Luca Locatelli for The New York Times
The wine guru Kermit Lynch at his home in southeastern France.
For much of the last 35 years, the wine critic Robert Parker dominated the international wine scene. Parker invented the 100-point rating system for wine, and his reviews wielded such influence over sales that vintners everywhere worked to please Parker's palate, making oaky, intensely flavored, high-alcohol wines. Kermit Lynch, meanwhile, through his wine shop in Berkeley, Calif., and also through his nationwide distribution business, chose to sell only French and Italian wines made in the unadulterated, old-school traditional style aimed at accentuating terroir — each vineyard's unique combination of weather, soil and geography.
For years, Lynch, who lives in Berkeley and near Bandol, France, wrote about these values in a monthly newsletter and also in his 1988 book, "Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France," which is being reissued by Farrar, Straus & Giroux next month. Today, wine culture is focused on natural and biodynamic wines, and wine bars named Terroir have opened in San Francisco, Scottsdale, Brooklyn, four locations in Manhattan and London. It seems fair to say the Lynch way is finally having its day.
Q: What makes you happy when you pick up a restaurant wine list?
A: I can tell you what makes me unhappy is when it weighs 40 pounds. I just don't get that. Make the selection for us. But also, when I started bringing in a lot of these wines — Côte Rôtie, Chinon — nobody wanted them. Every restaurant in the States was fighting to get their one annual case of the obvious big-ticket wines like Raveneau or Beaucastel. Now I go into restaurants and I'm asking the sommelier, "Where's this from?" It's a treat. One of the most exciting things happening is sommeliers turning customers on to new wines.
Q: For the longest time, the Robert Parker way of thinking about wine was ascendant. Now the Kermit Lynch way is in fashion. Why do you think that happened?
A: There are so many people scoring wines these days. That might dilute Parker's influence. And he's hired other writers. I've read so many times that Parker's great secret or invention or whatever — his route to fame and power — was that 100-point scoring system. I always thought it was his writing. He's great at expressing his enthusiasm. You want to feel that way yourself: I want to get all excited! I think too, people are going for more natural wines — the Parker style and natural wines weren't a good fit.
Q: Why?
A: I call the wines that have been ascendant during the Parker reign "pop wines," because they're created by people thinking, Oh, wow, if I make a wine like that I'll get a hundred points and I'll be as rich as so-and-so. They see, "Jeez, I'm driving my tractor, and he's driving a Mercedes, and I have land here, too!" But my God, how many oaky alcoholic wines can you suffer before it becomes monotonous?
I hope that doesn't come off as harsh — I don't criticize Parker for his influence. Parker even denies the existence of the "Parker palate," though he says humorously that his own wife disagrees with him about that. What is important is that he is the only person in the wine world who does not think there is a Parker palate, that there's a wine style that he has a weakness for.
Q: Wine grapes are being grown all over the world, these days — is that good or bad?
A: I don't stay awake at night about it. Look, there's great terroir and there's lousy terroir. A wine showing terroir doesn't mean it's good.
Q: To what degree does price reflect quality?
A: I don't think you can make a blanket statement. One of the two best reds I've ever had was a '61 Romanée-Conti. It was like discovering Bach for the first time, or seeing Michelangelo's David. Ah! That a grape can do that! I think the new vintages are $1,000 a bottle. Is it worth it? Ask a Russian billionaire. One domaine I imported, Henri Jayer, one of his wines just sold for about $20,000 a bottle. Plenty of wines sell at auction for great sums — are they worth it? Not always, but every once in a while I wish I were a Russian billionaire.
Q: Is there no reliable difference between, say, a great $100 bottle and a great $1,000 bottle?
A: Demand, that's the only difference. Some wines are in, some are out. It's not quality.
Q: How about grape varietals — are there any you find particularly interesting right now?
A: I'm a big fan lately of vermentino. Probably 50 or 60 percent of the bottles I open at home, for my own drinking, are white burgundies or vermentinos. But that changes. It's like, for a while I'll just be interested in older wines from my cellar, and then, "Oh, no, all I want are young fresh wines."
Q: Any others?
Daniel Duane is the author of ''How to Cook Like a Man, a Memoir of Cookbook Obsession.''
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 21, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a French wine. It is Côte Rôtie, not Côte Roti. The article also misspelled the title of a monthly French magazine on wine. It is La Revue du Vin de France, not La Revue des Vins de France.
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