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61 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So much wine, so little time..., October 22, 2002
This sixth edition of Parker's wine-buying guide is the result of Robert Parker and his accomplice, Pierre Rovani, tasting their way through more than 8,000 wines. Parker introduces the book as a "consumer's guide to wine." Although Parker and Rovani both write very well, this book is not an effort at creative writing. My review focuses on the utilitarian aspects of the book -- look to others for analysis of character development, plot devices, etc. My paperback copy of the book has 1635 numbered pages (not 1696 as the Amazon web blurb indicates). About 40 pages (2.5% of the book) are devoted to introductory material ranging from tasting glasses to notions of terroir. The index takes up another 2.3%. The rest (over 95%) is about the wines; these are covered by geographic region. Each region is briefly introduced (several with maps) with a summary of the kinds of wine produced (and grape varietals employed), recent vintages are characterized, and wine producers of the region are ranked from 5 stars (outstanding) to 2 stars (average). Breaking the geographic coverage down in terms of page volume, Europe takes up 69.5% of the book, North America 19.8%, and the rest of the world the remaining 5.9%. France alone takes up 53% of the book. Six major wine regions consume over 75% of the pages: Bordeaux, 16%; the Rhone, Provence & Languedoc 16%; Burgundy (& Beaujolais) 14.5%; Italy 12.5%; and California 16.7%. Australia and New Zealand weigh in together at 5.6%. South Africa and South America get 2 and 3 pages, respectively. Previous editions of the book have been criticized for this seemingly "undemocratic" coverage. The vast bulk of the book is tasting notes and numeric ratings for individual wines, organized by producer and vintage year. Parker or Rovani assign a numeric rating or score to each wine; these range from 100 points down to 50 points. A wine rated 90-100 points is excellent to outstanding (grade A), 80-89 points good to very good (grade B), and so on. Tasting notes describe each wine in terms of nose, flavor, body, etc., and these really are the crux of the review: the numeric score attempts to rate the wine relative to its peers, but you still want to know what it tastes like. Reviews for most producers cover the most recent two or three vintages that have been released; some have up to five or six vintages covered (e.g., many Bordeaux chateaux). Very few wines included in the book are rated at less than 85 points; apparently many wines that were tasted by the pair (and described in Parker's bimonthly *Wine Advocate*) did not make it into the book. By not devoting space to describe lesser wines, the authors are able to point us toward more of the very good and excellent wines. The other side of this coin is that they do not often explicitly steer us away from not-so-good wines. Moreover, if a wine is not included in the book, we don't know if it didn't measure up or simply was not tasted. But many unreviewed producers are at least rated in a general way in the 2- to 5-star tiers for each region/varietal. Wine prices are indicated by a letter code, from A (inexpensive) to E (expensive) to EEE ("luxury"). Bargain hunters may be dismayed upon randomly scanning the pages to see that A and B priced wines are relatively uncommon. But a closer look reveals a few regions that do have reviews of many reasonably priced wines (the south of France, for example). So how good is the book? It is not difficult to find fault with it. Some will find the geographic coverage uneven ("Not a single wine from Texas!"). Some will gripe that inexpensive wines are inadequately covered. But Parker and Rovani did not set out to give us a random, representative sample of all the world's wines. They chose to tell us about 8,000+ mostly very good to outstanding wines. The amount of useful information in this book is just incredible -- hundreds of pages of informed tasting notes on good to great current wines. It would be churlish to even think about downgrading the book by a star because of anything it omits. It is an amazing value and most wine consumers will benefit greatly from owning it.
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