priced. The point is this: don't let yourself succumb to the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome. Some intelligent buying in so-called off years can yield a lot of drinking pleasure.

B
UYING
F
OREIGN
W
INES

Obviously, imported wines can be intimidating ones to buy. The names are unfamiliar, and the bottles often don't list the grape or grapes used to make the wine. By law, for instance, most French wines are labeled according to their place of origin, not the grape or grapes that went into the bottle. (The major exception is in the Alsace region, where the wines are identified by the grape.) Chablis, for instance, is a region in northern France, not far from Paris; the wines we know as Chablis come from this region and are made from the Chardonnay grape, but producers are not allowed to put the word
Chardonnay
on their labels. This stricture is rooted in the notion of
terroir
, which is the cornerstone of French viticulture—the belief that the vineyard is the most important component in the winemaking process and that the grape is merely a vehicle for conveying the voice of the soil, the
terroir
. Most Italian and Spanish wines are also labeled by place rather than grape.

But even though imported wines can be intimidating, there is actually an easy, almost fail-safe way to find good ones: flip the bottle around and see who imported it. Importers have played a central, even defining role in the emergence and growth of American wine culture. Combining impeccable taste with evangelical zeal, people such as Kermit Lynch, Robert Chadderdon, Robert Haas, and Terry Theise have not only introduced Americans to many of the greatest wines that Europe has to offer; they have also helped cultivate several generations of palates. But the wine world has broadened dramatically in the decades since these importers started out; entire regions—entire countries—that produced mostly rotgut twenty years ago are now making respectable wines. Amid this global quality revolution, a number of newer importers are continuing the work started by Lynch, Chadderdon, and their generation and are scouring the Languedoc, Galicia, Sicily, Mendoza, and McLaren Vale for tomorrow's star winemakers.

Here is a list of importers whose wines can be counted on to deliver pleasure:

AUSTRALIA

Epicurean Wines

Old Bridge Cellars

The Australian Premium Wine Collection

AUSTRIA