Robert M. Parker Jr. Quotes

You can be drinking the wine today, but picking the grapes tomorrow.

I have even written a book about Wine called The Grapes of Ralph.

Walla Walla is where I make wine, with Eric Dunham. He and I partnered up on a small project for me. We make pretty good cabernet and syrah.

I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.

We started seven years ago and finally released our first vintage in March. It's an '07 vintage from Walla Walla, which is my old hometown. It also happens to be a world-class wine region that's just exploding on the scene right now.

Wine has been with civilized man from the beginning.

I've always enjoyed drinking wine, ever since I was in college. My appreciation really took off when I began to visit Napa. I was toying with an idea of making wine in Napa, but it's prohibitively expensive, and the competition is fierce.

The Loire Valley is grossly underestimated. The prices are fair, and the wines are real.

Our very long-term prospective hinges on making the best possible wine we can.

To work a vineyard, you need a lot of guts to do that. To go out there and work all year, you almost feel that these people talk to the grapes. Wine is a lifestyle, and you can talk about it for ages. It's a passion, but it's not something I can do on a daily basis.

I'm actually surprised how technical a lot of commercial wine production is. Things are done very much from an industrial chemistry point of view at certain price points, but that's not the impression you get with wine.

The reality is that I'm making better wine than I thought I would. The whole process is simple but beautiful.

Fairly early in my career, I had a passion for wine just as a consumer, and I started to learn about the whole process, starting with a piece of raw ground, and ending up with a work of art in a bottle.

Australian wine and Australian women - that's my weak point. Ha ha ha ha.

The French make the best wine.

I'm a big fan of a great glass of red wine and a delicious bowl of pasta made from scratch.

So I got into growing grapes, not realizing that there was a heck of a lot more to it than meets the eye.

At Andretti Winery, I'm not the winemaker.

What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space - and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time.

I'd love to visit South America, especially Argentina, as I'm a winemaker myself. They do a fantastic malbec, so it would be a dream to sample their grapes. New Zealand would be great, too. I'm a golfer, so it would combine both my loves.

I like to pour my wines for people. I watch their eyes, I can see what they'll like. Most people say they don't like dry wine because they haven't had a dry wine that's clean and fruity, instead of a big, oaky thing.

Back in 1990, there were fewer than 20 wineries in and around Paso Robles, a farming community midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Most of the wines produced there were rustic, highly tannic and alcoholic, with little charm or finesse.

I do like my wine.

As I get older, my appreciation for wine has just increased. I fell in love with wine through my travels, but knowing what the wine country is all about definitely makes it my own.

There is no question that Australia's most dramatic assault on the world market has been with its value wines. These are generally not from specific appellations but blends made by huge enterprises like Penfolds, Rosemount or Casella Estate - the group behind Yellow Tail.