In the course of reading Robert M. Parker, Jr.’s new Parker’s Wine Bargains: The World’s Best Wine Values Under $25, I noticed a couple of strange things. First, I was surprised to find the same winery, Casa Lapostolle—one of Chile’s most prominent producers—listed in both the Argentina and Chile chapters of the book, which were each authored by Wine Advocate critic Jay Miller (who was recently criticized in the Wall Street Journal for accepting a lavish junket in Argentina, which was first exposed by Dr. Vino).

And in the index, there are two successive entries for the winery: “Casa Lapostolle (Argentina), 14; Casa Lapostolle (Chile), 84.”

I figured this was just an editing/database mistake. It happens.

But things got stranger when I actually compared the reviews of the exact same wines in the two chapters. Aside from the words “black currant” and “black fruits,” their descriptions turned out to be totally different from each other. Here they are:

(From Argentina chapter) “Casa Lapostolle Merlot Cuvée Alexandre Apalta Vineyard. This Merlot has an attractive nose of black currant, blueberry, vanilla, and clove. The wine has good weight on the palate with layers of black fruits and a firm structure. Drink it during its first 6 years of life.”

(From Chile chapter) “Casa Lapostolle Merlot Apalta Vineyard Cuvée Alexandre. The Merlot Apalta Vineyard Cuvée Alexandra [sic] has aromas of cedar, spice box, black cherry, and black currant followed by a smooth-textured, ripe Merlot with ample savory black fruits, good depth, and a moderately long finish.”

Blueberry, vanilla, and clove have been replaced by cedar, spice box, and black cherry. Is there a wine-adjective dartboard in the house?

Moving on to the second double…

(From Argentina chapter) “Casa Lapostolle Cabernet Sauvignon Cuvée Alexandre Apalta Vineyard. Similarly styled but with the focus on black currants. It has enough structure to evolve for 2–3 years in the bottle and will drink well during its first 8 years of life.”

(From Chile chapter) “Casa Lapostolle Cabernet Sauvignon Apalta Vineyard Cuvée Alexandre. The Cabernet Sauvignon Apalta Vineyard Cuvée Alexandre has an expressive bouquet of smoke, pencil lead, spice box, black cherry, and black currant. The wine’s black fruit flavors linger into a medium-long finish.”

At least the black currants travel well.

Mistakes like this do happen. They don’t discredit the critics behind them; we all have slightly different experiences when we taste the same wine twice. And in this case, although the tasting notes are totally different, they’re not quite mutually exclusive, nor do they render dramatically divergent judgments/opinions about the wine (Parker ratings are not included in the under-$25 book). But I see it as yet another reminder of the arbitrariness of these fruit/spice adjectives, even in the hands of the world’s highest-end wine critics—which is particularly troubling when these opinions turn out to be so powerful in the marketplace.

Ethics scandals are politico porn. They’re also fertile ground for undeserved scapegoating. But there’s one category in which, across the board, there’s not nearly enough public stoning going on: the world of information intermediaries. On the government side, that means regulatory agencies; in the private sector, it’s the critics, the expert witnesses in capitalism’s de facto justice system.

Information intermediaries, we’re to understand, are society’s check against puffery. They make careers of trustworthiness and accountability. In society’s service, they apply rigor to the claims of corporations and analyze their standards. For this hard work, they’re rewarded by the marketplace and by the United States—sometimes handsomely, sometimes not.

Two bits of recent news bring about two otherwise disparate intermediaries, both preeminent in their niches—Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, the publication whose critical appraisals are one of the central determinants of a wine’s success or failure on the marketplace, and the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency whose critical appraisals are the primary safety check against America’s airlines—systematically abusing that authority.

Jay Miller: Disfrutando?

Parker’s is one of the few wine publications that don’t accept advertising, for which he deserves praise. And it’s certainly acceptable to take free samples of wine from producers—that’s often the only way to taste new releases before they’ve gone to market. But the recent transgressions of Jay Miller, Robert Parker’s right-hand man, are spectacular indeed. In another classic case of the traditional print media jumping on the bandwagon of a topic that had been exposed quite a bit earlier by an incisive blogger—in this case, Tyler Colman, who goes by “Dr. Vino”—Miller’s series of all-expenses-paid vacation/junkets, financed by wine producers, have finally been reported by the mainstream media in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

Some of rumors about Miller’s behavior in Argentina go quite a bit further in scandalousness (more…)