I would say that Jancis is worthy of great respect for telling it like it is--

I would say that Jancis is worthy of great respect for telling it like it is--for her. She dares to express a strong opinion about a wine and that opinion turns out to be diametrically opposed to that of the ";Great Guru of Maryland,"; his many lemming-like followers and, on top of that, the nincompoops at the Wine Spectator? >Well, bravissima!!! About time!!!

That Mr. Parker has resorted to attacks against Mrs. Robinson’s professional integrity is as shameful as it is expectable of him. Luckily, some of us know what’s what... The whole bit about ";the pot calling the kettle black comes to mind.";

The best line of Jancis’ tasting note is the one about Porto being just fine when it comes from the Douro, not from St.-Emilion. Of course, the vast majority of the wine press, with their heads stuck so far up their intestinal tracts (sorry, had to say it like that...), will argue for EVERYTHING being big, bold, brassy and improbably alcoholic. That’s become the way of the wine world, sadly, over the past ten years, the blind leading the tasteless, leading the hopelessly naive.

One of the doubts that come up over all this is whether Mr. Parker doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of an objection to purple-black, 14%+ claret? Yes, Jancis has often expressed a dislike of many ";garagiste"; wines which Mr. Parker adores precisely for their concentration and alcoholic strength, wines that, under almost any civilized definition, are freakish when compared to a classic ";table wine."; Regrettably, love of the freaks has become the ";new normal."; And if anyone’s in the mood to try to argue me down, I beg him/her to consider the analogy of the automobile world with the conception of ";wine"; defended by Mr. Parker and others like him... You walk out on any American street and see SUVs that look like armored troop carriers, gigantic vehicles that mostly bear no proportion to any rational being’s (and our world’s) needs. Hummers, Lincoln Navigators, give it a name. Used to be that people drove cars. Now they will only accept monstruosities as their mode of transportation.

Of course, I will probably be run over by some cretin drunk on Turley, or Harlan, or--why not?--2003 Pavie, while at the wheel of his gold-trimmed Hummer H2...

M.