Rating Bordeaux 2014: My Methodology

Before the unveiling of my anxiously anticipated scores for 2014 Bordeaux (many of which fall between 90 and 98 points, and have pretty much been randomly assigned), I thought it might be appropriate to outline my methodology. The real question is, which comes first, the methodology or the outline? I never even realized I had a methodology until I began the outline. I find that my methodology is a hindrance at primeurs week in Bordeaux, and that, for a methodology, it’s pretty much improvised anyway. For example, I taste all the wines blind, except the ones that I’m not able to. I’d tell you which are which, but, frankly, you’d misinterpret that information because you’re simply unqualified.


It's important to understand how we major wine critics review and rate wines, especially from an important region like Bordeaux. In this brief essay, now appearing in full over at Tim Atkin's legendary site, I discuss my methodology. As one of the world's leading wine critics, I endorse transparency, especially in silk panties. Which chafe, by the way, and I think I'll remove them. 

As always, please make my British publisher happy and leave your always witty comments on his site, or, if you don't have a six-year-old handy to show you how, feel free to leave them here, as is your custom.

TIM ATKIN MW


I have had this perverse thought lately that Rosé’s popularity might be mirroring the once popular Beaujolais Nouveau’s. Walk into many small wine shops these days and you’ll see a large display of Rosés. Dozens of Rosés, of all shades of pink. It looks like some sort of display of lipstick shades, or a dermatologist’s guide to sunburnt white people. And those displays are going up earlier and earlier in the year; the pressure on producers to bottle and sell their new vintage of Rosé as quickly as possible is nuts, but tangible. Consumers’ taste for Rosé seems unquenchable. There was a time Beaujolais Nouveau was that drink.

It wasn’t that many years ago, let’s say about 25, you could walk into a wine shop and see a couple of dozen Beaujolais Nouveau for sale. All of them damned insipid and uninspired. And somehow people had become convinced that Nouveau was the perfect Thanksgiving wine. Where did that come from? It’s a terrible match for Thanksgiving dinner, like every other wine. Beaujolais Nouveau is not a food wine. Hell, it’s not a wine wine.

When I was first a sommelier and the Beaujolais Nouveau release in November came around, I had to order 30 or 40 cases to pour by the glass, and then usually have to reorder. By Christmas, no one cared, but in that month or so, we’d sell a lot. Then the Beaujolais Nouveau craze just died. By the time I was nearing the end of my career, I wasn’t ordering any at all. And no one asked for it either. Demand just dried up. In the words of the great Clara Peller, “Where’s DuBoeuf?”

Rosé, of course, has a long tradition, and is far better wine than Beaujolais Nouveau. But I wonder if the current fad for Rosé isn’t a lot like the old days of Nouveau. Only a few years ago, you’d have been hard pressed to find more than a few California Rosés, now there are hundreds. I don’t make it a habit of tasting that many domestic Rosés. I don’t have to. I don’t envy those of you who do (you have my love and condolences, Samantha). Too many are outright terrible, a ringing memory of so much Beaujolais Nouveau. Rosé is in its heyday right now, up front in large floor stacks, pink and ready. I wonder if that will be true ten years from now.

A League of Their Rhône Rangers--Part Three

I wish someone would start a Syrah appreciation society, throw an annual Shirazapalooza. Is there one I don’t know about? For God’s Sake, Petite Sirah has a fan club! Really? Petite Sirah? It’s a hybrid variety, the feckless offspring of Syrah, not a grape as God intended. It’s the damned Bruce Jenner of varieties. Syrah deserves its own fan club outside of the Rhône Rangers. It’s nuts to me that so many people ignore the indisputable greatness of Syrah. When you start talking about the varieties that make the great wines of the world, you are an imbecile if you do not have Syrah near the top of that list, and an imbecile if you do have Petite Sirah on that list. No Durifs, ands or buts.

How did the unwashed public come to loathe Syrah? The tired old answer is that too much Syrah in California was planted in the wrong places and made crappy wine which turned folks off to the grape. But you could make the same argument about Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and Merlot, and they’re still selling a lot of wine. That argument about Syrah is a lazy answer. It’s almost become folklore. When I began drinking Syrah, it was a long time ago, and it was a lot of Rosemount Syrah from South Australia. I realize now what a lousy and manufactured wine that was, as bland and predictable as a Dave Koz concert. Now, of course, you have abominable wines like Yellow Tail Shiraz, which, if a wine can be heinous, is heinous (though if you remove the “h” from heinous you, amazingly, have its perfect aromatic descriptor). If you grew up drinking those cheap Australian Shirazes, as I did, you would have had no idea what Syrah tastes like. Maybe that’s where all this started.

