Whine of the Month : September 2009

Believe me, I’m no expert. The raison d'etre of this web site has never been about anything more than the pure, simple pleasure of drinking delicious, affordable wine. Sure, I suppose I know more than the average guy. After all, I’ve been into this stuff for over 30 years, but I’ve never been interested in sniffing out the excruciatingly obscure taste descriptors that you so often find in wine reviews.

However, there’s no doubt about the fact that “back in the day”, there was a clear difference between the styles and flavors of the products of various wine regions and grape varietals. For example, you’d never mistake a peppery Cote du Rhone for a dusty Rioja, or a racy Chianti for a juicy California Zinfandel. Sadly, I believe, this is no longer always the case.

The reason? Simple. The “Parkerization” of wine the world over. In order to sell their wines in the American market, winemakers everywhere are manipulating their wines to conform to the style that is consistently awarded high scores by that most influential of critics, Robert Parker.

He likes ‘em big. Big and juicy. Big and juicy and overripe and alcoholic. Big and…well, you get the idea. Look, we’ve been over this a dozen times and everyone who reads these diatribes regularly knows how I feel. In case you don’t, go through the archives and you’ll find plenty of references to the weasel and the damage done.

Actually, it’s the archives that inspired this column. I was wondering why at the tastings lately, the red wines have seemed kind of well…boring. I have trouble getting excited over any of them and they seem to all run together in a dull sameness. Good, solid wines, but lacking (for the most part) any sense of terrior or regionality.

I remembered an old column (last reprinted in August, 2007) about my growing preference for white wines, due to their wide and distinctive range of flavors, and realized that it’s also the narrowing range of styles in red wines that has put me off them to some degree. Every once in a while, I’ll taste something red that’s really wonderful and it brings me back to my days of discovery with Cote Rotie and Bonne Mares and Barolo and Rioja and other truly distinctive wines that reflected the winemaking tradition in the places from which they came.

Until then, I’ll drink my whites and curse the Parkerness.

Harry “Your Low Rent Dionysus” Orlove