Wednesday, January 28, 2009

 

The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization

by Alice Feiring

A very interesting book that highlights the difference of how wines are made today and in the past. The "Modernization" of the wine making process has given the crafters the ability to create a wines that has tastes that they want and in the process, removing, what the author says, the "terroir" (earth) from the wine.

Because wines can be made to taste, wine makers are creating wines to meet one man's taste, Robert Parker. He is the wine critic who made the 100 point wine scale that is used to sell wines.

This homogenisation of wines is what Alice Feiring is fighting. I must confess, I know next to nothing about wine and use the point system to buy wines. I would be interested in trying wines with "terroir".
Comments:
She makes a great case for her point of view but the freedom it gave me was to like the wine I liked without having to worry what "rating" it got. In otherwords, the rating system is not bad per se but knowing what it is based upon is good knowledge to have.
 
Agreed.

I was more struck by how wine makers so quickly changed how they made wine to meet one persons tastes.

As snobby as wine can be, I would have thought this would not have happened.

Emperors’ new clothes?
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?