P***** 's New Buying Guide

The galley of the 7th edition has been providing me with sparky pre-bed reading. The acknowledgements are heartwarming. Lovely writing. Great sentiment. He loves his wife. Then he rolls down the top and presses the four to the floor. Yes, he pisses on terroir (coming) and has the screwiest notion of unspeakable practices (coming). He takes his critical role to the role of other writers and even in his recommended reading, included some not-so subtle bashing of the Burghound, Allen Meadows. The critic gives kudos to Meadows' "unprecedented" coverage. Yet he also says, "He does seem to have swallowed the entire Burgundy philosophy hook, line and sinker, meaning that for him a grand cru will always produce better wines than a premier cru and it is doubtful he has ever met a Burgundy he didn't like. Burgundy needs a spokesperson, though." He pats Meadows on the back for extending his coverage into domestic Pinot. � He sees to be realizing that there is only a limited number of subscribers at this price point for these rare and notoriously unreliable wines, so he is branching out into domestic Pinot Noirs. A good move in my opinion.� I actually have it on tape that Parker clues into the notion of grand cru, undeniably better wines. He also has been known to love some notoriously expensive Burgundies like DRC and Ponsot. It almost makes me wonder if the critic has lost a screw somewhere. His message to his reader is: Burgundy sucks. Buy overpriced Bordeaux and Cali-Cab. Don't worry. Be happy. But he can't possibly mean that because now that, P***** has David Schildknecht to cover Burgundy (and the Loire etal.), the Parker Burgundy world is different. The difference is its new Burgundy credibility. Meadows has his first domestic critical rival in Schildknecht. To give you an idea of how different Mr. S. is from the past Burgundy regime, he sprinkled praise on the wines of Philippe Pacalet, a winemaker I have been covering for the past four years. He gives the highest scores given Pacalet�s grand cru. Mr. P. couldn�t possibly mean to infer that David also fell for the drill, hook line and�.does he? But more on that when I sit down and give the book a proper a read. *** FLASH: Thanks to those Google Alerts, I realize that Stephen Brook, who was blogging for Decanter stated that I had reported that P***** had questioned Meadow's impartiality. It is so difficult to insure words are ironclad. I don't like it when mine are not. I am stunned that is his takeaway. Maybe it's a language disconnect. What I did infer was that in the new guide, P***** suggested that Meadows was gullible and taken in by marketing and a little starstruck as well. It is an assumption that while I find pretty horrifying, is not the same as questioning impartiality. For the record, I believe Meadows to be a sharp cookie who is not glossie eyed but does his research quite well.