Judgment of Paris

by George M. Taber

  The driving force in all those deals was the recognition of the globalization of wine and the growing importance of brands. They also all involved beer or liquor companies with strong, established products looking for better profits than they could get from their traditional fields alone, where consumption was stagnant or falling. The companies were seemingly undeterred by the bad experience that liquor companies like Seagrams and Heublein had in the Napa Valley in the 1960s and 1970s, when they got into wine with big investments and left only a few years later after big losses. So far, at least, the mergers generally seem to be working.

  American wine companies have generally been content to live off their large domestic market. One exception is Gallo, which has gone after the British market with big advertising budgets and is also trying to get into the French market. Interestingly, Gallo abroad sells its middle-range brand, Gallo of Sonoma, rather than the jug wines that gained it fame in the U.S.

  Before it was sold, the Robert Mondavi Winery went abroad by doing joint ventures in countries such as Chile and Australia. Mondavi in 2001 attempted to start a winery that would make a superpremium Syrah in the Languedoc region of France, but was stopped by an ugly grassroots movement against what was seen as the American takeover of French land. In the late 1990s when Mondavi ran short of wine for its Woodbridge brand, it gave new meaning to the globalization of wine by importing Chardonnay from southern France to blend with its California wine.

  Growing up along with the globalization of wine has been the power of the global wine critic. Wine writers such as Hugh Johnson in Britain and James Halliday in Australia have long chronicled developments in the business, usually with a friendly approach that rarely, if ever, spoke ill of any winery. A new type of wine writer appeared in 1978 in the person of Robert M. Parker Jr., a lawyer from Monkton, Maryland, and his publicationThe Wine Advocate .

  Parker didn’t just write pleasant platitudes; he scored wines using a new 100-point scale with a candor that infuriated wineries but appealed to consumers. The Parker method, which resembled the scoring system used in U.S. schools, was easy for Americans to understand. Neophyte wine consumers could suddenly justify paying $100 for a bottle of wine simply by saying, “Parker gave it a 98.” Other wine publications, such as the widely readWine Spectator magazine, soon adopted the 100-point system.

  In a field where many wine critics and magazines shade their opinions to please advertisers, Parker has been highly ethical. His newsletter carries no advertising, and plays no favorites except on Parker’s personal basis of taste.

  Parker has an incredible ability to taste, rate, and remember wines. He is most avidly a fan of Bordeaux, although he also reviews wines from some other regions and countries. His opinions are widely followed, and his judgment can make or break a winery. The saying in the wine trade is that if Parker gives a wine a score of below 80 it can’t be sold at any price, but if he gives a wine above 90 it’s too expensive for most consumers.

  His detractors complain that Parker gives a degree of artificial statistical accuracy to a process based on subjective personal taste. They also note that his world is limited. The more than 1,600-pageParker’s Wine Buyer’s Guide gives short shrift to the Loire Valley, one of France’s largest wine-producing areas, and only two paragraphs to all of South Africa’s wines. Nonetheless, Parker and his system remain popular.

  President Jacques Chirac in 1999 made Parker a knight in the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest award, calling him the “most followed and influential critic of French wines in the world.” Winemakers around the world told me privately that they couldn’t understand how one critic came to have such a sway over their business and complained bitterly that no one should have that kind of clout. As a new generation of wine drinkers gathers more experience, people are likely to develop confidence in their own tastes and depend less on the counsel of any critic. For now, however, a large group of fans look for a guide to help them find their way through the wine thicket, and the critic that stands out far above all others is Robert Parker.

  Some connoisseurs complain that the development of the global wine scene risks producing a bland, international, McWine style, where an Italian Chardonnay tastes much like one from California or Australia or France. Parker is one of the loudest critics of this international standardization even though he, more than anyone, has helped foster it, because so many winemakers are styling wines to win high marks from him in order to get the resulting higher prices and greater sales. Knowing that Parker likes massive, dark-colored, intense-flavored, high-alcohol wines, that is exactly what they try to produce.

