"Mark Lipton" in ...
> Dale,
> Like you, I've marveled at the lionization (to use the polite term)
> of DuBoeuf in the WA. Parker has on several occasions lauded
> Georges DB's abilities as a taster (which BTW I have no reason
> to doubt) and has often given very high praise even to the "Flower"
> bottlings, which I've found to be bland, commercial offerings.
> This latest review from Rovani (in the WA), however, goes even
> beyond Parker's adulation. . . .
>

Constantine Costa-Gavras's polemical docu-drama film _Z_ (1969) opens with a
military Inspector-General (of Greece, though not explicitly) making a
speech, asserting a link between ideologies (especially Socialism and
Communism) and the appearance of sunspots. (He then ties in wine,
smoothly, comparing the treatment of grapes against mildew to prevention of
dangerous political notions in the young.) [1]

Until now, I had not linked the ascendancy of DuBoeuf and its familiar lite
style (tending at the time in the US to crowd out better-established and,
some felt, better, Beaujolais, for example) with the rise of "numerical"
critics, besides parallel timing. I'm finding the preceding posters'
remarks thought-provoking. (By the way, I hope some of you have seen
Stevenson's treatment of "bubble-gum" or "banana" Beaujolais in his "Sotheby
's" wine encyclopedia -- "The amount of antipathy, even in Burgundy, to this
style of Gamay ...")

-- Max

--
[1] We all have our passions, and a few years ago I assembled
recommendations for a couple of hundred classic movies (a passion of mine),
by request. I also sent a few of them to amazon.com as "customer reviews"
and _Z_ was one of those. I thought that someone reading this far might
appreciate the explanation, though the connection to wine is perhaps
tenuous. Still more so are those for anecdotes I posted lately to
sci.electronics.design on the "Pandora's Volt Incident" and the remarkable
"Destruct-O-Tron" in the UK, but connections do exist, especially in the
last case, which may be compared to the much less dramatic "magnetic"
products recently advertised for placement under wine bottles.