Wine - Roger Scruton deplores "the million-dollar nose".
Published 28 March 2005
A true critic will not go on about the aroma of freesias or hints of liquorice
The wines of France have been stitched like sequins to the map: each village shines in the glass, and to every taste there belongs a terroir. This has been the long work of small producers, some cultivating only an acre or two, discovering by slow and sacrificial labour exactly how to coax the soil into the fruit and the fruit into the aroma. These small producers were once acknowledged as national heroes, who had done more for their country's reputation than any football team. In 1991, however, under pressure from the health fascists, la loi Evin came into force, making it impossible for producers to advertise the merits of their wines. The result has been the takeover of the market by the big booze barons, who do not depend on advertising, because they have a guaranteed market share. The small producers have begun to register their distress in the traditional French way, by taking to the streets of
Montpellier and burning effigies of politicians, M Evin included.
If I were now in Montpellier, I would add another effigy to the bonfire - that of Robert Parker, the American wine critic who advertises himself on his website as "the man with the million-dollar nose". Thanks to Nosy Parker, the entire market in wine has been surrendered to the phoney expertise of the modern oenophile, which consists in writing execrable prose about flavours, awarding arbitrary points and pretending to be a nose about town, like the nose in Gogol's story.
You can analyse anything, even the way things taste and smell, but we should take a lesson from music. Janacek, asked to describe a chord that a musicologist would have called a dominant minor ninth with diminished fifth over a tonic pedal, said simply "A chord like that!" and wrung his hands. In like manner, a true critic, asked to describe the Maranges Premier Cru 1998 that I am now drinking, will not rabbit on about the hints of liquorice on the palate, the faint aroma of freesias and the deep tannins just rising from the bottom, but will reflect on the name and history of Maranges, the marshy region below the Cote d'Or, and, yes, maybe wring his hands and say: "A wine like that!"
However, Robert Parker has changed the terms on which wine is bought and sold. His language puts France on a par with its New World competitors, just as the musicologist puts Janacek on a par with Oasis (which has never produced a chord like that). His points system has given ignorant investors an avenue to speculation, grossly inflating the price of some products and unfairly lowering the price of others. And the extraordinary thing is that this man, who has ruined the small French producer, was awarded the Legion d'honneur by President Jacques Chirac. So there's another effigy to put on the fire.
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