Monkton—a town without a centre or a bank—is a quietly inconspicuous place in a remote corner of America’s Midwest. No one here is in any hurry to go anywhere, and there are hardly hordes of drivers exiting the motorway that bypasses the town all keen to get here. The days go by like they always have, and people seem to want to keep it that way.
On the outskirts of the town stands a solid but normal-looking two-storey white house in a quiet avenue. Its owner’s dogs have their own demarcated area in the well-tended garden. Every morning before 8, on at least six days a week, a large, serene-looking man walks down the stairs from the bedroom to the kitchen for breakfast. After breakfast, this 61 year old man, who occasionally grumbles about his back though on the whole is happy with his state of health, goes up to his work room, whose tile floor his two dogs spend most of their time on snoozing and playing. On the table is the day’s work, all set out the previous evening: 32 bottles of wine and as many wine glasses. Next to the bottles is a large silver spittoon, in which, as the day goes on, the contents of the various bottles will end up.
The man calmly begins work and pours a few centilitres of liquid from the first bottle, which is in a cloth bag to conceal its name. He glances at the colour of the wine and grunts approvingly at its dark, almost black, colour. He vigorously swirls the wine in the glass, unhurriedly raises it to his mouth and sticks his very valuable nose (it is insured for a million dollars!) deep inside. He sniffs earnestly at the wine for quite some time. The aromas the wine releases immediately attack his experienced olfactory receptors, as if their very existence were under threat. At the same time, thousands of memory traces awaken in his brain and a split second later his olfactory senses are at work analysing the new fragrance and comparing it to all those he has encountered before. Conclusions are reached. They are transmitted along the neural pathways leading to the fingers that hold the pencil he uses to record his experience in written form.
Next, he moves the glass away from his nose and down to his lips, which he opens slightly, and then pours a tiny quantity of the wine into his mouth, at the same time taking a short breath of air. The taste buds in his mouth and on his tongue slowly register the tastes of the wine’s different elements. Gone are the days when they awaited this moment anxiously and excitedly, when their owner made them work hard and insisted on complete success. Now they proudly, almost routinely, though always professionally, conduct an analysis of the wine, sorting out its various elements and sending the information up to the brain for a final synopsis. Having swilled the wine round inside his mouth for a moment, the man spits it out and once again scribbles a few sentences down on a piece of paper. Then he repeats the entire tasting ritual over again to confirm his opinions and makes a few final notes.
The notes normally consist of fewer than 10 sentences and one number. This number, generally made up of two numerals, is one of the world’s most potent combination of figures. It has the power to decide the lives of countless numbers of people, and can make them rich or poor. This two-digit number is able to persuade thousands of people to pay top prices for wines around the world.
This image of the start of the working day for Mr Robert Parker in his home town is purely a figment of my imagination. But the fact that he is the world’s most highly regarded wine critic is not. The two-digit, at best three-digit, rating he gives wines acts as a sort of eleventh Commandment for wine producers, traders and consumers. But why should the opinion of this normal, middle-aged American living in the backwoods be so important that it frequently influences my drinking and spending habits and those of millions of other wine lovers? Why do we not simply trust in our own sense of taste and the size of our wallets? Perhaps it is because Mr Parker is always right.
Many of his colleagues over the years have tried to challenge Robert Parker’s absolute rule and question his abilities. The attacks on him in recent years, particularly from British wine critics, are understandable but in vain. To the ordinary wine consumer they are no more than meaningless bickering between a small and very complacent bunch of people and which seems totally to ignore the fact that no one sitting in their Ivory Tower can tell you or me why their opinions should be any more reliable than Mr Parker’s.
Whoever is right is up to the consumers and their taste buds to decide, and they have chosen Mr Parker.
I realise that the opinions of critics also often guide my choices in areas like the cinema and art exhibitions. Almost as often I realise I am later amazed at the words of praise by the critics who persuaded me to go. But when I let Mr Parker inform my choices, I almost always realise afterwards that I am delighted—the wine is excellent. This is the case too with most of my friends.
Of course there are a lot of wine lovers who care little for what Robert Parker has to say. They evidently trust in their own sense of taste and nobody else’s. That is fine. Because the fact is that, although the judgments that critics make about wine are helpful when it comes to its quality and present condition, they do not say what the wine tastes and feels like in your mouth. Only you can say that, no one else. I urge all my readers bravely to trust in their own sense of taste and buy wines that the world’s best critic, you yourself, has awarded the complete 100 points to. If, however, sometimes you are not so sure, there is always Mr Parker to ask. After God, that is.