If I wait long enough, the winemakers I interview in France all bring up the same two subjects: first, the war; still a vivid presence in their lives 60 years later; second, Robert Parker. Parker may be the most influential person in wine today. He’s largely responsible for a world-wide upheaval in winemaking. How did he do this? With numbers.

Every day he stands over a sink, tasting, spitting and rating wine from around the globe. He tastes blind, and accepts no gifts. Even his detractors admit that he’s objective; incorruptible. Possessed of a prodigious palate, he claims to remember every wine he’s ever tasted. His feedback reaches far wider than the 40,000 circulation of his newsletter, the Wine Advocate. Yet, he’s still one man, with preferences, and that’s what gets the wine guys grousing.

On one level, their reaction is simple: if he gives you a low rating, his American, homogenized taste embodies the evils of globalization. But should he grace your wine with the magic numbers - 90 to 100 – then… Here! Here! It’s about time someone shook up those stodgy old chateaux and held them to a standard!

But there’s another aspect that miffs these guys. Before Parker, they claim, wine had variety. There were as many different styles as there were fermentation vats. Different countries produced wine with clear differences. Your plonk was someone else’s grand cru, and why not? Let a thousand flowers bloom! But the rooty-tooty-fresh-‘n-fruity Parker style, they lament, is so fashionable that it’s gotten so you can’t tell your Jadot from your Jekel. Perhaps coincidentally, the guys I interviewed, artisans all, said that while SOME winemakers change their style to get Parker ratings, THEY follow their own vision and let the customer decide.

But therein lies the problem. How on earth is the customer supposed to decide? Example: Argonaut Liquors of Denver stocks 344 different chardonnays from California alone! Suppose you’d also like to decide about Washington and Oregon, not to mention, oh, Italy, Australia and Spain, for starters? Imagine it was Saturday night and you were going to the movies, only there were 50,000 different films playing at the multiplex. And you’re not allowed to read the reviews.

Let the customer decide, indeed! They can say that in France because to the average Frenchman "wine" means "French wine." And in a country where truckers buy splits of Bordeaux at highway rest-stops, golfers chug burgundy, not Bud, and a glass of red costs less than a medium coke, face it, they drink a lot more and know what they like.

But Americans, the kind who don’t collect vintage-chart flash-cards, are faced with a paralyzing array of choices. They can resolve never to venture beyond the few, usually well-advertised, brands they know. Or they can check the ratings. Not just Parker’s. Numbers from Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and Wine & Spirits all appear on the shelf-talkers. And what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t knowing that SOMEONE considered it a Best Buy make you feel a little less in-the-dark when coughing up $15-$20 for an unfamiliar bottle?

Perhaps your local movie critic weeps over female bonding, while your tastes run more to female bondage. At least you can read his opinion, even as you take it through a filter. You won’t agree with all wine critics, either, but that’s no reason to knock the whole concept.

In the best of worlds, you would always have a trusted œno-professional or wine-geek friend help you. Otherwise, letting someone else plough through the business of comparing hundreds of wines for you makes sense, even if the result is rating an artistic creation with a number. Not perfect, but certainly helpful.
 

By Jennifer Rosen: http://www.vinchotzi.com