Robert Parker: ‘This Jihad’, ‘Extremists’ and ‘Blobbers’
April 28th 2009, by GQ
It’s all been going off in wine cyberspace, with the world’s most powerful wine critic, Robert Parker, in a bit of a black hole. Tyler Colman, as reported in his wine blog drvino.com last week, questioned Parker if his team on The Wine Advocate had accepted hospitality from the wine trade. It turns out that they have and, although this is hardly a heinous crime, it conflicts with Parker’s own well publicized, lofty standards.
However, instead of simply putting the record straight and squashing the story, Parker hit out at bloggers and others in the forum on his website, which in turn is controlled with a heavy hand by one of the alleged guilty parties, Mark Squires.
Dinner with Oz and a Private Book Signing
September 24th 2008, by GQ
Our good friend Oz Clarke came to Bordeaux last night to launch his new book, ‘Bordeaux – the wines, the vineyards, the winemakers’. I’ve got a copy or two of the earlier version, published by Webster’s, but the updated hardback from his new publisher, Anova, is a far more impressive affair. The Bordeaux Wine Bureau (Conseil Interprofessionel du Vin de Bordeaux) were handing out free French versions to invited guests, with Oz signing merrily. I took one as a birthday present for Daniel, our vineyard manager, but we can’t decipher what Oz wrote.
Saint-Emilion on the Left Bank. In Paris.
September 5th 2008, by GQ
One perk of being an accidental wine critic (for Wine & Spirit magazine) is that I get invited to taste some very good wines in lovely surroundings. This time it was a line-up of mature (or maturing) vintages of Premiers Grands Crus Classés from Saint Emilion in a private dining room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. With the TGV taking just 3 hours from Bordeaux – and costing around €60 each way for a first class ‘IDTGV’ ticket booked over the web – it’s an easy and affordable day trip. The lunch was arranged by the Groupement de PGCCs de St-Emilion for a handful of wine writers from around the world to meet the owners of the 14 chåteaux involved. For me, there was the added advantage of catching up with people like Neal Martin (above right, chatting to Philippe Castéja of Château Trottevielle, with Nicolas Thienpont of Pavie Macquin looking on). Neal has had a meteoric rise to wine-writing stardom since his Wine-Journal website was merged into erobertparker.com a couple of years ago.
In Praise of White Bordeaux
August 7th 2008, by GQ
The UK’s most influential wine critic, Jancis Robinson MW, posted a great article on the ’subscribers only’ section of her website with the headline ‘In praise of white Bordeaux’ at the beginning of August, following a tasting for British Airways.
“I strongly urge you to take advantage of the revolution in white winemaking in Bordeaux. I know I have said the same about Rhone wines but that doesn’t make it any less true of Bordeaux. If only there were a similar revolution in Burgundy…”
Strong stuff, but as a vinespotter in Bordeaux and not Burgundy, I’m not rushing to complain. Days earlier, Eric Asimov, the New York Times’ wine critic, posted this equally positive piece, entitled ‘A Bordeaux of a different color’, on his excellent blog, The Pour. ‘For good white Bordeaux, 2007 is a superb vintage’.