Is this guy for real?

I'd like to clarify one thing first. The wine I wrote about yesterday, the Domaine Le Galantin Bandol - for some of you that are unsure, I didn't enjoy it. All I'm saying is that I was fascinated by the flavours and aromas that it was giving off. I had no idea that wine could smell like a horse stable. I guess if you like that kind of smell, then go get a bottle and try it. It's just too funky for me to really enjoy. I've been trying to figure out what could cause this taste - and to me, it seems that the winemaker is either being lazy or using inferior equipment. Short of growing the grapes in horseshit, I don't what else could produce a wine like this.

Anyways, on to what I was planning to talk about today. I came across this site, called Wine Library TV. It's hosted by this guy called Gary Vaynerchuk. He posts videos on his site, and basically tastes wines and gives "ratings". The episode I watched was about the Le Galantin, so I was interested. Apparently, this guy is pretty famous and he's been on TV. People like his enthusiasm.

Normally, I'll be glued to the screen if anything wine-related comes up. But I watched 2 min into his 16 min episode and I closed the browser. I couldn't watch or listen to him anymore. He's the biggest douche I've ever seen. EVER. I mean, everything from his tasting routine to his mannerisms pisses me off.

An example - he pours out the first glass. Just pours it out. I guess he wants to coat the wine glass with the wine, to remove any extraneous tastes. But even for a clean glass? And he immediately discounts a score some other "critic" gave this wine. It's like he's pulling numbers out of his ass, he gave it a 92. There's no basis to how he awards points, I guess he thinks that just arbitrarily assigning a number value to a wine will give him credibility among his viewers.

My job this summer involved a lot of work in this field. Where you have to give a numerical value to something that is judged subjectively. And how my company did it was very very specific. We'd break down major sections into many subsections, grading each according to a very specific rubric. We'd then produce a final score. It was all very scientific.

The only person in wine who can give out consistent scores is Robert Parker Jr. And even he has a scoring system that breaks down every component. For example, he rates things such as colour, smell, finish, etc. and then adds them up for a score out of 100. Not like this wanker who just says, "No, this wine tastes like a 92 to me." And by the way, Parker's scores don't mean much to the average wine drinker - but that's another post.

I can't believe how pompous this guy is. Unbelievable. I mean - he says shit like, "Let's take a sniffy-sniff." People who talk like that deserve to be hung up from a pole.

Yes, so I had to get that off my chest. I hope this is going to be the only post where I'm being so rude, but just watch one of his episodes if you don't believe me.