bon, voici l'article.
The quest for fuller-flavoured reds is taking its toll on the wine trade. Tim Atkin sniffs out the culprits
Sunday March 30, 2003
The Observer
It's a tough life being a wine writer.
There are so many tastings held in London, still the nominal capital of the wine world, that at certain times of the year I could spend entire weeks staggering from event to event.
With so many events to choose from, it's amazing that we wine writers don't end up looking like Monty Python 's Mr Creosote. The reason we don't is that most of us pick and choose among the plethora of opportunities to add to our supply of chins. Some tastings are easier to avoid than others. A tasting of Vega Sicilia, Spain's most famous wine? I think I might be able to create some space in my diary. The launch of a new wine range from Brazil? Suddenly I'm booked up for the next, oh, 15 years.
Normally, I'd avoid a self-styled tasting of 'over-extracted, over-oaked reds' as much as I would a Donny Osmond concert, but this one was intriguing. For a start, it was put on by La Vigneronne, one of the best and most individual wine merchants in London. And secondly, the line-up included some hyper-trendy wines, most of them highly rated by the American wine writer, Robert Parker. The cheapest wine cost around £25; the most expensive well over £100. That's per bottle, by the way.
If you've never heard of Mr Parker, the only thing you need to know about him is that he is the most important commentator in the wine world, largely because Americans take his word as gospel and buy what he tells them to buy.
Parker tends to favour BIG, even VERY BIG wines. He is to subtlety what John Prescott is to oratory, although in his way he is a talented and consistent taster. I can see how he arrives at his opinions; I just don't happen to agree with them.
But back to the tasting. There were nine wines in all: four from different regions of France, two each from Spain and Australia and one from California. If they had anything in common, apart from weighty price tags, it was oakiness and high alcohol, rather than provenance. Maybe it's just my limey palate, but I found little to celebrate. Only the 1998 Chateau Pavie from St Emilion and the 2000 Terre Inconnue, Cuvée Sylvie from the Languedoc (£25 from La Vigneronne on 0207 589 6113, if they've got a bottle left) were drinkable, and the latter was a substitute put in by La Vigneronne rather than a Parker favourite.
The most expensive wine in the tasting, the 1999 Chateau de Beaucastel, Hommage à Jacques Perrin from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, was actively horrid, while several others (the 1999 Finca Dofi from Priorato, the 1999 Artadi Grands Aà±adas from Rioja and the 1997 Yalumba The Octavius from Australia's Barossa Valley) were so oaky you could use them to build a garden shed. The same goes for the Pavie, but at least the wine is in balance and should age well.
What did the tasting teach me? Well, it confirmed that Mr Parker and I have very different ideas of what makes a decent bottle of wine. It also confirmed a Parker-inspired trend towards an international style of red wine: oaky, concentrated, alcoholic and devoid of the thing that distinguishes wine from most other beverages - a unique sense of place.
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