On wine: News you can use....

Robert Parker's Vintage Chart 2000-2006

The renowned wine expert breaks down major wine-growing regions by year and ranking to help you find the best — and avoid the worst — wines

By Robert Parker
Business Week

Above find our Wine Advocate Vintage Guide for the last seven vintages. Vintage charts should be regarded as a very general overall rating slanted in favor of what the finest producers were capable of producing in a particular viticultural region. Such charts are often filled with exceptions to the rule: astonishingly good wines from skillful or lucky vintners in years rated mediocre and thin; diluted, characterless wines from incompetent or greedy producers in great years. However, knowing what the best vintages are does make a difference, and stacks the odds in favor of the consumer who is choosing from a restaurant's wine list or going into a wine shop totally blind. Print and take along the next time you buy wine. Enjoy!

Robert Parker is the world's most influential wine critic. Visit www.eRobertParker.com to see tens of thousands of tasting notes, buy his books, or subscribe to his newsletter, The Wine Advocate.

(The article is here.)

LP note: There are many in the wine industry — primarily the traditionalists — who feel that too much importance has been given to Mr. Parker's evaluations. While his meticulous ratings and the publicity given them have enhanced wine understanding for consumers, these evaluations — and I'm sure Mr. Parker would be the first to admit it — are purely the opinion of one man... with the help of a handful of associates.

I know several small vintners who do not submit their wines to Mr. Parker for evaluation, because their taste profiles, while highly regarded by many enophiles, do not fall within the taste parameters promoted by Mr. Parker and wine publications like The Wine Spectator.

The bottom line is this:

Like art, the appreciation of wine is highly subjective. As a friend of mine who owns a pinot noir vineyard, the wine from which fetches up to $100 a bottle in well-known restaurants, says: "If the wine in the glass you are holding is the best wine you've ever had, then it is for you, at this moment, the best wine in the world, regardless of price, type, or whatever anyone else says about it."