I don’t have any idea what the first great Syrah I tasted might have been. Hell, I don’t remember what the first average Syrah I tasted was. It was probably from California, only because I didn’t really understand French wines early on in my wine tasting life, and rarely bought any. It was probably one of the early Joseph Phelps Syrahs. In the mid-80’s there were but a few hundred acres of Syrah in the state, and it is the late Joe Phelps who is credited with making the first Syrah in California back in the mid ’70's. The first vintages of Phelps Syrah were pretty lousy, if I recall correctly (but what did I know?), and they were followed by a lot of other pretty lousy California Syrahs from a lot of other producers. It would have been hard to fall in love with Syrah at the time based on the offerings from the Golden State.

Somehow, perhaps spurred on by my “discovery” of ’78 Rayas, I became enamored of the wines of the Rhône Valley. And once I found Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie and Cornas, I was a Syrah convert. I almost feel sorry for wine lovers who have never had the pleasure of drinking a well-aged Chave Hermitage, Jaboulet “La Chapelle” Hermitage, Clape Cornas, Rostaing Côte-Rôtie, Jamet Côte-Rôtie, Guigal “La Landonne,” and, well, maybe even a Chapoutier Ermitage “Le Pavillon.” Those are all crazy expensive now, and I’m being one of those overbearing wine name-droppers we all hate, but how in the world can Syrah, which produces these brilliant wines, not have its own party? It’s shameful.

No matter. There were quite a few wonderful Syrahs at the Rhône Rangers tasting this year. Though, admittedly, I didn’t get around to tasting as many as I would have liked. I had the time, but I didn’t have the willpower. In my glory day, I think it was a Tuesday in 1994, I would canvas a large tasting like this and taste at least an hour or two past when any human could reasonably assess a serious wine. The more one tastes, I think, the more one loses any chance at detecting subtlety or character, and those are two of the most important qualities of great wine. After tasting too many wines in a day, one shifts to simply detecting intensity, which is like judging music by how loud it is. So now, in my dotage, I stop tasting a lot sooner, content to have tasted fewer wines but, I hope, to have tasted them more consciously. Believe me, I see a lot of unconscious tasters at these events, many of whom go on to “rate” the wines. You know the ones, the ones who “tasted” 150 wines in two hours. Ignore them, if simply for their air of superiority. Ignore me because I’m unimportant.

I’ve written previously about Steve Law and his MacLaren Syrahs. Steve is an unabashed fan of wines from the Rhône Valley, a guy who has tasted widely of those wines, and so has a knowledge base that serves his wines well. I tasted eight MacLaren Syrahs, and there wasn’t a dud among them. The only other California producer I know of with that kind of consistency with Syrah is Adam Tolmach at The Ojai Vineyard (just a white Ford Bronco drive away from Santa Barbara), who I think is the best Syrah winemaker in the state. I’ve too often found that a California Syrah producer who makes a great Syrah one year, then makes a stinker the year after. There are dozens of reliable Cabernet producers, and reliable Pinot Noir wineries, but when it comes to Syrah, it seems like there are only a few—and most of them only make one or two different Syrahs. Steve makes several, and Adam makes even more. Their talent for Syrah dazzles.

Steve was showing both his 2011 and 2012 Syrah. I think he’s more passionate about wines from cooler vintages. He almost apologized for the ripeness of his ’12’s, which were, by most California standards, not that ripe at all. He might qualify for In Pursuit of Balance, only he makes unworthy Syrah. His newest vineyard for MacLaren made his best wines, I thought. The MacLaren 2011 Syrah Atoosa’s Vineyard is brilliant. Here’s an example of what I mean when I say you can buy world class Syrah for $40—not a statement you can make for Cabernet. It’s cool climate Syrah, and it shows in its beautiful lean-ness. It’s a champion greyhound of a wine, and I’m not talking buses. Distinctively spicy, with red brambly fruit, it has power and grace, and is absolutely delicious. The 2012 I liked even better. I think it’s just showier at an earlier age--Lindsay Lohan, without the emotional problems. Around 13% alcohol, it shows a lot fleshier and riper than that, which seems to be a characteristic of Atoosa’s Vineyard. Both are, to my palate, wonderful Syrah.

But I think you can buy any of MacLaren’s Syrahs and you’ll be happy you did. Each is distinctive, and you’ll find your own way. Just as you might prefer Cornas to St.-Joseph, or Crozes-Hermitage to Cornas, you might like MacLaren’s Samantha’s Vineyard (a vineyard DuMol uses as well for Syrah) a bit more than the Stagecoach. But they’re all good.

