Reading comprehension is not your strong suit Torb. Obviously "him" refers to Oliver not Ringland. I'm not going to bother to dredge up a bunch of tns from Oliver with ludicrous drinking ranges for this style of wine but lets take a look at his range on the 2002 RunRig as just one example. In his (just for clarification by "his" I mean Oliver not Chris Ringland or Santa Claus, Torb) 2006 Wine Annual Oliver's drinking window for this wine is 2007 to 2010. Anyone who has tasted this wine with an open mind (his - again Torb "his" in this instance means Oliver not Peter Pan - is anything but an open mind) realizes that this wine won't have even reached early maturity by 2010 much less be over the hill.

It’s so nice to engage in conversation with someone who is so polite, civial, and who must be respected because they are infallible, perfect and never capable of writing anything that is not 100% clear, or have any possible ambiguity.

Speaking of "reading comprehension" - Jonesy, perhaps you missed where I wrote "let me see if I have got this right." I used those words because there seemed to be some ambiguity between what was said when reading one of your posts, my reply, and your next post.

As far as Oliver’s window on the 2002 Run Rig is concerned, every critic can only judge what is in the glass in front of them and bottle variation comes into play. Oliver is one of the few professionals that is not afraid to re-rate wines (up or down) by a fair margin and alter drinking window recommendations dramatically upon retasting a wine. I looked at his tasting note on this wine and my own, and they are miles apart, including drinking window recommendations. Does that mean Oliver is incapable? Of course not; it just means his bottle was different to mine and yours.

FWIW, I have been following Oliver’s drinking windows on Australian wines for many years and to my way of thinking, generally he is the most accurate critic in Oz today. Does that mean he is perfect or never gets it wrong? Of course not! But from what I have seen when it comes to Oz wines, he knows his stuff.

If you were to say, here are 200 wines picked at random that I have tried in their peak window and in 30/40/50 cases Oliver got it wrong, I would agree that he was unreliable, but his percentage of getting windows wrong is far less (IMO) than many other scribes.

And for the record, I frequently disagree with him and he has a much more elegant palate than mine.

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Oliver is one of the few professionals that is not afraid to re-rate wines (up or down) by a fair margin and alter drinking window recommendations dramatically upon retasting a wine.

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I am always suspicous of critics who do this. How do we know that they are changing their score by a fair margin because they re-tasted the wine as opposed to re-rating it because their earlier score stands embarassingly far afield from his/her peers and competitors. If 5 critics score a wine between 88-91 pts, and critic 6 scores it 80 pts, and then critic 6 bumps this up to 89 after "re-tasting", it would smell pretty foul to me. I think one should taste, re-taste, and taste again before publishing a score. If your low score is based on what you perceive to be a flaw, say so, and caution readers that their results might vary. But you have to stick with your score. Once you change your score after other pros have published their reviews, you lose all credibility.

Jimmy,

As background, please consider the following before I get to the main points you mentioned. Any professional who is a true professional doesn't give a rodents posterior how other people rate wine; they call the wine the way they see it. Let me give you just one example. Oliver canned the Henschke 1998 Hill of Grace giving it a much lower score than other pros; there were howls of outrage from consumers and everyone criticised him for the score but he stuck to it despite the negative comments.

Guess what? He was right! It turns out the wine was loaded with Brett and the other pros didn't pick it up. Or how about the 2002 Mt Langi Shiraz; all the pros got their samples well before release. Oliver was the only one to give it a low rating; many people could not understand why: that was until the wine was ditched prior to release as it was faulty.

More importantly, let me also give you an example of Oliver's rerating wine; take the 1995 Tahbilk 1860's Vine Shiraz which he (and everyone else) rated very highly on release and all pros also had a very long drinking window. A few years later Oliver rerated it down substantially and reduced the drinking window significantly. Now that move is in direct contradiction for the "embarassingly far afield from his/her peers and competitors" you mentioned in your response. In fact, he knowingly went far afield from his peers without reservation and knowing it would not be popular with his readers that had purchased the wine.

Now why did he do this? Because that is what he found when he retried it and there was no obvious or even suspected fault in the second sample; the wine was simply not developing as well as he (and others) had thought it would. I would call that "honesty" rather than "being afraid what others think."

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If your low score is based on what you perceive to be a flaw....

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Agreed, but if you don't think its flawed you have to call it the way you see it.

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But you have to stick with your score. Once you change your score after other pros have published their reviews, you lose all credibility.

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I think I have shown you that does not have to be the case. FWIW, even the esteemed Robert Parker rerated wine from time to time. Also, sticking to a score regardless could also be considered "pig headed" - rating wine is not an exact science and there are a countless factors that can change or influence scores and perceptions on wine, especially over time.

Moving the scores as you have demonstrated does, indeed, distance oneself from the rest of the pack. But I'll bet that there are just as many examples of the reverse being the case. It doesn't mean that the wine was re-rated to fall in line with other critics. But it does cast doubt. As with many things in life, it is the appearance of impropriety rather than the actuality of it that drives opinion, right or wrong. Peer pressure is a proven scientific phenomenon, and something for which wine critics have not been immunized.

I've had the 1993, 1995, and 1996 a couple of times. Each time the wine was perfect. I actually owned a couple of 1996's and they got sold in a divorce. Dang!

I had the 1998 once. I decanted it for an hour and we drank it over two more hours. This was New Year's Eve. At the end of three hours decanting plus swirling in the glass it was still eighty percent shut down. Yikes! I'd say 2012 is about right.