In this segment of "Stan Uncorked" I felt a need to make some comments about the magazine, The Wine Spectator.  Every year, The Wine Spectator’s selects their Top 100 wines for the year.  I look forward to this edition for a couple of reasons.  First, I like to see if any of the wines listed are ones that I’ve selected for my wine department.  I’m excited to find one or more as a part of this list since it means that during the year, I discovered a wine and purchased it for the store before it was voted by the reviewers as a Top 100 wine. This also gives me a sliver of some personal validation as an individual with good taste and a knack for finding good wines. This may or may not be true, and many could care less about this congruency of taste with a wine on the list.  However, all of you who have the same interest in wine will know exactly what I’m talking about.  Second, I look to the Top 100 list to see if I purchased any of these wines for my own cellar. Not only will these wines enjoy a likely increase in value, they may also be stunning wines to drink in the future.
As I was perusing the most recent list of Top 100 wines, I was shocked and a bit incensed to see the inclusion of Yellow Tail Reserve Shiraz 2005. As many of you may know, I don’t particularly consider myself to be a wine snob, and so my reaction was not motivated by distaste for inexpensive wines.  I go out of my way to find great wines that don’t demand a high price and are great values.  I must confess, though, that my initial negative reaction was based on a long-held belief that the Wine Spectator scores are potentially influenced by the amount of advertising a wine company does with the magazine.  While I admit that I don’t believe everything I hear and I would hope that the experts writing for the Spectator are not influenceable by commercial ties, seeing a Yellow Tail wine in the Top 100 made me think that just maybe the conspiracy people were right, and that the writers are, indeed, influenced by the magazine’s advertisers. Let’s face it; Yellow Tail has at least one big advertisement in every issue of the Spectator.
The only way I was going to resolve this issue and see for myself was to buy a bottle of the juice and taste it.   I did, and after tasting the wine, I must admit that I now have a bit of a different perspective on the Wine Spectator.  In my opinion, they were justified in putting this wine in their top 100.  This is a fabulous wine value that has achieved a level of quality that far outstrips its asking price.  Very deep and dense with intense anise, dark berry and chocolate tones along with a finish that seems to just go on and on.  Not only that, it has an asking price of only ten dollars. The judging crew and writing staff of the Wine Spectator should be commended for their effort and honesty in making judgments on wines.  I am now more inclined to believe that they, like me, take pride in not being influenced by outside sources.  While none of us are ever completely immune from influence, I believe that most wine critics strive to give their readers an honest evaluation of the wines they taste.  All we have to do as wine consumers is to be cognizant of the preferences of the wine critic and determine whether or not we are aligned with their taste preferences.  Not all wine writers understand wine from the point of view of the general wine-drinking populace. It is obvious that some have an idiosyncratic palate and evaluate wines in accordance with it. Our only obligation is to understand that and to look for the wine writer that seems to reflect best our own palate. It really is no different then walking in a wine shop and trusting the person recommending a specific wine. If, on several occasions, we are misled by that person in their recommendation for us, we hopefully learn and move on to somebody else’s advice.  Alternatively, perhaps that individual habitually gives us great direction and we love the wines they recommend. Of course we are going to go back to that person for recommendations. After the Yellow Tail investigation, I am convinced that the Wine Spectator is a probably a reasonably good guide for most wine consumers.  If you look at Stan’s Picks you will see my personal endorsement of the newest vintage of the Yellow Tail Reserve Shiraz.         
 
Stan