  Sometimes this can lead to grotesque procedures or shortcuts that might produce so-called Frankenstein wines. Some vintners remove liquid from the must, the mixture of grape skins, juice, and seeds, to intensify the wine’s tastes. The French developed a procedure called micro-oxygenation that puts oxygen into the juice while fermentation is taking place to speed up the transformation of hard tannins into soft and mellow ones, making poor quality wines seem like long-aged ones. The Australians discovered that they could get some of the same effects of aging in oak barrels by putting oak chips into holding tanks of nondescript white wine and then stirring them furiously. The final product had the vanilla and clove tastes that oak provides, although sometimes to an excessive degree.

  No one can deny, though, that this is the golden age of international wine. Never before in history have consumers enjoyed such high-quality wines at generally good prices. It is easy to romanticize about a glorious past when peasants wearing baggy pants and berets turned out supposedly wonderful wine in caves with straw-littered floors. I doubt, however, that today you’d really want to drink a lot of that wine. Now from California to Italy in the Northern Hemisphere and from New Zealand to South Africa in the Southern Hemisphere, winemakers are producing better and better wines. The 100-point rating system introduced by Robert Parker has become a rigorous international standard for all quality wines, and thousands of winemakers are striving to produce wines that win high scores from him. The consumer is now indeed king.

  One of the most spectacular celebrations of the globalization of wine took place twenty-one years after the Paris Tasting, and again in Paris. In September 1997, Jean-Claude Rouzaud, the managing director of Champagne Louis Roederer, celebrated his thirtieth anniversary in that position by hosting a dinner at La Tour d’Argent for the makers of what he decreed to be the world’s thirty greatest wines. A non-competitive tasting of their thirty wines was held the following day at the Louvre Museum, which was fitting since all the wines are museum pieces.

  A generation earlier, all thirty wines would have come from France, and even in 1997, this Frenchman chose exactly half—fifteen out of thirty—from France. Nine came from Bordeaux, starting with all five First Growths. The nine Bordeaux wines: Haut-Brion, Lafite, Latour, Margaux, and Mouton, plus Yquem, Cheval Blanc, Ausone, and Pétrus. Four wines were from Burgundy: Romanée-Conti, Faiveley’s Clos des Cortons, Leflaive’s Chevalier-Montrachet, and Joseph Drouhin’s Montrachet Marquis de Laguiche. There was also one Champagne, Roederer Cristal naturally, and one Côte du Rhône, Etienne Guigal’s Côte Rôtie La Turque.

  Nonetheless, Rouzaud also recognized the rest of the world.

  Four California wines were invited: Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill, Heitz Martha’s Vineyard, Ridge Monte Bello, and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cask 23.

  Four wines also came from Germany, all Trockenbeerenauslese, a sweet dessert wine made with late-harvested grapes that have undergone the same process the French call “noble rot” as Sauternes: Maximin Grünhaüser Abtsberg, Schwarzhofberger Riesling, Joh. Jos. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling, and Schloss Johannisberger Riesling.

  Two Super Tuscans, quintessential examples of globalization that are Bordeaux-style wines made in Italy, made the list: Sassicaia and Solaia.

  Five countries had one wine each: Australia (Penfolds Grange), Chile (Lapostolle Merlot Cuvée Alexandre), Hungary (Tokaji Asz
ú Eszencia Disz okö), Lebanon (Chateau Musar), and Spain (Vega Sicilia Unico).

  The selection seemed a little too much like a United Nations of wines, with some questionable ones selected for geographical balance. Nonetheless, it was a good stab at naming the International First Growths.

  GLOBALIZATION: WINERIES VISITED and THE WORLD’S WINE BELTS

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dispatches from

  the International Wine Trade

  Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.

