Wine can get expensive. And if you hate a bottle, you’re only going to feel worse for remembering the price tag attached to it, but you can avoid that sting if you take the advice of a good wine critic, like Robert Parker. In fact, Mr Parker has reviewed a huge number of wines over the years. We even have a section on our website which collects those bottles together here, which makes it so much easier to sort the wine you’ll love from the wine you won’t if you’re not sure what to choose.
Looking for quality and value? You’re in luck – We’ve put together a list of the world’s best value wines!
Click here to downlad the list: 15 Wines Under €15!
Why You Need the Robert Parker Collection:
Lots of things can go wrong with wine. To summarise:
- It may be too acidic or not acidic enough;
- Too sweet if you wanted something drier, or too dry if you wanted something sweeter;
- Too tannic;
- The vintner may have used cheap oak chips to give a wine oaky flavours, which can make a wine actively unpleasant;
- It may be too young to have developed good flavours;
- It might be too old, and have turned actively disgusting;
- The flavours might be too weak to be detected, unless you’re one of the people who like that sort of style;
- There might not be enough alcohol in the wine to preserve the grape’s flavours;
- There might be far more alcohol in a wine than you would have expected to support its weak flavours;
- Too many grapes may have been allowed to grow on the vines, producing diluted wine with many flavour faults;
- The bubbles in sparkling wine might be too big and harsh;
- It may have been blended badly to create an odd flavour profile;
- It might have been oaked when the variety doesn’t suit oaking;
- The grape variety might be unpleasant;
- The wine may be completely inappropriate for the food you’re trying to match it to, such as Tannat with mackerel;
- You may have a very clear idea of what you want, but the wine you’ve just tried isn’t giving that experience, however good its quality;
- Something seriously wrong might have happened at the winery, such as a dodgy producer mixing hydrochloric acid into their wine in the mistaken belief that it would improve the flavour. That has happened. People went to jail.
Thank Goodness for the Robert Parker Collection!
You can find our Robert Parker collection on the navbar on the main site under ‘Parker Guide’. At this point, you will see all the six hundred or so bottles reviewed by Robert Parker, but it gets better. Look to the right of the screen. There, you can find a banner linking through to the top rated wines which are still somehow below €20, and there’s a banner for Parker rated wines which are currently on offer. Bargain!
As you browse through the wines, look for the small grey rectangle that says ‘PA’. There, you’ll find the score which Mr Parker gave to the wine. These are rated out of a hundred, with a score of 80 being reserved for those bottles which give a good amount of enjoyment. If every wine you bought was from the list of 80+ scoring bottles, you’d never have a wine you disliked, and the page’s tasting notes usually describe the wine’s style as well. That way, you can see if it’s what you’re looking for.
Remember that you can order the results as well at the top of the search results. Bring the highest rated wines to the top, or find a good deal by ordering the wines by price. Seeing the bottles by their sales also gives an indication of what everyone else thinks too.
Why Robert Parker’s Views are Worth Listening To
Mr Parker is an internationally acclaimed wine critic. He has been critiquing wine for decades, and an you can read more about the influence of Robert Parker here.
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