W(h)ine Wars
I have been getting notices from WestHost, the company I pay for this web site, that my domain name is about to expire and needs renewal. I figured that, if I was going to justify paying any more money to maintain sobsey.com, I'd better at least put something up on it. The most recent post is a year and a half old. Call this a one-off, or a stopgap, or something. What follows is a series of emails between me and Todd Weilar, the proprietor of Chapel Hill Wine Shop. The first communiqué is an excerpt from Weilar's July 30th weekly email to his subscribers. My response follows, and so on. If there's more communication, I'll add it. 30 July 2006 Well, what do you know? This time last year, we were presented with some ridiculously good buys in Spanish wines. No-brainers, really. Now, after a little hard work, we have nailed down a bunch of Australian no-brainers.
Why do I call them no-brainers? I haven't even tried them, so how can I tell you these are can't-miss wines? Easy. Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate has spent over 20 years building a reputation as the world's foremost wine critic. And say what you will, you cannot deny that he is consistent. And that is important for buyers, whether it's me buying a few hundred cases, or you buying a few cases. So when he reviews a wine and gives it 94 or 95 pts, you know it is going to be awesome wine. Whether you buy into the points system or not, those kind of scores say, "Wow, this is great wine. Not good. Great."
So these are great wines. But why no-brainers? The price. At $18, you can't go wrong. Even if you decide these wines are not your style, you have a perfect gift for the holidays. Even the most novice wine drinker will be impressed by the gift of a 94 or 95 point wine. Enough explanation - what about the wines?
Many of you know about the wines from Marquis-Phillips, the original project between winemakers Sparky and Sarah Marquis and importer Dan Phillips. They exploded on the scene with the 2001 vintage, scoring 92 and 93 points for their $13 Shiraz, Cab and Sarah's Blend wines from Australia. And you have probably heard that there was a falling out between the two. So, now the Marquis family is on their own. And really, what did the importer have to do with making the wine anyway? So we are proud to announce the pre-arrival sale of their new label, Mollydooker.
The wines are due to arrive the first week in September. Given the size of my order, I will charge credit cards now for the wine, so be sure to call with a number if we do not have you on file. (Darn North Carolina is still cash on delivery, so I gotta have the money before I write the check.)
After building five successful wine brands in the last ten years, Sarah & Sparky are very excited about releasing their new proprietary brand 'Mollydooker'. These wines come from some of the best grape growing regions, McLaren Vale, Langhorne Creek & Padthaway in South Australia.
"Sarah and Sparky Marquis, who live by the motto, "We make wines that make people go wow - through attention to detail and commitment to excellence," have hit pay dirt with these brilliantly packaged, screw cap-finished wines with labels that resemble Broadway vaudeville acts from the mid-thirties." - Robert Parker
Mollydooker The Boxer Shiraz 2005 - 95 pts Wine Advocate - The 2005 The Boxer Shiraz (primarily from McLaren Vale, followed by Langhorne Creek and Padthaway) exhibits a black/blue/purple color, an incredible density of fruit along with that tell-tale purity, blackberries, white flowers, melted chocolate, sweet licorice, and subtle wood. Full-bodied, beautifully textured and layered with an awesome finish, it should drink well for 4-6+ years.
Mollydooker Two Left Feet 2005 - 94 pts Wine Advocate - The 2005 Two Left Feet is a 65% Shiraz, 19% Merlot, and 16% Cabernet Sauvignon blend assembled by Sarah Marquis. The fruit is sourced from McLaren Vale, Padthaway, and Langhorne Creek, and the wine is aged for 9-12 months in a combination of American and French oak (about 50% new and 50% one-year old). It boasts an inky/purple color, superb intensity, a big, sweet, full-bodied nose of creme de cassis, graphite, white chocolate, black olives, blackberry liqueur, and spice, and a spectacular, voluptuous, even unctuous texture. This is a big, powerful, classic southern Australian red made with no compromises. The good news is that there are 6,500 cases of this superb value. Drink it over the next 3-4 years, although I suspect it will last for a decade or longer.
The Deal - I have the most of these two - can you believe it? These wines will retail for $21.99 when they hit the shelves. But let's be honest, they'll never hit the shelves. And who the heck knows what people will price these at? 95 pts? From Parker? These could go for $30 or more...But here's what I'll do, and I think it is fair -
Mix a case any way you'd like it, and I'll charge you $17.99 per bottle. Hit reply, or click here to order. Or call us at (919) 968-1884.
Again, a disclaimer - these wines will go fast. They will be sold out before the wines arrive. Do not plan on just being able to try a bottle and then buy more. Sorry. That is just the reality of these wines!
16 August 2006 Todd,
First, go here.
Each time I go to delete the "No Brainer Australian Wines" email offer (July 30th), I find myself re-reading it with some combination of incredulity and outrage -- enough to bother taking the time to respond.
