Robert Parker: The Book

[The following are two reviews of The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste, a new book by Elin McCoy. The first review, by Mike Steinberger of Slate, is less about the book than it is about Parker’s influence on the wine industry. It is a provocative article. Both are lightly edited.]

The Wino in Winter: Robert Parker’s influence is on the decline. By Mike Steinberger
The world’s most celebrated boozer, wine critic Robert Parker, finally has his Boswell. The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste was published in late June by Elin McCoy, a longtime wine journalist who now writes for Bloomberg. Parker, who compiles his reviews in a bimonthly journal called the Wine Advocate, has always had his detractors, but the debate over his influence has become especially vituperative in recent months, and McCoy’s biography, though evenhanded, has only ratcheted up the acrimony. But this new wave of disdain for Parker is oddly timed, because in many respects his influence has already peaked. He’s still the world’s most powerful wine critic, but his palate doesn’t quite command the authority it once did.

McCoy doesn’t acknowledge that the Parker era has entered its twilight, but it is an understandable omission: After all, she has a book to flog. In every other respect, though, The Emperor of Wine is terrific-meticulously researched, well written, and balanced.

McCoy has captured Parker in full: He comes across as a man of uncommon enthusiasm, integrity, egoism, and prickliness. In McCoy’s view, Parker has done the wine world much good, but he’s also done real harm. She rightly points out that the 100-point scoring system, his most important innovation, is an absurdity that, as she puts it, “turns wine into a contest instead of an experience.” Parker’s legacy, she concludes, will be a checkered one.

Parker and his loyalists are not particularly enthusiastic about the book. For once, however, it is the Parker bashers rather than the Parker worshipers who have been driven to excess. The writer Tony Hendra, reviewing The Emperor of Wine for the New York Times Book Review, chided McCoy for going easy on her subject and offered readers his own splenetic take. By Hendra’s account, Parker is a loathsome figure who has succeeded in spite of himself because many consumers share his thirst for exuberantly fruity wines and because he has the “energetic support” of the American wine industry. (Never mind that the American wine industry is dominated by plonk-peddling corporations, most of whose wines Parker does not review.)

Hendra tossed a Molotov cocktail onto a bonfire that had been lit weeks earlier by the eminent wine writer Hugh Johnson. Decanter magazine’s web site published several Parker-trashing excerpts from Johnson’s forthcoming memoir, Wine: A Life Uncorked. In the book, Johnson draws a tortured and unfortunate analogy between Parker’s approach to wine criticism and George W. Bush’s approach to the world. “Imperial hegemony lives in Washington,” Johnson writes, “and the dictator of taste in Baltimore.” (Parker lives in Maryland.)

The Hendra and Johnson screeds followed closely in the wake of Jonathan Nossiter’s documentary Mondovino, which also misfired badly, portraying Parker as a genial devil who homogenizes wine and destroys tradition. There is, of course, much to criticize about Parker-I’ve taken a few shots at him myself. But in flailing so wildly at him, Johnson, Hendra, and Nossiter have made Parker seem even more important than he actually is.

To be sure, Parker continues to enjoy influence unparalleled among wine critics. The Wine Advocate remains the holy book when it comes to the cabernet- and merlot-based wines of Bordeaux and Napa. But in other places and with other grapes, its clout is diminishing. The Wine Spectator, for instance, has done much more than Parker to herald the coming-of-age of California Pinot Noir-arguably the most important recent development in American wine making-and has generally been quicker to identify the best new sources of California pinot.

In addition to Burgundy, Parker has given Rovani responsibility for the Loire, Alsace, New Zealand, and the Pacific Northwest, important wine regions all. And now comes news that Parker has enlisted the gifted David Schildknecht to take over the Wine Advocate’s coverage of Germany and Austria. Parker’s portfolio is growing smaller in part because the universe of review-worthy wines has grown so much larger during the last decade. But it may also be a concession to age: Parker is pushing 60 and will presumably be pruning his tasting and travel schedule over the next decade. It seems clear that Parker is now laying the foundation for a Parker-less Wine Advocate, and as he slows down, his influence will decline accordingly.

