Dr. Harry Oldman has a Surprise Holiday Interview...

Dr. Harry Oldman generously unwraps a spectacular interview for us on this Boxing Day.

Kyle, as an old white man with a beard, I felt that it was only appropriate that I give you and your readers a present this year, but I couldn't quite figure out what would be a good gift. Then it dawned on me! I'm friends with a moderately notorious wine critic and we talk fairly often about wine and life in general. He was kind enough to answer the kind of tough questions no one has ever had the balls to ask him. I felt like Katie Couric! He didn't know that I was going to publish the interview, and I don’t want to name names because I don’t have his permission, so I'll just refer to him as SHhh (as in I'll never tell!). You can guess, but I'll never reveal my source!

HARRY: Hey, buddy! Thanks for agreeing to answer some questions. I know how much you hate answering questions, so this really means a lot to me!

SHhh: No problem, anything for you Harry. I actually love to answer questions, almost as much as asking questions! I write for the consumer, first, foremost and always. So when my readers engage with me, I make it a point to always respond. I learn so much from my readers! Blogs and bulletin boards are supposed to be back-and-forths, right? I mean, we live in this new age of participatory journalism. It is not uncommon for me to comment on other blogs, too!

Maybe Steve Heimoff was right (I might have lost my mind...)

After giving it a week of thought, I'm going to argue something with which, on the surface, I adamantly disagree. Last week, my digital buddy, Steve Heimoff, wrote a blog post titled, "Saying Goodbye to the Golden Age of Wine Writing." His thesis was that with the rise of the "Age of Digital Information" (i.e., wine blogs) wine writers are finding it more and more difficult to earn a living writing about wine. He claims that the world of wine writing is no longer the utopia it was when he got into this profession and made a name for himself (I'd argue he actually has made his name via his blog and not as the California Editor for Wine Enthusiast Magazine). David White penned a great response to Steve's assertions and claimed that things are actually getting better in the world of wine writing. I wholeheartedly agree with David, but I want to take a deeper look into Steve's post.

A different 100-pt system compromise...

Image from http://www.arvi.ch/

Amongst the few of us who write about wine, the 100-pt system is a contentious topic. There are many reasons that people like me don't like it; it projects a false sense of precision, it implies a false notion of objectivity, it removes context from a highly contextual product, and of course there is the issue of score inflation. Oh, sure there are many other problems, but those were the ones I could easily think of off the top of my head.

With the release of the Wine Advocate issue #204 a few weeks ago, the problem of score inflation has come to a head. Mike Steinberger wrote a great piece about it on his WineDiarist blog and Antonio Galloni even chimed in on a heated discussion over on the WineBerserkers forum. To summarize the latest “scandal,” Galloni handed out 95-100 point scores to almost a quarter of the 2010 Napa Valley wines he reviewed. Robert Parker added 17 100-point scores from the Rhône Valley from the 2009-2011 vintages. Just in the past year, Parker has given 100-pt scores to more than 50 wines from Bordeaux, Napa and the Rhône! Perfection (and near perfection) aren’t that hard to come by anymore. Apparently it isn’t obvious to Galloni and Parker that giving too many high scores is going to make high scores meaningless. Like the boy who cried wolf, this duo is quickly turning into the critics who cried classic!

So I lied... (or at least a change of heart)

Yesterday, I tweeted that I was abstaining from writing a blog post about Robert Parker, Jr.'s announcement regarding the changes taking place at the Wine Advocate. I had a change of heart. This seemingly game-changing news story has been so blown out of proportion that I figured I had to throw my two cents (and common sense) into the bloggers' ring of buffoonery. Yes, the way this announcement was handled could have been improved, but that seems to be Lettie Teague's fault (which comes back to Parker for personally selecting her to write the story). Aside from that, this news isn't really worthy of the massive attention it has received.

Wine writers are lazy

Wine writers are lazy. Not in the sense that they don't work hard at what they do (well, my posting has been rather pathetic of late), but they don't necessarily do what they should be doing. Wine writers' main goal should be evaluating and describing wines so that consumers get the best wine for their money. Many do this and do it well, but as a group the major wine pundits have been stuck in a rut. James Suckling claimed that he was going to find the next big thing before any one else and where has he been tasting? Bordeaux, Napa and Tuscany... Those are the current and past big things for sure, but not the next big thing. Most wine drinkers know that the wines from those regions which Suckling is reviewing are of high quality. Suckling is tasting the same wines year after year trying to distinguish which $100+ wines are worthy of his 100-point decrees. Rating swings from 92 points to 95 points drive business for many of these wines. Nevertheless, most of these wines sell well and are priced accordingly (or unfortunately overpriced). While many glossies and celebrity critics only publish wine reviews of wines rated 85 points or higher, Suckling has taken the threshold up to 90 points. Suckling knows that he can find more than a handful of these types of wines in his favorite regions. Yet, he is afraid to venture into uncharted territory for the fear of only finding one or two great wines in a non-traditional wine region. Life is too short to drink poorly made wine, but life is also too short to drink the same wines year after year. Good wine is worth the risk and effort to find it.

