THE EMPEROR OF WINE The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste. By Elin McCoy. Illustrated. 342 pp. Ecco/ HarperCollins. $25.95.
ROBERT M. PARKER Jr., wine cop to the world, is a polarizing figure whose fierce judgments are echoed by the ferocity of his advocates and opponents. Elin McCoy reveals herself in "The Emperor of Wine," the first biography of Parker, as leaning to the former camp, but she does offer some tasty amuse-gueules. For example: meeting Robert Chadderdon, a New York wine importer, for the first time in the 1980's, Parker was given a white and a red to sample. He also chose to identify them, saying that the white was a grand cru Burgundy (and therefore a Chardonnay) when in fact it was a Chasselas, a delicate floral wine from Switzerland to which white Burgundy bears absolutely no resemblance: the vinous equivalent of an art expert mistaking a Matisse for a Mantegna.
In general, McCoy, the wine and spirits columnist for Bloomberg Markets, hews to the triumphalism of her title. Parker is cast as a plain-talking innocent abroad, facing down exploitative Euro-hordes urged on from the rear by the French, all of whom he can taste under the table. Going patriotic pushes McCoy into some unfortunate journalism. Setting the stage for the emperor's advent in the early 80's she writes: "A huge number of Americans . . . were energetically and enthusiastically educating themselves about wine in ways other countries, including France, never had." No sources are cited for this preposterous assertion.
McCoy is largely following the custom-tailored history of the late- 20th-century wine scene cut for himself by Parker. In his construct, the average wine consumer of the late 70's lived in a nightmarish world of exploitation: wine producers, especially the arrogant Bordelais, cynically flogged inferior plonk in overpriced bottles, hyped by the hopelessly compromised British and French wine press. Enter, at the average wine consumer's side, Robert M. Parker Jr., who sees himself as the Ralph Nader of wine.
This construct has great appeal, but McCoy, almost inadvertently, undermines it. The best part of her book is a lively history of the wine world of the 70's, in which it becomes clear that the reforms in European wine production for which Parker takes credit were under way well before his arrival, for example in the person of the French oenologist Emile Peynaud. The complacency of the French had been shattered years earlier in a storied 1976 blind tasting in Paris of Californian wines, whose quality stunned the French wine press. As for the English wine press, the old fustian school had been swept away a decade before that by a new irreverent generation, now mature, who are far more diligent in vinous research than Parker and far more entertaining; for example, Oz Clarke, Anthony Hanson and, above all, Jancis Robinson.
McCoy also shows that if it weren't for the French, Parker would be up the Garonne without a paddle. It was thanks to Peynaud's expertise that Parker developed his breakthrough advocacy of the 1982 Bordeaux vintage. By 1989, she notes, in the first flush of his power, Parker had awarded only 19 wines with a perfect 100 on his famous scale. All were French, as the overwhelming majority still are.
McCoy notes that though he's visited Italy only three times in 20 years, Parker told The Los Angeles Times that he "understood the 1997 Barolo and Barbaresco wines better than the people who made them." He adds of the Piemontese (who've been messing around with grapes for a couple of thousand years), "I don't think they really realize what they have."
McCoy clearly likes Parker. But she can't avoid painting a picture of an irascible, arrogant, ill-mannered man. It's something of a mystery why someone so abrasive enjoys such awesome power. The reasons seem to be, first, that Parker's predilection for "big," fruity and alcoholic wine mirrors a similar taste in his public, and, second, that he has the energetic support of the American wine industry. His scores give it a powerful tool for inflating prices at the top end of the market, drawing all other prices up with them. This industry adores its Ralph Nader.
The most controversial aspect of Parker's dominance is his unwavering confidence that he can precisely assess the worth of every single wine that passes his lips (some 10,000 a year or 200 a week). It's a claim no one else ever has made, but Parker repeatedly asserts that he has unprecedented powers. McCoy describes his method: spending about a minute on a wine, recording his immediate impressions and moving on to the next. She notes that many wine professionals experience "palate fatigue" after a couple of dozen wines, but Parker has "no problem sampling between 50 and 125 wines twice a week." She neither questions, nor cites any objective confirmation of, these prodigious abilities. The only corroboration comes from Parker himself.
At the end of her penultimate chapter McCoy cracks open a Pandora's box: scientific sensory research. Apparently there are many factors interfering with accuracy in tasting (mostly done by the nose not the tongue, a crude instrument that perceives only simple flavors like saltiness). The central issue is "olfactory adaptation": our sense of smell adapts within minutes to a strong odor until it's no longer perceived. (If you go into a room with a noticeable odor, you will soon stop smelling it.) Olfactory adaptation is an involuntary reflex; it can only be reversed by removing yourself from exposure for between 5 and 20 minutes. No one can reset his olfactory apparatus to zero at will. When other factors (like oral fatigue caused by astringency) are added in, this research suggests, tasting 100 wines (especially at the rate of one a minute) and judging No. 100 -- or No. 50 -- as accurately as No. 1 is a physiological impossibility.
Whereupon the vast multibillion-dollar inverted pyramid of global wine pricing, the fine-wine auction market and the fine-wine futures market, balanced like a rock on one man's nose, starts to teeter. Understandably McCoy slams the box shut and a few pages later takes refuge in a safer conclusion, that Parker's reputation "is rooted in . . . his unique semi-divine tasting ability."
Thus, triumphalist biography becomes faith-based biography -- which+seems only appropriate for faith-based wine criticism.
Tony Hendra is the author of "Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul." His next book,+a novel,+will appear in early spring.+He writes frequently about wine.