I'll voice the larger issue first, which has to do with the idea that wine contains a measure of art, or at least of craft; that it is capable of doing something unusual and complex, perhaps subtle and even revelatory, for the drinker; that wine is capable of marrying with food in a way that heightens both; or as Eric Asimov put it in his wine column today for the New York Times, that "wine is a product of lore and romance, history and poetry." The opposing view is that wine is a commodity, like cars, appliances, and movies, and ought to be numerically rated, priced, bought, sold, and "quaffed" or perhaps "collected."
Robert Parker, as you probably know, built his reputation upon his evaluations of Bordeaux wine. He argued that Bordeaux in the 1970s had deteriorated, and that California and other places were producing wines he thought were better, for less money. (It's worth noting that Bordeaux suffered an unusual amount of bad weather in the mid-1970s, resulting in a decade of aberrantly inferior wines.) Parker was asking for more "accessible" wines, and over time he has helped get them. (I'm assuming you've seen the movie Mondovino. I wasn't a huge fan of the movie, but the causal connection between Parker's palate and the work of wine consultant Michel Rolland seems fairly evident.) Wine has changed, become "globalized," in large part due to one man: Robert Parker.
Parker's scores reflect his preferences. You most likely know what those preferences are: big, very ripe, often very high-alcohol red wines with very juicy and jammy fruit, lots of toasty oak, and low tannins. He may be "the world's foremost wine critic" (as you put it), but it is important to note that his eminence reflects his tastes, which are fairly narrow. He has applied populist, mass-audience criteria to wine.
Robert Parker levelled the field (as he himself has said) and made buying wine easier for everyone by rating it, and by giving higher ratings to fruitier, less complex wines. He calls himself an Advocate, which supports the idea that he's primarily interested in wine as a commodity whose retail value can be strictly measured and quantified. (It also reminds us that Parker started out as a lawyer.) Many of the estates in Bordeaux and other places, rightly or wrongly, have had to change their winemaking practices in order to garner the 90+ Parker scores that will guarantee them sales. Idiosyncrasy, challenge, nuance, and depth are sacrificed for quick, broad, easy appeal, and increased revenues.
I think that Parker's ostensible "advocacy" for wine has actually been a thirty-year siege of the winemaking tradition -- he hasn't so much levelled the field as scorched the earth. Although he may have had legitimate criticisms of Bordeaux, Parker has demanded that its wine change -- not to fulfill the essential "Bordeauxness" of Bordeaux, but to fulfill his taste; and now there is plenteous wine from all over the world, a lot of it pretty much the same in its essential characteristics, that does just that. It could come from anywhere, and it does. Parker may have wounded Bordeaux, but he also sparked its internationalist makeover (with its right-bank "Garagistes" etc.). And he has played a major role in helping to line wine entrepreneurs' pockets in Barossa, Paso Robles, and Mendoza, to name just three regions, among others worldwide, that now produce barrel after barrel of wine that tastes more or less the same, and earns roughly the same (90+ point) Parker scores, along with huge profits in a globalized wine market.
The paradox is that, despite ostensibly democratizing wine, Parker has actually made his own critical judgment rule how the public will react to a given wine. Some wine shops -- like yours -- rely almost exclusively (and rather suspiciously) on Parker scores to sell wine (and on Wine Spectator scores, another big-business resource that, incidentally, advertises wine in its pages -- a conflict of interest). "When he [Parker] reviews a wine," you wrote, "and gives it 94 or 95 pts, you know it is going to be awesome wine. Whether you buy into the points system or not, those kind of scores say, 'Wow, this is great wine. Not good. Great.'"
I'll let the wine critic Hugh Johnson speak to the notion of the points system: "America likes numbers (and so do salesmen) because they are simpler than words." As for the scores "say[ing], 'Wow, this is great wine'" -- no, they don't say that! Those scores say nothing more or less than, "Robert Parker likes this wine -- and if Parker likes it, I can sell it." Yes, Parker has a lot of experience, and he aims to be fair. But to ignore that Parker's tastes are deeply subjective and quite specific -- the two Mollydooker wines, for example, which you describe in the email sound pretty similar to me ("voluptuous"... "powerful"... "density of fruit"... "intensity") -- is essentially to exhort your clientele not to have our own tastes -- not to think, as in "no-brainer wines." You want us to buy wine because a Maryland lawyer gives it a good grade.
The obvious rebuttal here is that I'm missing the clear scoreboard result: Parker wouldn't have become so powerful if he wasn't "right"; i.e., if so many people didn't agree with his reviews. The thing is, it's probably true that most of the people who buy wines based on Parker scores wouldn't buy much wine at all without those scores -- again, it's that shortcut to "accessibility" he provides, and the sense of consumer safety he creates with his ratings ("Parker likes it, therefore my choice is valid"). And so he has essentially created a market out of nothing, and then helped propagate wines for that market. A Parker rating is counting on people not to know too much about wine, as your email acknowledges: "Even the most novice wine drinker will be impressed by the gift of a 94 or 95 point wine." Even if that novice wine drinker doesn't like the wine? Yes, because the novice wine drinker then figures that, if Robert Parker gives it 95 points, it must be good. When an apparent authority (a highly visible one) endorses something -- as in Oprah's book club -- it becomes a bestseller, no matter whether it's good for everyone, or whether it's good at all. Mob mentality takes over -- with the cooperation, of course, of retail outlets that "buy into the (Parker) points system," obviating their own judgment (and anyone else's), and truckling to a self-made "authority" whose judgment enables the retailer to sell a wine he hasn't tried.
