From an interesting online excerpt of a Parker book (link in StarNews on StarForum and at the end)
THE WINE WORLD'S BIGGEST LIES
15. The reason the price is so high is because the wine is rare and great.
14. You probably had a "corked" bottle.
13. It is going through a dumb period.
12. We ship and store all our wines in temperature-controlled containers.
11. You didn't let it breathe long enough.
10. You let it breathe too long.
9. Sediment is a sign of a badly made wine.
8. Boy, are you lucky -- this is my last bottle (case).
7. Just give it a few years.
6. We picked before the rains.
5. The rain was highly localized; we were lucky it missed our vineyard.
4. There's a lot more to the wine business than just moving boxes.
3. Parker (or The Wine Spectator) is going to give it a 94 in the next issue.
2. This is the greatest wine we have ever made and, coincidentally, it is the only wine we now have to sell.
1. It's supposed to smell and taste like that.
A TONGUE-IN-CHEEK GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING THE LANGUAGE OF THE WINE-MAKER
What They Say in the Vineyard/Winery -
What They Really Mean in Plain English
1. This is a classic vintage for cellaring!
The wine is excessively tannic, and it will undoubtedly lose most of its fruit long before the tannin melts away.
2. This is a supple, fruity wine that is very commercial.
This is a thin, diluted, watery wine made from a vineyard that was atrociously overcropped. It should have a shelf life of 1-4 years.
3. One can sense the nobility of terroir in the aromas and taste of this wine.
The weather during the growing season and harvest was so cold and wet that the grapes never matured, some even rotted, and the wine tastes only of acidity, tannin, wood, alcohol, and copious quantities of damp earth -- terroir triumphs again.
4. We were fortunate enough to harvest before the rain.
We harvested before the last deluge (and we forgot to inform you that prior to the last inundation it had rained heavily for the previous 5-10 days).
5. This is a classic vintage in the style of the great traditional years of the region.
Once again we did not have enough sunshine and heat to ripen the grapes, thus we produced wines that are hard, acidic, angular, compact, and tannic from underripe fruit. Only a fool would buy this.
6. Do you want to taste my wines?
I actually have one or two barrels of exquisite cuvée vieilles vignes made from exceptionally ripe fruit that I set aside for all my importers, clients, and those nosy, obtrusive wine writers in order to give them an impression of what I am capable of achieving.
7. Those people who follow organic or biodynamic farming in the vineyard are phony, pseudoviticulturists.
We use every chemical treatment known to man -- insecticides, herbicides, tons of nitrogen and other fertilizers, including Miracle-Gro, in an effort to kill everything in the vineyard, except of course, the vine!
8. Mr. Parker knows nothing.
We cannot influence him, nor can we bribe him. A shameful man, he doesn't even write in his publication what we tell him to. Why can't we go back to the old days when we could stuff a trunkful of samples into a wine critic's car and get the reviews we desired?
9. This is the greatest wine I have ever made in my life.
This is the only wine we have to sell.
10. This wine is closed and needs time because it has just been recently bottled.
The malady of the bottling is a myth because anybody who bottles naturally, with very low SO2 and no fining or filtering, knows perfectly well that the wine tastes just as good in the bottle as it did in the cask. However, we are modern-day industrialists or, as we say, "wine processors." We utilize large quantities of sulfur, and, in addition, we eviscerate our wines by abusive fining and filtering. Thus we use the "maladie àla mise" excuse to justify the poor performance of our wines. If the truth be known, our wines have been stripped, nuked, and denuded, and they are incapable of improvement in the future. (Amazingly, writers and buyers have been swallowing this B.S. for at least the last four decades!)
11. Parker (or any other wine critic/writer) never tasted my wine!
I did not get a 90-point score.
12. Parker (or any other wine critic/writer) likes only heavily oaked, internationally styled fruit bombs.
I did not get a 90-point score.
http://www.intowine.com/shop/2932-0excerpt.html
Wine Double-speak
Wine Double-speak
Cheers
Brian
Life's too short to drink white wine and red wine is better for you too! :-)
Brian
Life's too short to drink white wine and red wine is better for you too! :-)
-
Winemaker
Parker gave our wines points in the 90s as it is a negative statement about the wines. Our best vintages don't rate well, the over ripe years do. So,
1 Parker gave my wines 90+
(The wine was picked too late and we used too much new oak as it was a low yielding vintage and we used up all our new barrels anyway.)
True.
1 Parker gave my wines 90+
(The wine was picked too late and we used too much new oak as it was a low yielding vintage and we used up all our new barrels anyway.)
True.