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Humble Pie with Pithon-Paillé, June 2011

First of all, those expecting an article on food or wine matching, and perhaps those unfamiliar with the concept of humble pie, please accept my apologies. For there will be no pie served with this article. This is not, despite erroneous expectations, a feature on food and wine matching. The only things I will be eating here are my words.

Following my report on the latest releases from Pithon-Paillé, tasted in January 2011, Wendy Paillé enquired as to whether she could send some new samples for me to assess. In particular, could she send new bottles of the 2009 Anjou Blanc Mozaïk and 2009 Savennières? Naturally I acquiesced - in fact I was delighted to be given an opportunity to retaste these wines which seemed, when I met them last, to be cut through with a firm and - to me at least - a very undesirable seam of oxidation. At the time I showed due diligence, in that when Wendy asked me how the wines were showing I mentioned that two were showing some notes of oxidation. Ideally, I would have returned to retaste them during the Salon, but having met up on the final day there was simply no such opportunity. Happily, thanks to my recently received samples I have been able to retaste, and the result of doing so is this short tasting report. And I have to confess that my opinion of these wines is now very different, much more in keeping with my thoughts when I tasted them during my visit to Pithon-Paillé in 2010. So, for that, I send my apologies to Wendy Paillé and the Pithon-Paillé team.

There are many different facets of this change of heart that I could explore within this report. For example, please indulge me for a moment and consider just how many writers there are worldwide who currently comment on, score or critique wine, including both professionals and the more amateur blogger. Isn't it remarkable that you never - or perhaps I should say almost never, as I am sure there will be a few examples out there - see any retractions of scores or opinions, or admissions that a wine has been judged incorrectly? Everybody seems to get it right, first time, every time. My only conclusion is that there must be a lot of 'perfect' tasters out there.

The only reference to such an admission of error that springs to mind was during Robert Parker's visit to Cheval Blanc, described by William Echikson in Noble Rot (W. W. Norton, 2005, p.110). Parker visited the château in order to retaste the wine, having been invited to do so by manager Jacques Hébrard. To his dismay Parker, on tasting, "realized that the wine was indeed better than he first thought". He was bruised and battered by the experience, and not just in terms of his professional reputation - Echikson describes how Parker was attacked by Hébrard's dog during his visit, an episode which apparently "left a scar on his leg for life".

To me the affair all sounds a little bit precious, and I suspect that, somewhere along the line, it has been over-dramatised somewhat. And does such a vicarious admission of a mistake really count anyway? It's a story from Echikson (the veracity of which I have no reason to doubt, but I do not vouch for it), not an admission from Parker. How often do you see critics stand up and say, in their own voice, "I got it wrong" or "I've changed my mind"? Are the professional reputations of these critics so fragile? Should Parker, for instance, in down-grading his opinion of the 2008 Bordeaux vintage, so recently reassessed, have accompanied his new notes with a few conciliatory words? Or is maintaining the impression that you never get it wrong, and that you didn't really over-rate the wines when tasted en primeur, more important than the wines and vignerons that you judge?

Alternatively, this short tasting report could lead me down another path, one of natural winemaking, and how oxidation can no longer be routinely dismissed as a fault. But I consider this too much of a tangent to the basic tenet of this report which is, in case it isn't already clear, that - thanks to some tired samples - I misjudged these wines, and I will save these other thoughts for tomorrow's blog post. And so, without immediately opening that can of natural wine worms, may I present a portion of humble pie, with three notes on wine samples sent to me by Wendy Paillé. (9/6/11)

Humble Pie with Pithon-Paillé - Tasting Notes

The wines below were tasted in June 2011. All my tasting notes on Pithon-Paillé's wines, including those below, are collated under my Pithon-Paillé profile. Click to locate stockists.

All three wines here were tasted at home. Note that the first two are differentiated purely by the closure used.