Wine Taliban by Tom Perry, Inside Rioja Blog

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Gerry Dawes: “The 1947 Bosconia is the best red wine I have ever drunk.”

"I have a reputation among some writers and wine aficionados in Spain as being a “Taliban,” as a couple have called me in print. They think because I have defended the classic wines of La Rioja that I have an old-fashioned franquista palate. They are full of shit. Few of them have traveled the wine roads of Spain tasting wines in bodega after bodega like I have.  And I have done it, not from a base in Spain, but from the United States.  Between 2000 and 2010, there was a four year stretch when I averaged EIGHT trips to Spain a year and another four years when I averaged six trips per year. I have been in at least 600 bodegas in Spain, some of them multiple times, re-visiting some of them as many as a dozen times or more.  Has anyone else in Spain–besides the owner Juan Gil, the Marqués de Figueroa, been in vertical tastings of Palacio de Fefiñanes Albariños six times?" - - Tom Perry, Inside Rioja

 Tom Perry on Gerry Dawes on his Inside Rioja blog

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 About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on WPWL 103.7 FM Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York.

  Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 
 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at  gerrydawes@gmail.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@spanishartisanwine.com

American Tom Perry, a Long-time Veteran Wineman Living in La Rioja, Weighs in on the Pancho Campo-Jay Miller-Robert M. Parker, Jr. The Wine Advocate Fiasco

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Tom Perry, long-time Rioja veterand and author of the blog Inside Rioja.  Haro, La Rioja, June 6, 2011.  

Photo by Gerry Dawes, copyright 2011/ gerrydawes@aol.com

Don Geraldo (my nickname),

(Tom Perry) The email below, the first as far as I know from a winery concerning this mess, has moved me to respond.

"As you know, I've been in the wine business in Spain for 37 years as export director of three wineries (two in Rioja and one operating in several regions) as well  the person responsible for international PR for Rioja for 14 years. So I humbly think I know what I'm talking about."

Antonio David* says (in a post today, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2011 on Mike Steinberger's Wine Diarist):

"We as winemakers, winery owners, vintners, enologists need a voice to be heard and Pancho provided us all with paid access to Mr. Miller. He said, they said, we said doesn’t matter, it is our bottom line and that is why we paid access to Mr. Miller.

My wine is not yet rated and not imported into the US. If I don’t secure some way of having the Big US Critics to discover my wines and write about them, I will never export. 

The amount of money we all paid Campo was obscene, but what choice do we have? None. "

(The rest of Antonio David's post on The Wine Diarist, here in parenthesis, was not in Tom Perry's e-mail to me, but I reproduce it here in its entirety:

"The amount of money we all paid Campo was obscene, but what choice do we have? None.

Questions on the expenses and how the money was spent?

We were told a large portion of the money went to Pancho for arranging the trip, airlines, transfers, hotels, meals, video, and publication in The Wine Academy of Spain portals.

I hope Mr Campo gets run out of Spain as he is nothing more than a vagabond. While I struggle to pay for my tractor repairs, Pancho if flaunting around in his Ferrari, having lavish 50th birthday & anniversary parties in Marbella (all on the social media to see), and acting like a jet set multimillionaire. Fuera Pancho Fuera!

He has no shame and no place among the good people of Spain. Any winery supporting him now are only doing so because they are holding on to a thread of hope that he still has some tricks up his sleeves to sell them.

Gracias for letting me speak, Antonio David"

(*GD: In fairness, as yet the full identity of "Antonio David" has not been verified.

(Tom Perry) "Yes, Antonio, you have a choice.

If you decide to follow the 'point path' and belong to a denominación de origen, your DO should have contacted Miller and offered to put the wines from the DO at his disposal in a tasting at the Regulatory Council without the presence of a middleman such as Pancho Campo, whose role, from what I can see, has been to make the whole process enormously expensive and has cast doubt on the impartiality of the whole process.

If you have read Elin McCoy's book about Parker, The Emperor of Wine, you will have no doubt read how, before his international success,  RP would fly across the pond, rent a car, pay for his own hotel and visit wineries. He thought that this was taking the correct ethical path.

Today, the Wine Spectator, the New York Times and a host of other publications insist on paying their own way to wine regions and wineries so as not to compromise their impartiality.

In the course of my PR experience with journalists, most freelancers do accept having their travel and hotels paid for but there was always an understanding that this in no way would color their reports and tasting notes.  Believe me, Rioja received its share of negative publicity from these trips.

Getting back to the Wine Advocate, RP has stated on anumber of occasions that his tasting team has to adhere to the highest ethical standards.  This seems to preclude the use of middlemen.

We have to get back to basics, staring with ethics.

Spain is not a hard place to visit.  You book your flights and a hotel, rent a car, get a map and go.  Today with the appellations of origin and winery associations it's easy to send an email requesting wines to taste.  You sit in a tasting room and work your way through 100, 200 or 1000 wines.  No winery people around.

An alternative is for the DO to organize visits to wineries.  But no financially motivated middlemen promising, for example, a seminar about the US market as an excuse to generate expenses to a group of wineries that hope their presence will call attention to their wines.  Everyone should get an equal chance to have their wines tasted.

I remember once I (in my PR capacity) insisted that all the wines be tasted blind to avoid label bias.  As a result, some very good but hitherto unknown wines were highly rated.

That's what we would do in Rioja when someone wanted to do a comprehensive tasting of Rioja (ask John Radford). 

The other choice (aka 'the hard way') is to tell your story passionately to everyone who will listen (for example López de Heredia here whose wines can hardly be called 'Parkerized'). You have the internet and a huge number of consumer forums that in my way of thinking, are the way of the future. But you have to work hard.

Winemaking is all about passion that you transmit to your customers.

I guess the bottom line for me is that we have become lazy instead of working hard to develop distribution and a consumer following.

Gerry, I don't mind if you send this out and get me publicly involved.  It's what I believe.

Un abrazo,Tom"

Thomas Perry
Inside Rioja
General Vara de Rey, 77-1ºD
26002 Logroño (Spain)
+34 639 70 09 14
perry@eniac.es
http://insiderioja.wordpress.com

Tom Perry, Inside Rioja. Interview with Gerry Dawes: “The 1947 Bosconia is the best red wine I have ever drunk.”

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November 14, 2011

Gerry Dawes with Maura Villanueva, the owner of El Lagar, Logroño, La Rioja.

Photo by Casimiro Somalo.

After several attempts I’ve finally gotten my interview with good friend, eating, drinking and bullfighting buddy Gerry Dawes, who I’ve said many times is one of the two guys with the most comprehensive knowledge of Rioja.

Here are my questions and his answers, which I have copied verbatim. Hold on to your hats.  This is vintage Gerry, once again pulling no punches.


When did you first taste a Rioja? Do you remember what brand and vintage it was? What were your impressions? 


Back in the late 1960s, like everyone else who visited (or in my case lived in) Spain, I drank Federico Paternina Banda Azul. Rioja wines were Spain’s best red wines and I developed a taste for them over a period of several years. I thought many Rioja were great. Marqués de Riscal was a bit of a luxury and so was Cune Imperial and Cune Viña Real, but once in awhile I got to drink them. I still remember finding Cune Imperial Gran Reserva 1959 on the shelf of a Costa del Sol shop for 225 pesetas a bottle when I lived in Mijas overlooking the Costa del Sol. I grabbed all three bottles.

READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW HERE:  INSIDE RIOJA