  —EVELYN WAUGH

  While writing this book, I roamed the world in search of wines that reflected the new globalization of viticulture. These travels took me from vineyards near the surfer’s promised land of western Australia to those of Chile in the shadows of the Andes. I found an American woman making wine for a French company in New Zealand and a Frenchman making wine in Chile. Some of the wineries I visited had a direct connection to the Spurrier tasting, having been built after the event. Others predated it, although they came to international prominence only after the judgment of Paris stimulated interest in non-European wines. All of them, however, reflect the revolution that started in Paris on that day in May 1976, and are six examples of the outstanding wines being made today in greatterroirs around the world. All of them have brilliant futures and one day may have earned a place among a new ranking of the world’s greatest wines.

  Blenheim, Marlborough, New Zealand

  David Hohnen is an Australian who studied winemaking at Fresno State in California, and worked for the French-owned Taltarni Vineyards in Australia and then for the French-owned Clos Du Val in the Napa Valley before starting the Cape Mentelle winery with his brother Mark in western Australia. He is also the father of what many people consider to be the world’s best Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand’s Cloudy Bay.

  Winston Churchill said of his political rival Clement Attlee that he was a modest man who had much to be modest about. The same might have been said about Sauvignon Blanc wine. Until recently, it would have been better described as Sauvignon Bland. The most famous Sauvignon Blanc is France’s Sancerre, but even much of that lacks any personality and is often too acidic. In the 1960s, Robert Mondavi tried to change the wine’s style and name to Fumé Blanc, which he hoped would make it easier for Americans to pronounce and enjoy. It didn’t help.

  The world’s view of Sauvignon Blanc changed dramatically in the late 1980s, however, when a new version came roaring out of New Zealand. The Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc was alive with flavors of cut grass and fresh fruits. The wine has its detractors, who claim it’s too much in your face, but no one ever forgets the taste of a well-made New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. One wine critic compared drinking Cloudy Bay to hearing Glenn Gould playing Bach’sGoldberg Variations . Another said drinking your first New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc was like having sex for the first time. Winemakers in other countries have tried to match the New Zealanders but with only modest success. No other region in the world can match Marlborough, the northeastern corner of New Zealand’s south island, which seems to be the best place in the world to grow Sauvignon Blanc grapes. While many New Zealand companies now produce the wine, Cloudy Bay in the town of Blenheim set the world standard for Sauvignon Blanc and now demands premium prices around the globe.

  The story of Cloudy Bay begins in the spring of 1983, when four New Zealand winemakers, who had been attending a conference in Perth, Australia, drove three hours south to visit the Cape Mentelle winery in Margaret River. They wanted to meet David Hohnen, a hot winemaker there who had just won the Jimmy Watson trophy, Australia’s top wine honor, for the second year in a row.

  Hohnen was proud to show off his wines, in particular his new Sémillon, which sparkled with lots of herbaceous flavors. The guest winemakers, though, were unimpressed. If Hohnen wanted to experience something really exciting, they said, he should try a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. One of them went out to their car and got Hohnen a bottle, but he only got around to opening it after the visitors left. With the first sip, he was stunned. The wine was like nothing he had ever experienced. Its taste exploded in his mouth and demanded attention.

  A year later, Hohnen went to New Zealand, ostensibly to attend a wine show in Auckland, but his real purpose was to check out the country’s wine scene, especially what was happening with Sauvignon Blanc. He had been successful at producing red wines in Australia, but was looking for something new and interesting in white wines. Ever since the visit of the Kiwi winemakers, Hohnen hadn’t been able to get that New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc out of his mind. While driving a rental car around the country and trying various wines, he started to zero in on the Marlborough area as having the best Sauvignon Blancs. The town of Blenheim in particular looked interesting. Montana, New Zealand’s largest winemaker, had planted major vineyards there in 1973 and a few other wineries were also producing some interesting Sauvignon Blancs. The area enjoyed hot days and cold nights—just the ingredients to give wines the intense aromas and lively, but not overpowering, acidity. The soils were geologically young and rich in minerals.

