Gotta weigh in on this one. Scores are under attack, yet again, and so SuperScore Man–that’s me, kids–has to fly to the rescue of the poor, beleaguered wine score.

Go ahead, read the link. It’s a short article. You’ve heard the arguments before: wine is too complicated to reduce to a score, a number. It’s about history, romance, authenticity. There’s even an organization, scorevolution, with its own website, where you can take the pledge not to use scores to sell or buy wine. I didn’t count the signatures but there seem to be a few hundred. I didn’t recognize most of the signers, but I do know a few of them.

Rod Smith. A great writer. Rod’s been anti-score forever. In fact, he’s not only anti-score, he’s anti-wine reviewing, period. He likes to write long articles and books about wine, and that’s just fine. I do, too.

Kermit Lynch. He’s the famous Berkeley wine merchant and importer. Kermit doesn’t use scores, but his newsletter–one of the most entertaining in the English language–certainly doesn’t shy away from hype. Here’s a made-up typical one: “I’ve tasted a lot of Sancerres in my 30 years, but this is the greatest ever.” That’s kind of like a 100 point score, don’t you think? And then sometimes Kermit’s newsletter will say something like, “Won’t set the world on fire, but it’s great on typicité and price,” which is more or less an 86. So the emperor’s house is made of glass, I’m afraid.

Clay Mauritson, Darek Trowbridge and Randall Grahm. Three winemakers. So why the heck are they sending me their wines for review if they don’t like scores? It makes me feel bad in particular to put Darek on this list because he’s a cool guy and I really like him. Ditto for Steven Washuta, Darek’s A.W. Guys: make up your minds. Love you all, but don’t be sending me your wines for review if you’re anti-score!

Rajat Parr. Well, what can I say? He doesn’t like high alcohol wines (except when they’re in a paper bag), he doesn’t like scores, end of story.

Jonathan Nossiter. I love this one. He’s the guy who directed “Mondovino,” the worst. movie. ever, a cheap, dishonest insult to the people, like the Staglins, who kindly agreed to be in it. Nossiter discredited himself forever with that bag of slime.

Okay, that was the fun part. Let’s get serious. The Manifesto says “The power of scores is limiting the discovery of numerous grower wines, encouraging formula wines, and even influencing the creation of brand icons and inflated pricing scenarios.”

Break it down.

- limiting the discovery of numerous grower wines

I suppose this means that the public is not buying small, lesser known brands, and prefers instead to buy well-known brands that get good scores: Beringer, Chateau St. Jean, Robert Mondavi, Sutter Home, things like that. But what does that have to do with scores? It’s always been true that consumers stick to trusted name brands. That’s why advertising exists. Any small family that gets into the wine business knows, or should know, what it’s up against. So don’t blame the scoring system because little wineries have a tough time. If you need to blame someone, blame distributors. Besides, speaking for myself, I review small brands all the time. I’ve given great scores to Darek Trowbridge (Old World Winery), Clay Mauritson and Randall Grahm. So this charge is bogus.

- encouraging formula wines

There’s some truth to the accusation that there’s a certain style of winemaking by which all wines of a particular variety taste similar. But I wouldn’t exaggerate this. It’s said that the Bordeaux communes used to be less similar to each other than they are today, so that there was a real difference between, say, a tannic, hard St.-Estephe and a rich Margaux. But since nobody alive today ever tasted wines from 100 years ago, we don’t know that for sure. Here in California, wines may have been more differentiated 50 years ago, but a lot of the reason for that was because they were flawed and underripe. Today, there are very few flawed wines and most everything is ripe; and ripeness does make things taste fruity-similar. But you know what? I’d rather drink a ripe wine than an unripe one.

- influencing the creation of brand icons and inflated pricing scenarios

If I had the slightest idea what this sentence means, I’d be able to respond to it. True, it has the form of an English language statement, with nouns and verbs, but it sounds like something Lewis Carroll wrote. But let me try anyway. “Brand icons” are, I suppose, things like Harlan or Araujo. Now, I’m the first to admit there are a lot of knockoff Harlans and Araujos. We live in a free country. Anybody who’s rich enough can start a new brand and hope to compete with Harlan. But I would say that, rather than the scoring system encouraging the creation of these wannabe brands, it (the scoring system) is the consumer’s best protector against being hoodwinked. We scoring critics are the first to taste these new brands, which makes us the police who protect you, the buying public, from buying a $125 bottle of mediocrity. That means we’’ve got the consumers back when it comes to “inflated pricing scenarios.” And besides, it is patently false historic nonsense that the scoring system has led to inflated pricing. The Manifesto people can borrow my old copy of Eddie Penning-Rowsell’s The Wines of Bordeaux to understand how the chateaux have been inflating their prices for 200 years. That’s even older than Parker!