For me, a Rhône Rangers tasting isn’t complete without a visit with Steve Lagier and Carole Meredith of Lagier Meredith, a clever name, though "Steve Carole" might have hit it big when “The Office” was popular. I was lucky enough to be tasting at the Lagier Meredith table with Steve Eliot of Connoisseurs’ Guide, which is always a pleasure. And Carole is as forthright and honest about wine and the wine business as just about anyone I know, which makes her my kindred spirit. You get the feeling that if Lagier Meredith made crappy wine, she’d be the first one to say so. Luckily, the wines are always terrific. So it was great fun to taste there.

Steve Lagier was serving three vintages of their Mt. Veeder Syrah, the ’02, ’11, and ’12. Out of curiosity, I looked up the Parker scores for the wines, and the Lagier Meredith 2011 Syrah received the lowest score of any Lagier Meredith Syrah—90 pts. I was surprised, really. I thought this was lovely Syrah, and very reminiscent of Parker’s beloved Northern Rhône wines. I immediately thought of Cornas, with that tightness and structure that holds fruit with lots of promise, floral right now, with Syrah’s trademark white pepper and deep, dark fruit. My hunch is this will be a beauty a decade from now.

They had poured the 2002 Syrah at one of the seminars, and Steve had some left for the tasting, and it was beginning to show more of the smoky, roasted meat sort of character that older Syrah can develop. There’s still some available to buy on their website, and it’s a very, very nice older Syrah. The 2012 Syrah is certainly of a piece with the other two, the character of the vineyard shining through. Where I think the 2011 needs a lot of space to grow, the 2012 is already luscious. This doesn’t mean the 2012 won’t outlive the 2011, it probably will. But it is brimming with that dark blackberry and plum fruit, which almost overwhelms its floral aromatic aspect, but not quite.  The Lagier Meredith 2012 Syrah was one of my favorite wines at the event. I know Carole and Steve know it, but you should, too—this wine comes from a very special site.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Lagier Meredith 2012 Malbec (yes, I know Malbec is not a Rhône variety). Only 37 cases were produced, so you’ll have to buy it from their website (and you should). Steve Eliot and I agreed that it was topnotch Malbec. I cannot remember a Malbec from California that I liked anywhere near as much as I liked this Lagier Meredith wine. It won me over the minute I put my nose in the glass. Very pure, very sweet aromas of blackberry and black cherry. It just smells like something you want to eat. And as plush and as sexy as it is on the palate, it still has Malbec’s acidity and is not the least bit flabby. Someone buy me some of this.

I’ll briefly mention a couple of other Syrahs I liked. Tercero 2010 Syrah White Hawk Vineyard has lots of guts to it, intense and layered with dark fruit and that iron/meaty character of Syrah. Owner/winemaker Larry Schaffer seems to be indefatigible. You can almost feel his energy in his wines. I think that’s a compliment. Anyhow, this is terrific Syrah, and a good deal at $35. I also very much liked the Holly’s Hill 2010 Syrah Wylie-Fenaughty Vineyard. I won’t try to entice you to buy it because the website says it’s Sold Out. But Holly’s Hill is a great source for Rhône wines at very fair prices, so you should at least be aware of their name.

To those of you who actually read all this crap down to this last paragraph, thank you. To all the fine wineries whose tables I never got around to, you’re welcome. Next year, I’m not wearing my name tag. And maybe not my pants.

Corky Taint, Terrorist Sommelier

It wasn’t the first time Corky Taint had run away from home. But he’d always returned before. Gotten scared, or corraled by a cop, or hungry. Except for a few months ago, when Corky suddenly vanished one night, leaving no clues behind for his desperate family. Months later his family learned the horrible truth. Corky had been recruited online. Hours and hours spent on a website chatting with older males pretending to be his friends, and he had decided to leave everything he knew behind, his friends, his family, his dignity, to join a radical group of misanthropes whose sole aim is to intimidate and brutalize everyone who doesn't agree with them, who doesn't follow their path. Corky had left home to join a highly secretive and dangerous group of people, a group that has systematically and successfully recruited large numbers of young people from across every economic background to terrorize modern society, to intimidate ordinary citizens, people like you and me, in such a way that we are frightened to do something as basic and simple as go out to dinner. Corky had left home to become a sommelier.

Corky’s story is not the least bit unusual now. All over the United States, young men and women are joining this terrorist organization. Where once the United States was home to but a few dozen sommeliers, experts now believe there are tens of thousands. “Sommeliers are proliferating like cockroaches,” says the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism Chief Noah Clue, “cockroaches that can spit.” Many, if not most, of the new members are recruited online, at seemingly harmless websites and chat rooms that turn out to be radicalizing young men, and the occasional woman, into believing that they know everything about wine, and that those who don’t agree with them, or aren’t as knowledgeable, are beneath contempt, and deserve overcharging. Once recruited, these young people are subjected to further brainwashing, as well as tests of endurance and training in the fine arts of oenological torture. Let loose on an unsuspecting world, these radicalized fundamentalists of wine spread chaos and misunderstanding, intimidate hundreds of people every week, extort large sums of money to fill their organization’s coffers, and just generally degrade society. And yet there are many who say there’s little proof this is happening, that there aren’t really more sommeliers than there used to be—these are the microclimate change deniers. Time has proven them wrong. One can no longer lift a seat without seeing a sommelier floating in the bowl.

