Grand Vin Wine Merchants UK | Blog

I see from an article in today’s Drinks Business that Robert Parker, speaking at the industry conference WineFuture Hong Kong , has criticised increasing alcohol levels in wine. Parker (quoted by DB’s estimable editor, Patrick Schmitt) suggests that wines should not exceed 15% alcohol: “If you’ve made a wine at 16, 17, or 18% then that is not a table wine, and should not be sold as table wine; 15% I think is palatable, but above 15%, you start to get into a very grey area.” See the article here. The term “table wine” is key: the wine world is rich in acclaimed wines at 16% and beyond, but they inhabit different categories and expectations. A Tawny Port with an alcohol level of 20% perturbs no one because the tension between sweetness, extract, acidity and oxidative ‘bite’ offsets alcohol. We also tolerate and expect that heady, sweet burn: that’s what Port is, and has been for some time. Modern viticultural techniques and warmer conditions have made sugar - and therefore alcohol - leve...

I love tasting wine, almost as much as I love drinking it. I love arguing about it, or for it. I’m unfailingly thrilled by the opportunities I have to try some of the world’s greatest, rarest or oldest wines. I attempt to convey a wine’s character and qualities in a way that I hope is helpful to fellow wine lovers. But I score wine with a heavy heart. It goes against everything my mentors have taught me, and my own instincts. I concede the usefulness of wine scores. When I am judging hundreds of similar wines (same broad origin, same vintage) in concentrated succession, scores help with the necessarily rapid recalibration of relative quality, and when I get back home and have hundreds of notes to make sense of, they can also help to identify quickly the star-performing commune. I also empathise with the consumer’s liking for wine scores. That unequivocal number crosses language barriers and inspires confidence: a definitive and concise judgment in a wine landscape of bewildering ch...