The honest wine writer.

Wine writers are strange animals. Most love to portrait themselves as objective, that they see it all from all angels and perspectives. That they judge absolute and fairly. Someone’s life’s work for a few years, judged in seconds. Some are more subjective than they might like to admit. Robert Parker has a style. Michael Broadbent another. And Jancis Robinson, and so it continues. I enjoy it when I “crack the code” of someone’s preferences. Only then do I understand what they’re on about. Some writers I can never understand, or crack open it seems. Tasting panels means nothing to me, as they’re results have too many parameters. I can never find they’re preference either.

Today I met a totally new honesty. Someone clear about the preferences. Someone, who thought me to be wrong, because I didn’t share those same preferences. I should have agreed! The quality wasn’t good enough…. For whom? For the wine writer? For this one wine writer? Many will agree, and many will not. The question was about whom to write about, and whom to exclude. I have no problem seeing that some producer of the drops of Dionysus have to be excluded when you don’t have unlimited space. But I was a bit surprised by the honesty of the answers, how subjective they were.

I can enjoy a glass of Barolo from Josetta Saffirio. I can enjoy a bottle, and I have done so many times. At a tasting at Villa Beccaris in Monforte d’Alba, Sarah’s wines came out first during a blind tasting. That was my first taste of her wines. Later that night we enjoyed a dinner with Nicola Argamente, Domenico Clerico and others down the hill at Ruggeri Corsini. The next day we visited her winery. I have tasted them many times since, and have only good memories.

I have many fond memories after visiting Vietti many times as well. Many great visits with the always smiling and charming Luca Currado, sometimes even tasting forbidden fruits. But my point here is that from my perspective, Vietti makes finer wines than Saffirio. I haven’t tasted younger wines than the 07 vintage from either, so I’m not totally up to scratch. But Vietti have a longer track record, and they make some of the best wines in Barolo, not at the absolute top, but close.

Domenico Clerico was omitted as well, and seeing that Robert Parker in the book ‘The world’s greatest wine estates’ has included this producer, it’s a wine of repute. Robert Parker’s word is not law, not in anyway. It may or may not be to your or my liking, as any wine. But the condescending answer from the wine writer at hand was that the wines of Domenico Clerico are killed by oak flavours, and that I should know better. Meaning I should have known why they were not mentioned. Why they were excluded.

I didn’t. I’m not a particularly big fan of Cos d’Estournel and Pavie anymore. Old vintages are fine yes, but now, it’s Bordeaux on steroids. Vulgar, fat and bling. Like Russians with new found wealth while fighting to get expensive purses at Sax Fifth Avenue. They have little resemblance with French nobility and their elegant Hermes. But if I’m to write on Bordeaux, can I exclude them? Just because I don’t like them? Isn’t that a bit too easy? Some love them, they sell, even quicker in some markets than some wines closer to my palate and liking. For the record, I think Domenico Clerico is overly oaked myself.

I was astounded by the honesty, of which the pickings had been utterly from personal preference, regardless of what anybody else should believe or think. Or suggest.