Parker v. Prial: The Death of the Vintage Chart

In a February 2000 NewYork Times article, Frank Prial declared the vintage chart, a chart giving the chart author's viewof the taste of a number of types of wines for a number of production years (or vintages), dead. "Rarely," he also wrote,"doesa yeargo bythat doesn't produce good wine ... the winemakers of the world have rendered the vintage chart obsolete." Here, I report my tests of Prial's implied hypothesis, that winemakers have rendered the vintagechart obsolete in that they make wine of such uniform high quality that the wine drinker either