Robert M. Parker Jr. - Parkers Wine Buyers Guide: The Complete, Easy-to-Use Reference on Recent Vintages, Prices, and Ratings for More than 8,000 Wines from All the Major Wine Regions

ALSO BY ROBERT M. PARKER, JR.

The Worlds Greatest Wine Estates

Parsers Wine Buyers Guide (Editions 16)

Bordeaux: A Consumers Guide to the Worlds Finest Wines

Wines of the Rhne Valley

Burgundy:
A Comprehensive Guide to the Producers, Appellations, and Wines

SIMON & SCHUSTER 1230
Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1995, 1999, 2002, 2008 by Robert M. Parker, Jr. Maps Paul J. Pugliese

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information
address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Suet Y. Chong

Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parker, Robert M.
[Wine buyers guide]
Parkers wine buyers guide.7th ed. / Robert M. Parker, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Wine and winemaking. I. Title.

TP548.P287 2008
641.22dc22 2008001113

ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-3997-4
ISBN-10: 1-4391-3997-0
eISBN-13: 978-1-43913-997-4

Portions of this book were previously published in Robert Parkers bimonthly newsletter The Wine Advocate.

Portions of the preface were originally published in the September 2008 issue of Food & Wine.

For Pat and Maia

and

To all those passionate men and women who understand the land, respect their craft, and admire the intricacies of nature, and all those artisans who coax from their soils the purest and most noble expression of agriculturean unmanipulated, natural, honest, and expressive beverage that transcends time and place yet never fails to tantalize us, fire our passions, and profoundly touch our liveswe salute and honor you.

[ ABOUT WINE ]

[THE DARK SIDE OF WINE ]

[ WHAT CONSTITUTES A GREAT WINE? ]

First and foremost, to my team of contributors, who have added their areas of expertise, which has benefited the book enormously: David Schildknecht, Antonio Galloni, Dr. Jay Miller, Mark Squires, and Neal Martin, my profound thanks for your exceptional efforts.

To the tiny staff at The Wine Advocate, who were heavily involved in gathering information and putting it into some sort of sensible arrangement, I owe a great deal of thanks. Despite Joan Passmans officially retiring at the end of 2006, her heartfelt loyalty and concern for my mental well-being has her still working several days a week and has helped expedite the books completion. Her full-time replacement, Annette Piatek, did as much as anybody, and I cant thank her enough for her hardworking and conscientious efforts in gathering information, sorting through it, and trying to make some sort of sense of everything all of us have written. She was assisted very capably by the other Wine Advocate staffer, Betsy Sobolewski.

At the professional publishing level, my editor, Amanda Murray, deserves an enormous amount of credit for making sense of our verbose commentary, cleaning it up, and assisting all of us in making certain ideas clearer. In short, her enormous efforts have made the book significantly better, and we all deeply appreciate it. I would also like to thank the rest of the Simon & Schuster crew, including Kate Ankofski, Anne Cherry, Suet Chong, Linda Dingler, Nancy Inglis, and John Wahler.

Every author requires plenty of psychological support, and I suspect I receive more than most. The love of my life, my beautiful wife, Patricia, always provides wisdom and counsel, and is an encouraging voice when things seem gloomiest. I must not forget my wonderful daughter, Maia. Now that she is in college, I actually see less of her these days than of my two furry companions, Buddy, a three-year-old English bulldog, and Hoover, his favorite friend (and mine too, for that matter), who at ten years old still has remarkable vigor and youthful-ness.

I also want to acknowledge a longtime friend, bon vivant, and exceptionally wise man by the name of Dr. Park B. Smith, a spiritual elder brother whose love of wine and laserlike thinking have provided enormous wisdom to me over many years.

Finally, to the following friends, supporters, and advisers, a heartfelt million thanks" all of you have taught me valuable lessons about wine and, more important, about life: Jim Arseneault, Anthony Barton, Ruth Bassin and the late Bruce and Addy Bassin, Herve Ber-laud, Bill Blatch, Thomas B. Bohrer, Barry Bondroff, Daniel Boulud, Rowena and Mark Braunstein, Christopher Cannan, Dick Carretta, Jean-Michel Cazes, Corinne Cesano, Jean-Marie Chadronnier, M. and Mme Jean-Louis Charmolue, Charles Chevalier, Bob Cline, Jeffrey Davies, Hubert de Board, Jean and Annie Delmas, Jean-Hubert Delon and the late Michel Delon, Dr. Albert H. Dudley III, Barbara Edelman, Federic Engerer, Michael Etzel, Paul Evans, Terry Faughey, the legendary Fitzcarraldomy emotional and quasi-fictional soulmateJoel Fleischman, Mme Capbern Gasqueton, Dan Green, Josue Harari, Alexandra Harding, Dr. David Hutcheon, Barbara G. and Steve R. R. Jacoby, Joanne and Joe James, Jean-Paul Jauffret, Daniel Johnnes; Nathaniel, Archie, and Denis Johnston; Ed Jonna, Elaine and Manfred Krankl, Robert Lescher, Bernard Magrez, Adam Montefiore of Carmel Winery, Patrick Maroteaux, Pat and Victor Hugo Morgenroth; Christian, Jean-Franois, and the late Jean-Pierre Moueix; Bernard Nicolas, Jill Norman, Les Oenarchs (Bordeaux), Les Oen-archs (Baltimore), Franois Pinault, Frank Polk, Paul Pontallier, Bruno Prats, Jean-Guillaume Prats, Judy Pruce, Dr. Alain Raynaud, Martha Reddington, Dominique Renard, Michel Richard, Alan Richman, Dany and Michel Rolland; Pierre Rovani and his father, Yves Ro-vani; Robert Roy, Carlo Russo, Ed Sands, Erik Samazeuilh, Bob Schindler, Ernie Singer, Elliott Staren, Daniel Tastet-Lawton, Lettie Teague, Alain Vauthier, the late Steven Verlin, Peter Vezan, Robert Vifian, Sonia Vogel, Jeanyee Wong, and Gerard Yvernault.

THE LAST THIRTY YEARS

Looking back 30 years, its nearly impossible to comprehend how provincial the wine world was circa 1978, the year I launched my journal, The Wine Advocate. With virtually no wine-by-the-glass programs in restaurants, the U.S. was not yet importing a number of the wines recognized as the greatest of their countries, including Vega Sicilia in Spain and Penfolds Grange in Australia. There were no selections from New Zealand, virtually nothing from Australia, and only a handful of Riojas from Spain. Italy was represented largely by Chiantis, a few generic wines from the north, and an ocean of industrial jug wine from Bardolino and Valpolicello. California was largely a nonentity: none of the so-called cult wines existed, and the states best wines rarely received any press. Nor were there any stirrings of the Golden States revolution in quality that was about to be unleashed. Even La Belle France, the reference point for so many of the worlds greatest wines, was a perennial underachiever: only a handful of Bordeauxs most famous classified growthsthose chteaux recognized more than 160 years ago as making the best wines in Bordeauxactually produced wines that were palatable. Appellations renowned today, such as Pomerol and St.-milion, were considered the refuge of ignorant peasants, and the quality of their wines usually reflected these sentiments. South America was another nonfactor, Malbec was an unknown grape, and Argentina was equally unknown as a wine-producing region. Next door, the proliferation of value wines from Chile was a decade away.