By LETTIE TEAGUE 11/9/12
IT'S NOT often that a man achieves so much power that his name is transformed into an adjective, but that's exactly what happened with Robert M. Parker Jr., the famous wine critic. Mr. Parker is not only the most influential wine critic in the world, he has also inspired the creation of so-called Parkerized wines.
What is a Parkerized wine, anyway? I asked Mr. Parker, who was sitting across from me in his Maryland living room. (When I'd asked Mr. Parker if we might meet for a chat, he had suggested lunch at his house featuring crab cakes made by his wife, Pat.) "Well, it's not a word you'd find in Larousse," Mr. Parker said. But he added, more seriously, that "Parkerized" was a term generally employed in a negative fashion to describe a wine that was "oaky, alcoholic and bombastic—which I totally disagree with, by the way."
Mr. Parker believes that the more accurate definition of a "Parkerized" wine would be "one produced from previously underachieving vineyards whose winemakers got serious about creating a quality wine." After all, the 65-year-old Mr. Parker has spent his entire 30-year career championing talented winemakers who produce wines that outperform the standards of their country, their region and their peers.
Quite a few winemakers have become celebrities (not to mention millionaires) thanks to Mr. Parker's enthusiastic descriptions of their wines and the scores he awards them on his 100-point scale (on which the lowest score is 50). In fact, I'd argue that Mr. Parker's exuberant, multiparagraph descriptions in the Wine Advocate, his subscriber-only newsletter, are even more impactful than his numerical scores. (There are some 50,000 Wine Advocate newsletter subscribers, who pay $130 a year. There is also a separate website,eRobertParker.com.) Mr. Parker is an unabashed fan of deliciousness—his pleasure is practically palpable, his excitement truly infectious, even if it occasionally goes over the top.
Pundits have long enjoyed lampooning Mr. Parker's exuberant verbiage.
Indeed, pundits have long enjoyed lampooning Mr. Parker's verbiage, which can occasionally sound like a parody of itself. Here is Mr. Parker on the 2005 Harlan Estate, a cult Napa Cabernet: "The 2005 exhibits a gorgeous thick-looking ruby/purple color in addition to a beautiful nose of burning embers interwoven with crème de cassis, roasted meats, sweet black truffles and spring flowers…this cuvée seems to want to be both a Pauillac and a ripe vintage of La Mission Haut-Brion." It's an almost Shakespearean style of tasting note—and one no other wine writer has ever quite managed to pull off.
It's certainly not the sort of writing that one would associate with a former Farm Credit Bank attorney—Mr. Parker's job before he turned to wine criticism full-time. As the story goes (and it's one well familiar to serious wine drinkers), Mr. Parker was inspired by his hero, Ralph Nader, to become a consumer advocate for wine drinkers. When Mr. Parker began his newsletter in 1978 (initially titled the Baltimore-Washington Wine Advocate), the wine trade was rife with cronyism and conflicts of interest. Leading wine writers were often engaged in selling the wines they wrote about, especially in the U.K.
Robert M. Parker Jr.'s Picks
- The greatest wine he has ever tasted: 1978 Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Mouline.
- The best Châteauneuf-du-Pape vintage:Either 2007 or 2010—'we will have to wait six to eight years to tell.'
- Wine-drinking life lesson: A glass of water for every glass of wine. Badoit, the French sparkling water, is Mr. Parker's favorite.
And their notes on wines were often florid if rather vague on particulars. "I often thought the Brits hedged their bets—they couldn't be held accountable because they didn't really say anything about the wines," said Mr. Parker. That was one reason he decided to employ the 100-point scoring system. At least that way he was "putting his stake in the ground."
Mr. Parker's other now-legendary point of distinction was his ringing endorsement of the 1982 Bordeaux vintage when every other wine critic dismissed both the wines and the vintage. Mr. Parker saw greatness—and he turned out to be right. The 1982 Bordeaux are still some of the most sought-after wines in the world. It was the turning point that put Mr. Parker enduringly on the wine map.
While he has been instrumental in determining the fortunes of wine producers in other regions, especially California and the Rhône, Bordeaux has been a particularly important region for Mr. Parker—and it's one of the regions that Mr. Parker still visits each year. (He has assigned deputies to cover the wines from most other parts of the world, including Burgundy, Italy, Germany, California and Washington state.)
When Mr. Parker assigned his deputy Antonio Galloni to review the wines of California last year, speculation among bloggers and writers was rife: Was Mr. Parker planning to retire? Did he have a replacement? Was he selling the Wine Advocate? And what would happen to the price of California wines, especially the pricier ones, if Mr. Parker weren't rating them? I put some of those questions to Mr. Parker that afternoon.
Mr. Parker gently shooed aside his bulldog Betty Jane (he's almost as impassioned about dogs as he is wine) and offered some semiconvincing assurances. "There is no apparent heir, although Antonio has the work ethic and the integrity to do it." But, he added, he had no intention of retiring. "I still work 12-, 14-hour days when I'm on the road," he said, though he no longer tastes hundreds of wines a day in his home office as he once did.
Mr. Parker said he has entertained offers to buy his newsletter over the years, including three from "hedge-fund guys," but so far he has refused them all, in part because he would not relinquish editorial control of the newsletter. And with that, Mr. Parker announced that lunch was almost ready—although there was time for a brief cellar tour.
The Parker cellar lies just below the kitchen floor and is accessed by a door decorated with a charming photo of the young Parkers: Pat Parker looked like a double for Natalie Wood, while Mr. Parker looked like Jack Nicholson in his prime. The Parker cellar, on the other hand, looked like nothing I've ever seen before. There were wooden cases of wine stacked all the way to the ceiling of the cellar—wines of impeccable pedigree and provenance, but in a bit of a perilous jumble. Mr. Parker assured me he knew where everything was, and besides, no one but him came down to the cellar. Pat hadn't visited "in years," he said.
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I was flattered to have been granted admittance, if somewhat alarmed. "Watch the broken glass," Mr. Parker cautioned. He stood behind cases of first-growth Bordeaux and recounted that he recently found a case of 1982 La Fleur-Pétrus. "That increased my net worth," Mr. Parker said with a laugh. The cellar has about 10,000 bottles, by Mr. Parker's estimate. He will probably end up donating a good portion of it to charity one day, as his daughter, Maia, is of drinking age but prefers tequila to wine.
Upstairs, Pat Parker was ready with the crab cakes and Mr. Parker had three bottles open—all Châteauneuf-du-Papes, two reds and one white. The Parkers drink Rhône wines with most meals, although Mr. Parker is, surprisingly, a fan of simple Spanish whites, especially Godello and Albariño. "They've really had a quality revolution with Spanish whites," said Mr. Parker, who has also been known to drink a Tavel rosé or two—something the detractors of "Parkerized" wines would likely be surprised to find out.
The white Châteauneuf-du-Pape was the 2009 Château de Beaucastel Vieilles Vignes, "the best white I've had in the past year," said Mr. Parker, who proceeded—in a rapid, stream-of-consciousness fashion—to describe what he found in the wine: "honey, white flower, white apricot, marmalade—it's viscous but elegant."
"Slow down!" Pat said, laughing.
That's the one thing that Mr. Parker—who is still tasting and traveling, and now working on a memoir as well—doesn't seem able to do.
See Off Duty wine videos and more at youtube.com/wsj. Email Lettie at wine@wsj.com.
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