FBI forensic computer specialists were able to track Corky’s online whereabouts before he disappeared. Without his parents’ knowledge, Corky was haunting a particularly subversive website, a website known for its subtle but persuasive propaganda and dick-wagging. The site is WineBozerkers, a male-dominated forum where women are allowed only if they swear to God they’re wearing a veil. Corky’s first post, dated September 11, 2012, was commented on by most of the iMams (so called because they love Apple and mammary glands), who profusely welcomed Corky to their online world. This is how it usually starts, according to Noah Clue. “Women who comment are usually universally ignored, or asked if they like blush wines, or Randall Grahm. This is a way of making them feel isolated and unwelcome. Young men are embraced, and made to feel that their comments, though often as naive and as uninformed as their female counterparts’, are intelligent. Acceptance into this secretive world makes the young men feel important. It doesn’t take long before an insecure guy like Corky, and this is a terrorist group that personifies insecurity, feels like part of the group; and soon he begins to preach and believe the basic tenets of the iMams. He’s fucked. And not long after that, he tells everyone he’s a 'sommelier.' The two things together make perfect sense.”

Criticism of the iMams of WineBozerkers is forbidden. In the guise of “civility,” members are slowly brainwashed into conforming. From there, it’s a short road to believing you’re always right, incredibly insightful, and one of wine’s chosen people. Most leave it at that and waste their lives on the chat room. But many young men, believing their own press, convinced of a superior palate, feeling invincible and drawn to the mysterious mystique that surrounds sommeliers, take the next step. They move to a different Internet site, lured by the promise of fame and money and a hundred virgins in the afterlife, most of them wine bloggers (almost all of whom, judging from their About photos, are clearly virgins). Corky took that next step. He moved over to the website of the Court of Master Sommeliers. It is every parent’s nightmare.

Each year, hundreds of young people register on the site to try to join the Court. Simultaneously enriching the Court and providing it with young, disposable meat, these young people give up their free time pursuing what for most of them is a completely unreachable goal—becoming a Master Sommelier. In reality, they fall under the spell of a handful of that terrorist organization’s most famous and powerful members, including the ironically named Fred Dame. “If he were a dame,” says Clue, “he’d never have made it past the first test.” The FBI has a list of Master Sommeliers it watches. I wasn’t allowed to view the list, but one assumes it also includes men like Geoff Kruth, thought to be at large as a Jay McInerney impersonator, but without the humility, and Larry Stone, one of the men most responsible for Master Sommelier plots to terrorize the public. “We sent a drone to watch Stone,” an FBI man who wished to remain anonymous for fear of having Stone send him some of his crappy Oregon wine in retaliation, “but it couldn’t find the little bugger. Or, we think maybe the drone felt a kinship to him as another little machine and purposely threw us off the track.”

Master Sommeliers believe their time has come. Their websites are filled with delusional proclamations telling their members to be prepared, that they are the new arbiters of wine, that the old men who have been running wine for years now are impotent and disgraced. Their diatribes tell their followers to take every opportunity to declare “Death to Parker!,” “Death to Shanken!,” “Death to Asimov!” They urge followers to be prepared for war, be prepared for doubters, but to rest assured that sommeliers will conquer, sommeliers will rule, sommeliers will dictate, all at 300% higher than cost. And the Court just doesn't care how many young lives are ruined along the way. The ruthless leaders of Master Sommeliers seem to truly believe their tastes are the future, that they, and they alone, will determine what the public will buy. This is always the way of nearsighted and misanthropic zealots.

Corky Taint, some time in the year 2014 (everything about the Court of Master Sommeliers is shrouded in secrecy, except how often they mention they’re Master Sommeliers, which is more often than Elton John mentions he’s gay, only louder) passed Level One of the Sommelier exam. They all do. The Court makes sure even the dumbest among them pass. Corky was hooked. From a young man with a passion for wine, with a great future and a supportive family, Corky’s online path had led him to the shady underworld of the sommelier. No one knows where he will surface. But when he does, when yet another sommelier infiltrates our society, slips through our complacency and our underfunded security measures to keep them away from vulnerable civilians, who knows how many people Corky will make suffer. And then expect a tip.