So you see, this screed against scoring is just the latest silliness. I’m not saying that the 100 point system was handed down by God to Moses, who then gave it to Parker. No. Every system of wine reviewing and writing has its limitations. But the scoring system–whether it’s 10, 20, 100 points or puffs or icons, which are just another visual representation of rankings–is here to stay, for the simplest of reasons: it performs a useful function.

Yes, it’s true. I’ve admired Hugh Johnson‘s country shack for years, ever since he invited me to stay there while attending Prince Andrew’s and Fergie’s wedding, back in 1986. Hugh and I go way back, to when we joint published Vintage: The Story of Wine. So when he decided to put Saling Hall up for sale, for the ridiculously giveaway price of only 2.8 million pounds sterling, I couldn’t say no.

For the time being, I’ll divide my time between my Oakland home,

my villa on Mustique,

and my Paris Pied-a-terre, which I bought in the 1980s with my first profits from wine writing.

I think I still own a condo in Abu Dahbi

but it’s been so long since I stayed there, I can’t remember. [Memo to self: check on status of Abu Dahbi condo.]

I never dreamed wine writing could be so rewarding when I first started. To tell you the truth, I didn’t set out to be rich. No, I started writing about wine because I loved (a) wine and (b) writing, so I decided to put the two together. I didn’t care at all about making money as long as I could pursue my dream career.

It’s funny, though, how sometimes, you get things you’re not even looking for! Here I am, all these years later, with homes all over the world, luxury cars,

yachts,

and Hollywood starlets throwing themselves at me.

Little did I dream of all this wealth and happiness, but there you are. No wonder so many of these young bloggers want to succeed as a wine writer, the way I have. They yearn for the life I lead!

Once I move into Saling Hall I’m going to have to make it feel like my place, not Hugh’s. I was thinking of buying this little hat from Queen Elizabeth

and wearing it when I’m home. When I was over in London for Kate and Will’s nuptials, Liz told me I could have it for a mere 10.5 million pounds. (I think she and Phillip are a little short on cash following that expensive wedding.) I don’t have that much in my checking account, but I’ll just sell off a few of my older bottles of Romanée-Conti and Lafite to the Chinese. Which reminds me: I seem to recall buying this house in Beijing

with the royalties from my first wine book. Did I really, or am I just dreaming? [Memo to self: Look into Chinese real estate holdings.]

Woke up early yesterday morning to the usual gloomy fog that has plagued us all summer, but Michael Jackson’s Black or White was playing in my head (with that gorgeous jangly guitar riff) so it was all good. We headed east on the 580, the MacArthur, named for the General who wanted to nuke Red China and was summarily fired by Truman. The fog reached all the way to the 680 split, in what’s called by weathermen “a good push”; but beyond the Pass the sky was bright. It would be another hot July day in the Central Valley.

We were on our way to the ninth annual P.S. I Love You Petite Sirah Symposium at Concannon Vineyard. By the time we reached Livermore, the sun was shining in full force, the fog having burned off to a few puffy patches tucked into the foothills. But to the northwest, over the Vacas hung an ominous smoke-grey pall of low clouds. Napa Valley was still shrouded while we were already hitting seventy degrees. I wondered if Calistoga was in the clear. No way of knowing, but probably not, given the strength of the intrusion.

To get to Concannon you head west on North Livermore Ave., past the old Eagle’s Hall, through the center of town, where the road turns to South Livermore. Livermore, the city, has changed a lot in the 30 years since I first visited, but once out of town, where the valley opens up, things still look the same. Neatly tended vineyards line both sides of the road. Beyond, golden hills reach to the horizon.

At the Symposium, some old friends, “old” being increasingly an operative word. Dan Berger and Wilfred Wong were just fine. Dan gave a lucid, intelligent historical perspective, as is his wont. I also made a new friend, Doug Knauer, who works for a most interesting company, Treasury Wine Estates, a spinoff of Foster’s, whose California brands include St. Clement, Beringer, Chateau St. Jean and Stags’ Leap Wnery. The history of these wineries runs in my blood; I’ve taken their pulse for a long time, so it was fascinating to talk with Doug about Treasury’s plans to reinvigorate them.