Other wine reviewers are so lazy that not even know that certain wine regions produce wine. Stephen Elliot of the Connoisseur's Guide to California Wine recently visited Palisade, CO without knowing it was in the Grand Valley AVA and home to 25 wineries. Now, of course Palisade is most definitely not a mecca of wine production, but I think that a wine "expert" would at least check to see if his vacation spot has any wineries. I don't claim to know of every wine region in the world, let alone the U.S., but when I drove to Wisconsin this past summer, I made sure to research any wineries along our route. Lo and behold, we stopped at a winery in Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin. I will forgive Mr. Elliot's mistake as he and his co-writers are so focused on California wine that it takes accidental encounters for wineries in other regions to come across their radar. But to his surprise, Stephen actually enjoyed the wines made by Canyon Wind Cellars in this little part of the wine world. Who'd have thunk that?!?

However, I was pleasantly surprised a few days ago when James Molesworth tweeted, "Looks like a flight of wines from the Finger Lakes, Virginia and Colorado lined up in the tasting room today..." Granted, James is the tasting coordinator for Wine Spectator and is stuck reviewing wines from non-mainstream regions such as Chile, Loire Valley, South Africa and New York's Finger Lakes. At least he has Kim Marcus' and Harvey Steiman's beats beat! Now, this tasting isn't going to change much, but at least Wine Spectator has Colorado wine on its radar! While there haven't been any "next big thing" proclamations about these regions, Molesworth was happy to report that, "Good, competent winemaking [is] now the norm more than not, thankfully."

Steve Heimoff, west coast editor for Wine Enthusiast, said he doesn't review Colorado wine because no one pays him to do so. I can understand that it is his job to review the top wines from California, but I bet he tastes wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and other regions to keep his palate calibrated and not Calicentric. He should also be seeking out wines from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and New Mexico to see what California's neighbors are producing. You can bet that reviewers of American automobiles are keeping tabs on what German and Japanese manufacturers are making.

Even Robert Parker, Jr.'s heir apparent, Antonio Galloni, declared on Wineberserkers.com that he publishes content based on "what our readers have become accustomed to." Most wine consumers are not familiar with Turkish, Greek, Slovenian or Coloradan wine but how else will the broader public obtain information on what these other wine regions are producing? Sure, Galloni is charged to taste Californian wine, but is he tasting wine from Cucamonga Valley, Potter Valley, or San Antonio Valley?  We have almost gone back in time to the early 1970s when the French wine elite dismissed California wine as inferior to French wine. While the wine world has expanded incredibly in the past 40 years, we are at a new crossroads of wine evaluation and education. As David White said in his keynote address to the Nederbrurg Rare Wine Auction in South Africa recently, "As consumers grow more comfortable dismissing gatekeepers like Parker, the influence of local voices ... is becoming more important." If the gatekeepers wish to remain keepers of the wine gates, they had better start doing their jobs and expand their palates (and pens) beyond the traditional wine regions.

The Fallacy of Wine Journalism

Last week, Mike Steinberger led a debate about whether wine critics are journalists on his blog, WINE DIARIST.com. This debate was partially triggered by the words and actions of Wine Advocate reviewer Antonio Galloni and former Wine Spectator founder James Suckling. Each has started for-profit ventures that involve tastings with high-profile winemakers. Suckling in particular has caught flack for charging both customers and producers to attend his event and for advertising the event under the guise of a Decanter report on the state of Brunello di Montalcino.

Many of the commenters on Steinberger's post suggested that critics and wine writers are journalists and should be held to the same ethical standards as magazine and newspaper reporters. One of the common points was that wine critics should remain objective in their jobs and adhere to a set ethical standards that ensure consumer confidence and trust. Journalists disseminate information. Wine critics disseminate opinion. Wine is subjective and consumers want "expert" opinion on which they can align their palates and pocketbooks. While some wine writers may be journalists, the vast majority are nothing more than pundits. Just as with the well-known political pundits, the bigger the name (and Suckling and Galloni are pretty big names) the more rocks that are thrown at them. I am not trying denigrate these wine pundits. In fact, while I do not claim to be in the same class of pundits that I read most (Joe Roberts, Steve Heimoff, W. Blake Gray, Jeff Siegel, et al.), this blog does offer punditry like the others. I will make no claim for the opinions and agendas that other "writers" advance, but I do not hide the fact that I advocate for Colorado wines and not being afraid of what's on wine a label. While I focus on Colorado, I do not limit myself to only Colorado because I believe that it is important to reasonably place Colorado wines in the larger context of the wine industry.

Furthermore, the one agenda common to each critic, professional or amateur, is self-promotion. Whether he wants to make money by selling subscriptions to his website or she just wants to share her thoughts on wine with family and friends, we all want to be read and/or heard. Some writers focus on regions or wines dear to them (or their audience) while others mock those who attempt to be heard. Regardless, we all are promoting wine and all voices are welcome in the world of wine punditry. The greater the diversity of opinion, the stronger the debate about wine. If we debate enough, we might just break down the barriers intimidate the potential wine drinker.

Just as with modern "journalism" (see most major 24-hr "news" organizations), the reporting of simple fact is a minor component in the world of wine writing. Nevertheless, we can and should have ethical standards to which we are held. These standards will vary from pundit to pundit, but as Joe Roberts and others have so wisely advised is the need for transparency. Let the readers decide if they value your opinion. The explosion of wine punditry has allowed wine to be more popular and of a higher quality than any time in history. Keep up the good work, pundits!