Critic Quotes

At 66 years of age, I feel about 20.
Back in 1990, there were fewer than 20 wineries in and around Paso Robles, a farming community midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Most of the wines produced there were rustic, highly tannic and alcoholic, with little charm or finesse.
Generally speaking, when Australian winemakers try to make delicate, European-styled wines of finesse and lightness, the wines often come across as pale imitations of the originals. One exception is Australian Riesling, delicious, dry wines meant to be consumed in their first two years of life.
I always said your best palate is your own, not mine. I'm a guidepost.
I like white wine when it's young and vigorous. I don't think you should cellar white wine at all, unless it's white Burgundy, and definitely not nonvintage Champagne.
I think the Japanese love young, tannic red wines much more than most Americans do. Perhaps it is because Asians have a great fondness for tea, and tea is a very tannic beverage. Therefore a young, tannic red wine is something familiar to an Asian palate.
If California ever developed a vineyard rating system, Saxum's James Berry Vineyard would be classified as one of the best.
In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call 'authentic' or 'natural.'
It may seem hard to believe - unless you sit down and taste them - but some of the world's greatest sweet wines are made in the Rutherglen region of Victoria, Australia.
It's nearly impossible to believe just how provincial the wine world was in 1978, the year I launched my journal, 'The Wine Advocate.' There were no wines exported from New Zealand and virtually none from Australia (including Penfolds Grange, one of the greatest wines in existence).
My first trip to Japan, in 1998, began with an enormous crowd of Japanese paparazzi and television crews, all waiting for me to clear customs in Tokyo (a first-time experience for this wine critic). Over the next five days, the attention never waned.
Nineteen-eighty-two is a vintage of legendary proportions for all levels of the Bordeaux hierarchy. In short, it is a vintage which has produced the most perfect wines in the post-World War II era.
No scoring system is perfect, but a system that provides for flexibility in scores, if applied by the same taster without prejudice, can quantify different levels of wine quality and provide the reader with one professional's judgment.
Tawny ports have already spent 20 or 30 years in wood - it's not likely they're going to improve. On the other hand, they're not going to get any worse.
The advantage we have as Americans is that we can be fair; we tend to be more open-minded about different styles of wine.
The best Chateauneuf-du-Papes are among the most natural expressions of grapes, place and vintage. Chateauneuf-du-Pape vineyards are farmed organically or biodynamically, and the region's abundant sunshine and frequent wind (called 'le mistral') practically preclude the need for treating the fields with herbicides or pesticides.
The first famous winemaking consultant was the late professor Emile Peynaud, who reigned over Bordeaux throughout the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s.
The premise of Nossiter in 'Mondovino' would have been a lot more accurate when I started writing about wine in 1978 than when the movie was made in 2003. When I started, I was enormously critical of California wines, and I thought the entire wine industry was on a real slippery slope.
The wine world is so big. Yes, there are styles of wines I don't like. Orange wine, natural wines and low-alcohol wines. Truth is on my side, and history will prove I am right.
There is no question that Australia's most dramatic assault on the world market has been with its value wines. These are generally not from specific appellations but blends made by huge enterprises like Penfolds, Rosemount or Casella Estate - the group behind Yellow Tail.
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