From the road: Portland Oregon
Up here in Portland, Oregon, a town I haven’t really spent much time in, and I must, what a cool place. Of course it helps that the weather has been so beautiful—much better than in Northern California, where the past week has been dismal and cold. The neighborhood they call the Pearl District reminds me of parts of Baltimore, where I was two weeks ago, and also the area of San Francisco around the Barbary Coast: old brick buildings (fortunately seismically retrofitted!) that have been rehabbed and loved back to their exciting historical roots, making them great places to live and work. We had dinner at Paragon Restaurant & Bar, in the heart of the Pearl. With the warm night, the ‘hood was swarming with life, and I swear, there were ten bars and cafés on every block. Portland clearly is a town that loves to eat and drink! Young, too. But, as I discovered from talking with some locals, they are experiencing the same difficulties with rising housing prices as is happening up and down the Pacific Coast, from Vancouver to La Jolla, although rents and home prices aren’t anywhere near what they are in San Francisco and, increasingly, Oakland.
Anyhow, I could live up here! The Pearl is exactly the kind of neighborhood I’ve always lived in: inner city-urban, densely packed, with old buildings and lots of stuff going on.
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Why do some people call “Parkerization” a dirty word?
They do, you know, as a symbol for wines that are “overblown, over-alcoholed, over-oaked, overpriced and over-manipulated.” With Parker’s recent retirement from reviewing Bordeaux, the topic of Parkerization has re-arisen. For instance, in this reporting by Yahoo, they refer to his “his preference for predominantly wood flavours, strong tannins and high alcohol content.” Well, naturally, nobody wants wines that are over-anything, whether it’s oak, alcohol, blown, manipulated or priced; and certainly there are plenty of those kinds of wines. But let it not be forgotten that there’s a Good Twin to the Evil Twin of Parkerization: too many wines pre-Parker were thin and boring and, quite frankly, not well made. Parker dragged sometimes reluctant wineries into modern times, forcing them to clean up their acts and actually get the grapes to ripen correctly so that they tasted good. He doesn’t get enough praise for that—people fasten on the excesses and thus end up throwing the baby away with the bathwater.
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Well, tomorrow (Tuesday, today as you read this) it’s off on a whirlwind visit to Seattle that will be over so fast, I won’t even have time to see my family up there. The temperature is supposed to be in the mid-80s, which I personally love, but really, seems pretty hot considering we’re halfway to the Aleutians. They tell me the Pacific Northwest has been very rainy lately, but also very warm: Global warming, I should think. Then, after Seattle, it’s another whirlwind trip to L.A. and back home—and to Gus—on Friday. I’ll try to blog everyday this week but with this schedule, don’t blame me if my posts seem a little slapdash—like this one.
Steve – Portland is wonderful but do yourself a favor and get yourself to Hood River and the Gorge on your next visit. One beautiful and easy hour drive east from Portland…IMHO most beautiful part of Oregon. Wines/vineyards here have all of the potential and quality or WV and so much more to experience and living here! Happy to show you around anytime…. Cheers
“But let it not be forgotten that there’s a Good Twin to the Evil Twin of Parkerization: too many wines pre-Parker were thin and boring and, quite frankly, not well made. Parker dragged sometimes reluctant wineries into modern times, forcing them to clean up their acts and actually get the grapes to ripen correctly so that they tasted good. He doesn’t get enough praise for that …”
Parker’s crusade in the 1980s to get wineries to clean up their act — through lower yields, riper fruit (eliminating chapitalization), eliminating acidification, gentler crushing and using only free-run juice, extended maceration, sur lees stirring, new oak barrels [one area where they literally had to clean up their act], minimal filtering and fining, et cetera — yielded better wines.
Grape growing and wine production processes we now take for granted.
But there is a gaping flaw in the accusation that Parker is responsible for “overblown, over-alcoholed, over-oaked, overpriced and over-manipulated.”
No, vineyard managers and winemakers following the dictates of winery owners are responsible for that style. [*]
That is a conscious, commercial (and some might say cynical) volitional act on their part to craft those wines in pursuit of higher sales volume
No one is holding a gun to these folks’ head. So put the blame squarely on the folks who make the wines whose style you detest.
And vote with your wallet by supporting wines which align with your personal palate.
For every Meomi or Prisoner, there is a counterbalancing Bill Dyer or Cathy Corison wine.
[*Dan Berger: “The Collapse of Cabernet”
http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking/wine/columnists/dan-berger/dan-berger-the-collapse-of-cabernet/article_704bc688-0712-11df-a231-001cc4c002e0.html
Quote:
“The most telling — and damaging — aspect of today’s cabernets is what I hear from wine makers, and always off the record. The phrasing may differ, but the sentiment is the same: ‘I may make cabernet, but I don’t drink it any more.'”]