One of these two men is a psychopath

I just watched Mondovino, I laughed, I cried, I made death threats. The interviews with Robert Parker... This! This is the man we are all listening to? I mean look at that haircut, holy shit. And then they cut away to the old picture of him with more hair and it's worse! Jesus Christ, dude go to a salon, they're called hair products. Parker's proclaimed preference for young wine (even first growths?) is not surprising given his love of Californian wine, I just can't believe that he admits to it on camera, such is his arrogance. He says he loves the vibrancy, he says, "The older I get, the younger I like them," with a wink and a nod, and certain sexual implications, but I don't think he would know good wine or pussy if he saw it. Could it be that maybe his palate, that million dollar palate is just dying?

To say you like the vibrancy of a young Staglin over the fractal complexity of an old Bordeaux, or Chateauneuf or Burgundy is like saying Led Zeppelin is better than Mozart, it's more vibrant. Thing is I don't think Parker ever discovered Mozart. And I don't think his mind or palate can really grasp the nuances of an old, terroir driven wine. I think he will always take flash and beauty over truth and culture. That just makes him a fool. What makes him dangerous is that so many people follow suit and believe that a bottle of Screaming Eagle is the pinnacle of the wine world. Equally tragic is his insistence on seeing himself as an agent of the "democratization" of wine. Yet the fruits of his labor, the globalization of wine and the hegemony of aesthetic , have only served to strengthen the position of wealthy wine aristocracy like the Frescobalis and the Rothschilds.

And James Suckling (has ever a man had a more appropriate last name), what can I say, another self-absorbed, self-centered, self-congratulatory baby boomer. The idea that there is anything cultural or historic in the world that he is not aware of is absurd to him. He is just another post war T.V. baby (I wonder if he watched Daniel Boon and had a coon skin cap?) , largely ill-equipped to understand the scope of what he writes about . For Suckling, culture is a flower whose beauty is only manifest upon his perception of it. If this were a Greek tragedy we would simply have to wait for an angry god to strike them dead for their hubris. Unfortunately, this isn't Euripides, this is the fucking wine business.