  At the Auckland wine show Hohnen, a serious, focused person when on a mission, sampled every single Sauvignon Blanc on display and concluded that the ones he liked best all came from Marlborough. While he was tasting, Hohnen noticed another winemaker also zeroing in on the Sauvignon Blancs. His name was Kevin Judd. He was also Australian and was currently the winemaker for Selaks, one of New Zealand’s quality producers. Hohnen and Judd met briefly and talked in general about the potential of the country’s Sauvignon Blanc.

  Hohnen returned to Australia with plans to start a new company in New Zealand to make the wine. In late 1984 and early 1985, he began putting the pieces together. Despite interest rates that were then a rapacious 24 percent, he assembled a group of investors who put up a total of $1 million. Hohnen then hired Judd to be the winemaker, even though he had to stay at Selaks to finish the 1985 vintage. Hohnen also made a deal with Corbans, another big New Zealand winemaker, to buy its surplus Sauvignon Blanc grapes from Marlborough for the next three years. Reflecting the new global wine business, the clone used to grow the grapes had been developed at the University of California, Davis. In August 1985, Hohnen and company broke ground on a winery on Jacksons Road on the northern side of the Wairau Valley just outside Blenheim. The sandy loam soil seemed to make it an ideal location for a vineyard that they wanted to plant later.

  Everything for the first vintage was done on the fly and involved lots of phone calls between New Zealand and Australia. Hohnen, whose greatest strength is in viticulture, hovered over the Corbans grape crop and had frequent phone conversations with Judd, who was working in Auckland. After the grapes were picked, they had to be trucked twelve hours across the Cook Strait to the Corbans winery at Gisborne on New Zealand’s north island. Still running the operation by phone, Judd directed the Corbans winemaking staff on how he wanted things done.

  Judd’s goal was to keep the production simple—stainless-steel fermentation and no aging in oak. The goal was a simple, pungent dry wine. Judd had been making a successful oak barrel–fermented Sémillon for Selaks, so he bought some of that from Corbans thinking it would give the wine a more interesting taste. Sémillon made up about 15 percent of the final wine, although it was not enough to require him to call it a Sauvignon Blanc–Sémillon blend. The production of the 1985 vintage was only 2,800 cases.

  In addition to making the wine, Judd also played a key role in developing the wine’s label, which has been cited by industry experts as one of the reasons for its great success. A gifted amateur photographer, Judd has published a book of vineyard pictures entitledThe Colour of Wine . He had taken a shot of the Richmond Ranges, which rise majestically behind a vineyard in Marlborough in a three-tiered silhouette. An artist turned Judd’s photo into a label. Then the founders needed a name. Hohnen’s Cape Mentelle was named after a spit of land located near Margaret River in Australia, and he wante
d another maritime connection for his new place. Captain James Cook, who had claimed New Zealand for Britain, named the bay near Blenheim Cloudy Bay because of the ethereal way that clouds, fog, and mist softly embrace the land and sea. Hohnen and Judd were reluctant to call a wine cloudy, a quality winemakers eschew. Someone quipped that they could call the wine Farewell Spit in honor of a jut of land to the west, but the idea was dismissed with a laugh. Finally the company’s marketing advisors carried the day, and it was Cloudy Bay.

  Now that he had a wine, a label, and a name, Hohnen had to sell the product. Since New Zealand was going through a wine glut and prices were low, he decided that the larger Australian market, where he already had a distribution system in place, would be the primary focus. The heavily indebted company had no money for a marketing campaign, so Hohnen was forced to be creative. Starting in Sydney, he made promotion trips to Australia’s leading cities. At each stop he sent out a gift package to restaurateurs, wine writers, and retailers that included a wine glass, a bottle of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, a can of New Zealand mussels, and a note that said, “Before you open this box, get a corkscrew and some fresh crusty bread.”