Parker’s Power Is Felt Worldwide
Story By Katrina Altersitz
Robert Parker’s journey to international wine critic began on a 1967
trip to France with his then girlfriend and now wife, Patricia. |
“WHEN ROBERT PARKER ’70 entered Professor of History Gordon Prange’s class during his junior year at Maryland, he was far from the passionate student he would become and still is today.
“He got a student who was half-assed to get serious about his academic endeavors,” says Parker, recalling his days as a Phi Kappa Sigma brother living on Frat Row. “He turned the lights on.”
And ever since, Parker has been lighting up the world around him, especially the world of the wine industry. Today, Robert Parker is a name feared and awed by wine makers, a name trusted and held high above by wine buyers and a name that few knew 30 years ago.
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Parker’s primer
Beware the 12 greatest lies you are likely to hear from people in the wine trade.
| 12 | The reason the price is so high is because the wine is rare and great. |
| 11 | We ship and store all our wines in temperature-controlled containers. |
| 10 | You didn’t let it breathe long enough. |
| 9 | You let it breathe too long. |
| 8 | Sediment is a sign of a badly made wine. |
| 7 | Boy, are you lucky … this is my last bottle (case). |
| 6 | Just give it a few years. |
| 5 | We picked before the rains. |
| 4 | The rain was highly localized; we were lucky it missed our vineyard. |
| 3 | Parker or the Wine Spectator are going to give it a 94 in the next issue. |
| 2 | This is the greatest wine we have ever made, and, coincidentally, it is the only wine we now have to sell. |
| 1 | It’s supposed to smell and taste like that. |
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His journey from history major at Maryland to international wine critic began in 1967 with a trip to France to spend six weeks with his then-girlfriend who was studying abroad. “I was just like a sponge that absorbed so much because of my studies and because of her,” Parker says.
Over dinner with the woman who now shares his life, Parker met the other half of his destiny in a modest carafe of wine.
“Here was a beverage that was pleasing from a pure hedonistic side but there was this intellectual side,” Parker says. “There was a mild sense of euphoria. It seemed to enhance the food. It seemed to encourage conversation.”
Here was a previously undiscovered sensation. For him, beer was bloating and liquor numbed the senses. With wine he found his perfect medium, his art. Of course, Parker admits with a laugh, “The stuff I was drinking back then I probably wouldn’t touch today.”
Luckily for today’s average wine consumer—the one who walks into the local wine store and peruses the various wine bottles, looking for the highest grade assigned to the best buy—he did drink that French wine and never stopped.
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