Television alert: Robert Parker on Charlie Rose Feb 14

Apparently Parker and Rose are close buddies and have traveled together on tasting trips. Rose was very careful to elicit from Parker his credo of accepting nothing in the form of a gift or bribe that could tarnish his reputation. I thought overall it was a great program because it allowed Parker to lay out all his philosophy of wine. He started out by saying he was a Francophile but then talked about the democratic nature of ignoring the pedigree of the wine and rating them on their merits. He also talked numerous times about young people in the wine industry trying to make great wines and how he liked to recognize them with good ratings to help them get going. On the negative side, Charlie Rose was just a little to buddy buddy at times and detracted from what Parker was saying. Parker praised his two minions and said between the three of them they knew more about wine than the rest of the world combined. Leading into the new wine movie about globalization of the industry, the Australian "industrialized wine business" certainly did take a beating. I don't think he had one good word about Oz wine. He also seemed to have a lot of bad words about Italian wines. There was no mention of German or Austrian wines that I heard. Bill