Last night we held our most eagerly anticipated tasting ever – Robert Parker vs. Michael Broadbent. The amount of interest we received in this tasting and the controversy it engendered were both pleasing and unexpected. The idea arose out of a conversation we had in the shop a few months ago centring around Château Lafite 1985. I said it was one of the best wines I’d ever drunk and we turned to the books. Sure enough, Broadbent raved about it: ‘not too massive, not too dry, not too anything’. A pretty perfect summary, I would say. But look for the same wine in Robert Parker and the disappointment is unmistakable: ‘after a pensive sip, one is likely to ask, Is this all there is?’

So which one is right?

Of course, it’s pretty obvious to anybody who thinks about it for a few moments that even to ask this question is to simplify some rather complex issues – What is the purpose of wine criticism? How objective is wine tasting? Isn’t each bottle of wine a unique experience, depending on when and where it is opened? Etc. etc. Well I suppose we could have gone into all that, but I’m not sure it would have been such an enjoyable and popular evening.

In the event, our approach was to let the wines speak for themselves – allowing people to make up their own minds about which they preferred and which critic they sided with. Most importantly, the wines showed very well and there was a lot of lively and interesting debate. The wines preferred by Parker certainly differed in style from those preferred by Broadbent and, if there was a conclusion to be drawn, it was that if you are looking for advice on what sort of wine to buy, it is important to identify a critic you tend to agree with or whose taste is in common with your own before making a decision. A rave review means very little unless it comes from a source you can rely on.

I will now hand you over to Mark for a full account of the wines and how the voting went…

The wines were drunk in three flights (1980s, 1990s & 2000s), with the first two flights sub-divided into pairs. Once each flight had been tasted, we discussed the wines and voted for our preference, with the opinions of Messrs Broadbent and Parker not revealed until the end. All the wines were decanted three hours prior to the tasting, and poured just before we commenced proceedings.

Here are the results, with the victorious wine in bold text.

Flight One / Pair One
1989 Château d’Issan (22 votes) vs 1986 Château Beychevelle (21 votes)
A very close call that actually went to a recount after protestations from a couple of tasters that their preference had not been accounted for! Both wines were well received, but the softness and charm of the d’Issan won out in the end, and the wine went on to improve steadily over the next couple of hours.

Flight One / Pair Two
1986 Château l’Eglise-Clinet (7 votes) vs 1985 Château Lafite (36 votes)
Perhaps a little one-sided this contest, as the only real comparison would have been with another first growth of the same vintage. However, Mr Parker scored the Eglise-Clinet 92 points compared to an original score of 87 points for the Lafite, and we felt that this pairing offered an interesting comparison between two excellent but very different vintages.
In the end it was something of a walkover, with the fantastically elegant Lafite highly praised by almost everyone and the Eglise-Clinet deemed to be a little clumsy and poorly integrated.

Flight Two / Pair One
1997 Château Figeac (21 votes) vs 1998 Château Grand-Mayne (22 votes)
Another very close contest between two very different wines, with the up-front, primary nature of the Grand-Mayne triumphing over the softer but utterly charming Figeac.
Personally, I felt that the Figeac was a wonderful wine that was fully deserving of the four stars you gave it in 2001. Parker scored it a lowly 76 points, which once revealed at the end of the tasting was met with incredulity by much of the audience.

Flight Two / Pair Two
1993 Château Pichon-Lalande  (10 votes) vs 1996 Château Léoville-Barton (33 votes)
Despite the large winning margin for the Léoville-Barton, the Pichon-Lalande was a popular wine with the tasters and bearing in mind that it came from a weak vintage (at least in comparison to ’96) it showed remarkably well.
An interesting conclusion that was drawn by some of the guests was that ’96 is an atypical Leoville-Barton, in that it was a very forward and somewhat feminine style for both the property and the vintage.
As a side note, the Pichon-Lalande was one of two wines (the other being Figeac ’97) that we sold out of after the tasting, and could have sold a great deal more if we had the stock!

Flight Three
2000 Hermitage ‘La Chapelle’; Paul Jaboulet (24 votes) vs 2000 Château Pavie (19 votes)
Another tricky pairing, but what could you compare with the Pavie? We decided to match the Pavie with a non-Bordeaux wine, our reasoning being that it is such an atypical example that traditional Claret fans would perhaps be prejudiced against it. As it happened, the ‘La Chapelle’ was unusually light and nothing like as tannic as you would expect an eight year old Hermitage to be, and the Pavie was unbelievably rich, oaky, thick and concentrated – nothing like you would expect a claret to be!
The ‘La Chapelle’ was well received, if not with abundant enthusiasm – it was pleasant and very drinkable with sweet red fruit. The Pavie (as expected) completely divided opinion. The 19 votes that it got were from tasters that thought it was superb, with some people mesmerised by its quality. The rest of the audience seemed utterly perplexed by it, seeing it as a somewhat pointless exercise and a wine that could have been made anywhere with a bit of sunshine and a state of the art winery! Typical St Emilion it most certainly isn’t.

After we had voted on the final pair of wines, I asked the audience to vote on the wine they would take home that evening:
a) If somebody else was paying (the winner was the Lafite ’85 with 14 votes)
Or b) If they were paying for it themselves (the winner was Figeac ’97 with 11 votes)
The consensus was therefore with Mr Broadbent’s opinions over that of Mr Parker (3 to 2 and the two favourites of the night) although it was certainly a closely fought contest.

It was a great evening, and we’re already thinking that a rematach is on the cards for next year, so watch this space…