It was difficult to chose just ten of the many great bottles I’ve enjoyed this year, but these are some of the best, listen in no particular order. Reviewing thousands of young wines, I generally gravitate towards mature specimens when drinking for pleasure, and 2017 was gave me abundant opportunity to gratify that preference. What’s … More The best bottles of 2017
When uttered by a Burgundian, the words ‘my uncle used to say…’ often preface interesting insights into times past. In Emmanuel Rouget’s cellar, however, they carry particular weight, for at this address ‘le tonton’ refers to none other than the late Henri Jayer—no matter which generation is speaking. Burgundy’s most influential twentieth-century vigneron, who passed … More A tasting with Emmanuel Rouget
An expanded version of this article can be found at http://www.robertparker.com.
One of my favorite pastimes in Burgundy is tracking down mature wines. To my mind, older bottles offer incomparable insights into the character of the region’s terroirs and the families which translate them into wine. Their textural plenitude, aromatic complexity and sapid, gastronomic qualities are unrivaled. What’s more, I believe the great postwar vintages to … More Some mature Burgundies
Consider the wine list of a typical starred restaurant in London, New York or San Francisco. More likely than not, it’s a list that encompasses extraordinary geographic diversity, ranging widely across the old world and the new. Amidst the excitement of choosing, we seldom reflect that a wine list like this, a gazetteer of almost … More Wine & Culture
This article originally appeared in Noble Rot (13). Jean-Marie Guffens may have mellowed with age, but he remains a bull in the china shop of his fellow vignerons’ sensibilities. This ruddy faced Belgian-turned-Burgundian is certainly not afraid to shock. ‘When Parker told me I was one of the three best white winemakers in the world, … More Rebel Aesthetic: the wines of Jean-Marie Guffens
This year, I was delighted to be invited to the famous Southwold Tasting for the first time. For over two decades, a group of the UK’s leading wine buyers and writers have convened in Southwold to taste the most recently released Bordeaux vintage from bottle. This year’s venue was different, the tasting in fact taking … More 2013 Bordeaux: the Southwold Tasting
Tasting from bottle is essentially a matter of recording one’s impressions. Bottled wines are stable and evolve comparatively slowly; though they may be more or less open, easier or more difficult to read, tasting them is, at least in principle, a simple enough task. Tasting from barrel is appreciably more difficult: seldom does one encounter … More Reflections on tasting from barrel: revisiting Vincent Dancer
The wines of the Côte d’Or are becoming unaffordable. Village wines from the most sought-after domaines routinely retail for three-figure sums. It’s a problem felt particularly acutely by restaurants, so it’s not surprising that one man who’s bucking the trend is a restaurateur: Jean-Charles Fagot, the proprietor of one of my favourite places to eat … More A tasting with Jean-Charles Fagot
I began visiting Domaine Hubert Lignier as a graduate student, and Laurent Lignier has always been phenomenally generous with his time (and wine) ever since. So it was personally as well as professionally gratifying to discover that the Ligniers have produced some of the finest wines to be found in the Côte de Nuits in … More 2015 Burgundy: Domaine Hubert Lignier
William Kelley 