Esporão Reserva 2005, Herdade do Esporão
24th August 2008
The region of Alentejo used to be best known for corks. It is said that over half the world’s corks are from Portugal, and of these nearly all are from trees in Alentejo. Since the 1970s the region has also produced some interesting wine. Its best-known firm, Herdade do Esporão, hit form in the 1990s. Since then a combination of sound investment and the gifts of an Australian winemaker named David Baverstock have taken it from strength to strength.
This Reserva is the estate’s flagship wine. It has a bright, appealing nose of strawberries and tulips. On the palate it is robust and slightly tart, with a strong presence of oak. It is fiercely strong (14.5%), and while not perfectly balanced, it is straightforwardly enjoyable, particularly with the right food: steak or venison would go perfectly. $17 in the US, $8 in the UK.
Last week I took a modest pot-shot at one of the gods of US wine publishing, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. This week I learned of a 12-inch cannon which another blogger has fired at the Wine Advocate’s great rival, the Wine Spectator. It is a splendid tale.
If you are interested in wine, the chances are you have already come across the Wine Spectator, so I needn’t describe it in detail. Suffice to say that it is glossy and expensive, and that it radiates Olympian superiority. Like so many American food and drink publications, its constant implied message is “You know nothing, and you never will. This subject is too big and complicated for hicks like you. But do not worry. We are the high priests. We have the Knowledge. Trust our judgment and all will be well.”
Thousands of people fall for this rubbish. More fool them, you might say. But one way or another we are all affected. Whenever the Wine Spectator urges its readers to stampede for a certain wine, the chances are that you and I will never see that wine again, and if we do, we will no longer be able to afford it. So we should applaud anyone who helps expose the Wine Advocate/Wine Spectator racket, and that is why the hero of the hour is Mr. Robin Goldstein.
Mr. Goldstein’s target was the Wine Spectator’s “Award of Excellence,” bestowed on restaurants whose wine lists reach a vaguely defined level of quality. To be eligible for this award you have to pay the Wine Spectator $250 (the magazine makes over a million dollars a year this way). What you do not have to do, Mr Goldstein revealed, is to sell good wine, or indeed run a restaurant.
Mr Goldstein invented an imaginary establishment called Osteria L’Intrepido. He submitted its details to the Wine Spectator, which made only the most cursory attempt to verify them, and on failing to do so, gave Mr Goldstein the award anyway.
More damning still was the Osteria’s wine list. Most of its wines were unexceptionable, but the reserve component – the supposed crème de la crème – was made up of wines that the Wine Spectator itself had condemned using such adjectives as “unacceptable”, “barnyardy” and “swampy”.
Mr Goldstein tells his story in detail here, and I commend it to you. Even funnier, if possible, is the Wine Spectator’s response. Its Executive Editor, Thomas Matthews, complains bitterly about Mr Goldstein’s “act of malicious duplicity”, concluding that “this scam does not tarnish the legitimate accomplishments of the thousands of real restaurants who currently hold Wine Spectator awards, a result of their skill, hard work and passion for wine.” How Mr. Matthews knows they are real restaurants is not explained. And since it is now clear that to hold a Wine Spectator award you do not need skill, hard work and passion, only a cheque for $250, it is hard to see what the “legitimate accomplishment” might consist of.
Mr Matthews’ jeremiad is followed by a long series of supportive comments. One is from James Molesworth, Wine Spectator’s Senior Editor. Mr Molesworth knows exactly where the true blame lies:
“This is the problem with the ‘blogosphere’. It’s a lazy person’s journalism. No one does any real research, but rather they just slap some hyperlinks up and throw a little conjecture at the wall, and presto! you get some hits and traffic… but frankly, I’d rather talk about wine…”
So there you are: it’s all the fault of lazy bloggers like me. If only we were painstaking in our research, like those pros at the Wine Spectator who took so much trouble to check out Mr Goldstein’s restaurant and his wine list, then none of this unpleasantness need have happened.
Well, perhaps. My own feeling is that Mr Matthews and Mr Molesworth and the rest of them would have done better to say nothing, or to offer a simple, dignified apology. But for some reason con artists never do this. Upon exposure, their response is always to bleat with indignation and try to present themselves as victims. This tactic seldom works, and it certainly doesn’t here.
For there is no question that the Wine Spectator Awards are a con. To pass off a piece of paid advertising as a merit-based award is mendacious and squalid. And whatever the fine print in the pages of the Wine Spectator, it is clear that the true purpose of these “awards” is to trick inattentive diners into thinking that they are eating in a place that experts are acquainted with and have judged to be of high quality. Now the truth has been revealed, the Wine Spectator will have to devise some other money-making dodge. All very embarrassing. No wonder Mr Molesworth would rather change the subject.