I take no offense at Parker's taste: one of the most pleasure-giving bottles of wine I ever had was by Chateau Quinault, a right-bank Michel Rolland project. And I don't resent Parker's status as a bellwether; I myself am a critic for the Raleigh News and Observer, so I know that the job can be difficult and that I wouldn't be writing theater reviews unless I thought I had at least some expertise in the matter and confidence in my appraisal. But when I write reviews, I am assuming that my readers are thinking, seeking, discriminating, and willing to challenge me. I'm engaging in a dialogue with a craft -- one that, incidentally, I happen to practice, unlike Robert Parker -- and with people who care about that craft. And I will never, ever formulate an opinion about a piece of theater I haven't seen -- or a bottle of wine I haven't tasted, as you have -- and then tell people to buy it (or not to buy it).
More alarming, though, than recommending untried product, is telling us not to use our brains. Fattening your business by breeding ignorant customers is a practice as cynical as rating wine with a points system. Those of us who persist in thinking anyway, despite your admonition, aren't looking for points inside the bottle. We're looking for good wine, from a good place, made by good hands.
- Adam
16 August 2006 I am not sure if you want me to respond, engage in a dialogue, or if you simply want to vent your feelings and be done with it, never to venture into our store again. If that is the case, I really don't see the point in discussing. However, if you want to have a meaningful discussion, I would be happy to. I feel you miss the point on quite a few things, and are flat out wrong on a few others.
I won't embark on a full dissertation here, but one that really jumps out is your statement that "Some wine shops -- like yours -- rely almost exclusively (and rather suspiciously) Parker scores to sell wine..."
A quick count would tell you that, of the approximately 1500 wines in our store, about 10% are marked with ratings. So the notion that the only way we sell wines are through points is ludicrously incorrect. In fact, if you analyze our sales (which I do regularly), you would find out that only about 5% of our wines are sold based on the rating alone. (Believe it or not, I track those things). And that is by dollar volume. If you look at bottle sales, only about 1% of our sales are based on ratings. Cases of the week, Saturday tastings, etc, are sold by what we taste and like. Sometimes those actually jibe with Parker or Spectator. Sometimes not. We've even done tastings of low-scoring wines to prove the point - ratings are a tool of information. A tool and another piece of the puzzle when making a buying decision.
And I doubt you meant to offend so, but your comment "rather supiciously" is just that - offensive. It is a statement on my character, of which you have no basis to make such a statement. Period. I will not retort in an equally attacking manner. As I said, I am sure (I hope) you did not mean to come across that way. Emails are a deadly weapon - once you hit send, you can't take it back, and apologies take time. I have more than once offended someone because I did not convey the right tone and could not find the right words in an email. A hazard of the medium, I guess...
But I digress... I need to get back to the business at hand. I am trying to raise $50k for the North Carolina Children's Hospital. And I have run out of time for now.
Respond if you'd like. Come by if you'd like. I am always happy to reasonably and rationally discuss my business. I have no apologies about it or how I run it.
Thanks
Todd Wielar 17 August 2006 Of course I want you to respond; otherwise I wouldn't send the email -- although of course to some extent I'm venting.
Todd, I'm not making anything close to a personal attack on you. If it seemed that way, I apologize. You're right, tone is paramount, and email doesn't convey tone. What I'm doing is questioning the business practice of relying so heavily on Parker points to sell wine. There's no need to defend your character by reminding me that you're raising money for a children's hospital. I like you.
You're also right, of course, to point out that only a few of the wines in your store are adorned with ratings -- I was unclear there, and I'm sorry about that. What I meant to say was that the only ratings I have ever seen in your store come from Parker and Wine Spectator. Of those two resources, the former has a strictly limited palate, and the latter is an advertiser that reviews wines it also advertises. I think that telling clientele to buy wines that Parker and Wine Spectator recommend is something that should be done cautiously, if at all. I agree, ratings are a tool -- but in the case of your email, they're only an advertising and marketing tool. You're using the ratings to sell wine, without interrogating whether the ratings are warranted, or informing your addressees about Parker's tastes. That's my beef.
I too have to get back to business right now, which is renovating my duplex. But I absolutely want to engage in a dialogue, and I again want to tell you that I mean nothing personal and no offense. I'm talking business, and business and wine have an uneasy relationship...
Look forward to hearing from you.
- Adam
from Chapel Hill Wine Company
from Adam Sobsey
from Chapel Hill Wine Company
from Adam Sobsey
