If Parker has few challengers, it’s because few wine experts have his strength and focus in words. Historians have said that one of Ulysees S. Grant’s great strengths was the ability to communicate, in the confined space of a dashed-off telegraph, directives to his commanders on the field (in the Memoirs, too, his style has a remarkable directness and clarity). The capsule mini-reviews in Wine Bargains, a large survey of bottles costing less than $25, are the work of an orderly mind and a lawerly one (that was Parker’s training before the legendary trip to Paris that revealed to him his onephilic gift). Wine writers such as Alice Freiring may offer headier sentiments, as she does on her entertaining blog, where she opens by saying she wants the Trotskys, the Philip Roths, the Chaucers and the Edith Whartons of wines. You might wonder why anyone would want a wine to match the death- and sex-obsessed turbulance of a Philip Roth, but hers is an understandable approach, a desire to summon the romantic mystery that makes wine such a rich experience. (She christened her book with the jokingly provocative title: The Battle for Wine and Love: Or How I Saved the World From Parkerization. ) But this won’t necessarily make you a kingpin. Wine is not bottled and sold and shipped because the muses are stirring the breezes. Parker is much more to the point, brusquer and also less deep—if anything, he is wine’s Daniel Plainview, the oil-drilling antihero of There Will Be Blood.
Parker himself wrote only a few of the chapters in this book, which allots no formal ratings and notes up to three dollar-signs to indicate the expense of the bottle. But if you read through his entries you see how he is dedicated to utility and lack of nonsense, and how his firm sense of cadence marches you through his clauses and sentences:
“This is a heady, succulent red.”
“It is full-bodied, pure, and deep.”
“A display of oak along with good stuffing, attractive berry fruit, a hint of wet stones, and a spicy finish.”
“A superb, full-bodied red with terrific precision, definition, and concentration.”
“This is a serious Cotes du Rhone, sexy, round, and medium to full bodied.”
All very concrete. Parker doesn’t search for metaphors or allusions, partly because he does not allow himself the space, but mostly (one suspects) because he sees no need to think of wine this way—apart from, say, powerful or perhaps sexy. You sometimes get the sense that somewhere in his mind is the image of an old movie poster of Ava Gardner—but then, that would be falling into the sort of thinking that Parker avoids. He leaves it to the drinker and the poet-drinkers to attempt anything more imaginative.