The Symposium’s keynote speaker, Mark Oldman, called Petite Sirah a “functional alternative” to more popular varieties. A rather technocratic phrase, I thought–I can’t imagine a section of the wine store or wine list called “Functional Alternatives”–but I took his point. I preferred Dan Berger’s characterization of Petite Sirah as an “orphan variety” but then, Dan is a first rate wordsmith.

As for Petite Sirah in general, Oldman’s “dominatrix” and Clark Smith’s (Grape Crafter) “sado-masochistic” descriptors had me scratching my head. “Weird tangents,” my new friend, Doug Knauer, observed. But maybe a walk on the wild side occasionally brings the curiosity seeker into functionally alternative places. I liked that Ellen Landis, a Half Moon Bay sommelier, recommended pairing Petite Sirah with bacon-wrapped filet mignon in a Gorgonzola sauce. That dish can dominatrix me anytime it wants. Come to think of it, let’s add a great Petite Sirah and make it a ménage a trois.

We touched on a lot of topics at The Chardonnay Symposium, where my panel consisted of Greg Brewer (for Diatom), Dieter Cronje (Presqu’ile), Joshua Klapper (La Fenetre), Leslie Mead Renaud (for Foley), Mike Eyres (Chehalem) and Greg Stach (Landmark), all of whose Chardonnays were delightful.

The title of my seminar in the official handbook was “The Great Oaked Debate,” but I didn’t want to make it into some kind of hot-and-heavy competition between adherents of oak (like Joshua) and those who don’t use much if any oak (Greg Brewer), like those cable television shootouts between conservatives and liberals where the moderater has to practically keep the opposing sides from crawling onto the table and attacking each other.

That just wasn’t my intention. There’s way too much fuss and furor in wine media anyway. It’s like the debate over “France vs. California.” That might have been relevant 15 years ago, but no more. The wine media loves to take tiny differences or distinctions and blow them up into “wars.” Another example is “natural” winemaking versus what I suppose would be “unnatural” winemaking. Another version of that is organic (or biodynamic) vs. non-organic. Then there’s the high alcohol vs. low alcohol faux issue and the native yeast vs. commercial yeast debate. We seem to always be itching for a fight, and to pit stainless steel vs. oak is a natural for stirring up trouble.

Except that if I’m the moderater, it’s not gonna happen. As I explained at the outset, I don’t see it as oak versus stainless, I see it as oak or stainless. Separate but equal. Not better or worse, just two different approaches. Either one can go bad. If you take the oak approach, the wine can be appallingly overoaked (as too many Chardonnays are). If you take the stainless approach, the wine can be simple, like fruit juice. With all things, it’s a matter of balance, and as a journalist, I’m always looking for balanced coverage of the things I write about. (Or maybe I’m a journalist because I’m a Gemini and so I see everything from dual points of view). I’ve just always gotten upset and impatient when people take ideologically rigid attitudes in wine, claiming that their approach is the correct one and everybody else is doomed to hell.

I don’t know what the 60 or 70 people in the audience expected, but they liked what they got. I’ve done a lot of these panels over the years, and never had the overwhelmingly positive reaction I got from this one. When people walk up to you afterward–they don’t have to, they just make the decision to–to shake your hand and tell you how much they enjoyed the session, that’s pretty cool. The typical reaction was: Thank you for an interesting, informative and respectful discussion of the issues. People liked that I didn’t take sides, or bait one side or the other. Of course, there was disagreement among the panelists, but it was expressed in a good humored way that made the audience chuckle, even as it brought out fundamental winemaking issues. I don’t believe a single person in the audience walked away thinking that the oak adherents had “won” or that the stainless people had “lost.” Instead, they left thinking, “Hmm, you can make good wine anyway you want, as long as you start with good grapes.”

To be truthful, I did say I think an unoaked Chardonnay can’t rise to the level of complexity of a great oaked one, and I’ll stand by that assertion, in a general way. Would I turn down Greg Brewer’s unoaked 2003 Inox? Hell no. At lunch later that day I had a 1997 Qupe Bien Nacido Reserve Chardonnay from magnum (poured by a beaming Bob Lindquist himself) that was obviously oaked, and I have to say that both wines really turned me on. To have to choose between them would be a crime. Fortunately, we don’t have to. The bottom line is this: Great wine is an anomaly that cannot be explained. Even after every aspect of terroir, viticulture and winemaking is defined (as if terroir can ever be fully defined), the final satisfaction of a great wine is a phenomenon of nature, or perhaps a singularity is a better word. In a singularity, the laws of nature no longer apply. Anything is possible. Isn’t that what we look for in wine? Every time I open a bottle, I’m prepared to fall into a wormhole and be transported to some magical new place. That’s why I love this job!