This process may be hastened by the atypical trajectory his palate seems to be following. Many oenophiles, as they get older, tend to gravitate toward more subtle wines, but Parker appears to want them even brawnier and bawdier. His growing predilection for freakish wines (Australian Shirazes with 15 percent alcohol and the consistency of sludge) and freakish vintages (the 2003 Rhônes, the product of a lethal heat wave that nearly turned the grapes into raisins) has raised eyebrows even among some of his most slavish followers.

In short, the Parker problem is proving to be a self-correcting one. Parker was the product of a unique set of circumstances. He made his name by being one of the first critics, and certainly the most insistent, to proclaim the brilliance of the 1982 Bordeaux. As it happens, 1982 also marked the start of a 20-year bull market in the United States which enriched many Americans and gave them an interest in the finer things, including fine wine. All these aspiring connoisseurs naturally wanted guidance, and Parker, unequivocal in his opinions and armed with a drink-by-the-numbers scoring system that conveyed the illusion of scientific precision, made himself their guru.

But two decades on, many people who once drank only wines that bore Parker’s stamp of approval, have grown more confident in their own judgments. In addition, there are now many more sources of informed wine criticism (thanks in no small part to the Internet). While the number of “Parkerized” wines (lavishly fruited, lavishly oaked) has unquestionably exploded, there are still plenty of winemakers unwilling to cater to one man’s palate, and I still find plenty of subtle, distinctive reds and whites on my local retail shelves. If these wines and winemakers managed to survive the Parker ascendancy, they will surely survive his decline.

McCoy ends her book on exactly the right note: “There will never be another emperor of wine.” Parker agonists should read The Emperor of Wine content in the knowledge that his crown has already begun to slip.

Mike Steinberger is Slate’s wine columnist.

[Robin Garr, who writes the informative WineLoversPage.com, wrote the following balanced review of The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste, a new book by Elin McCoy. The review has been edited for brevity.]

In the history of wine appreciation, there has certainly never been a wine writer as widely known (nor as controversial) as Robert M. Parker Jr. Based in tiny Monkton, Md., an outer suburb of Baltimore, Parker’s no-advertising newsletter, The Wine Advocate, reportedly circulates to no more than 50,000 subscribers - one-sixth that of The Wine Spectator. But Parker’s influence among wine enthusiasts, particularly those who pursue collectible wines, is a phenomenon without parallel in wine (or possibly any field of criticism). Widely publicized as “The man with the million-dollar nose” because he literally had his sense of smell insured for that amount (the underwriters allegedly declined to risk any more), Parker can literally make a winery’s reputation with a single good review or destroy it with a bad one.

Parker is given much of the credit (or blame) for nudging the international wine industry toward fashioning wines to suit his tastes: big, powerful, and driven more by fruit than earth. In fairness, Parker himself denies this charge, and he frequently speaks well of subtle, graceful “Old World” wines. But as Elin McCoy points out, a quick look at Parker’s voluminous record makes clear that the blockbusters are indeed the wines he loves the most and rates most highly on the 100-point scale (which he, in fact, innovated and made popular for wine ratings).

Parker has become a love-him-or-hate-him figure among serious wine enthusiasts. Those who love him follow every word he writes and rush to wine shops to strip the shelves bare of the bottles he rates highly. Even the less enthralled typically pay him the backhanded compliment of choosing wines he doesn’t like, assuming that these wines will suit their tastes for subtlety, elegance, and terroir, and that they’ll remain affordable since Parker did not recommend them.

In her book, The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste, Elin McCoy is perhaps the first writer to put meat on the bones of the public Parker. A longtime writer and editor who has written about wine for Food & Wine and Bloomberg Markets, she  writes in a clear journalistic style, and she sketches characters and scenes with deft strokes that bring them alive. It’s fun to read, and you really get a sense that you’re meeting a full, well-rounded Parker, not just the the usual cartoon-character stereotype. McCoy offers some tales that Parker would much prefer forgotten: the lawsuit by Burgundian producer Francois Faiveley, eventually settled for a single franc, that left Parker persona non grata in Burgundy, and a more recent development in which a Parker associate in Bordeaux was charged with having used Parker’s letterhead and stationery to lend credibility to a consulting project. Nor is McCoy reluctant to record some of the less appealing sides of Parker’s personality, including a thin-skinned and occasionally litigious response to criticism, verbal battles with fellow wine writers (including a particularly nasty exchange with Jancis Robinson), and an ego expansive enough to dismiss any criticism as based on mere competitive jealousy.

E-Mail: beekman@conversent.net

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