One final thing I wonder about, which didn’t really get addressed during the panel, was if the consumer is confused by the oaked-unoaked Chardonnay thing. Lord knows consumers have enough to be confused about anyway (I’m just talking about wine). Since there’s no legal terminology to refer to an unoaked wine, proprietors use all kinds of different terms: unoaked, no oak, stainless, steel, naked, and even whimsical terms like Metallico. One of the winemakers on the panel related how a customer, tasting a Chardonnay from a bottle labeled unoaked, said he didn’t like it because he wasn’t getting the oak he expected. I wondered, if the same wine had been poured from a bottle labeled “barrel fermented,” would the customer have had a different reaction? Hmm.

I’m back from my panel at The Chardonnay Symposium down at gorgeous Bien Nacido Vineyards and man oh man, what a fun time it was. Only in its second year, TCS is growing by leaps and bounds, and is destined to be the premier Chardonnay event in the U.S.A. (Actually, it already is, but you ain’t seen nothing yet!)

After my panel, on oaked and unoaked Chardonnay, people asked me, what was your favorite wine in the flight? And I said, I can’t actually say. There are different ways I taste wine. Tasting at home for review is a very specialized form of wine tasting. It’s how I taste at work, but it’s not how I, or any normal person, would taste wine anyplace else. It would be dreadfully boring to always be formally tasting wine.

For example, at my seminar, the way I tasted was to look for what was best and most exemplary in each wine. So although we had 12 wines, and they were all quite different from each other–grown in different regions, made by different winemakers, some entirely unoaked, some with 200% new oak, some at 13%, some at 16%, some from barrel, some 8 years old–I looked for the best qualities of each. And I found them, because you generally find what you’re looking for, whether it’s in wine, people or life.

On the other hand, when I taste critically, in blind flights, what I’m looking for are faults. I’m seeking to eliminate wines from the lineup, one by one, due to certain flaws. They may be excessive in acidity, or flabby, or too hot in the finish, or too oaky, or not fruity enough, or have raisin tastes, or be too sweet; it could be anything. Last one standing wins. So, just as I said you always find what you’re looking for, if you’re looking for faults, you’ll find them.

This leads to the question, is it better to look for faults or for virtues? The answer is, you can’t say one approach is better than the other. Different approaches are suitable for different purposes. When I’m reviewing and scoring, it’s appropriate to look for flaws. When I’m leading a panel of invited winemakers, each of whom I’m honored to sit beside, I’m looking to find those qualities in the wines that are the topic of the symposium. And let’s face it, the winemakers on my panel are not accustomed to making ordinary wines! Each of the twelve samples was extraordinary in its own unique way.

(Thanks by the way to Ellen for being a wonderful traveling companion!)

The Wine Blogging Awards

Of course I wanted to win Best Wine Blog at the Wine Bloggers Convention. And I didn’t. But I can honestly say that there’s nobody whom I would more have preferred to beat me than Tom Wark and his Fermentation blog.

Tom deserved this award by every measure. He’s easily the most important person in wine blogging history. He not only had one of the first wine blogs, he began the Wine Bloggers Conference and he started the Wine Blog Awards. Those achievements alone put Tom in the pantheon. Tom is to wine blogging as Walt Disney is to animation, as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were to the personal computer. In other words, the creator.

More personally, Tom has been my mentor in wine blogging. Not in the most direct way, but still importantly. It wasn’t Tom alone who persuaded me to be a wine blogger. But he was incredibly supportive of my efforts from the start. When I began wine blogging, Tom wrote one of the first reviews, which he headlined “Steve Heimoff and the Active Mind.” I was so proud of that, because Tom really “got” what it was I was trying to do (as I already had “got” what he was trying to do).

Since then, Tom has been a friend and ally. I like to think he’s had my back, and I know I’ve had his. It was Tom who advised me to blog 5 days a week. I’ve had offline conversations with Tom over the years. I’ve asked him questions and for advice; he’s always kindly answered. He’s asked me questions; I’ve given him my opinions, I hope helpfully. I respect the hell out of Tom Wark (and by the way, Tom is absolutely leading the fight against monopolistic distributors). Like I said, if I couldn’t win this award, there’s nobody on Earth I would rather have seen win. So my heartiest congratulations, Tom. You singularly deserve this honor.