The consummate critic
By Howard G. GoldbergConventional wisdom has deemed Robert M. Parker, Jr. the most powerful wine critic in America. Who can disagree? But throughout his ascendancy he has not been America's most inviting, unforgettable wine writer. That honor belongs to Frank J. Prial, my former colleague at The New York Times. Although Prial's byline and commentary titled "Wine Talk" continue periodically in The Times, he and his column, written from 1972 to 2005 (with two interruptions), formally retired last July. Still, his influence flows on underground. Strangers ask about him. Consumers remember the tone and details of his writings. Winemakers remember long-ago encounters with him. Rival wine authors ask about him fondly.
Prial, 75, was not cut out to be an autograph-circuit celebrity. Unlike Parker, he has not made or unmade vintages and vintners. Mostly, his name has not been an asterisk in every wine ad. (Prial is pronounced PRY-al, not PRE-al, as many readers often guess.)
Like a memorably influential teacher, Prial has kindled and shaped millions of readers' interest in and attitudes toward wine. From his earliest "Wine Talk" columns, he embodied the down-to-earth notion that wine, like breathing, eating and having children (he has three sons and seven grandchildren), is an everyday part of life; it is not, as peculiarly American wine geekery defines it, what life is all about.
"Almost from the start," Prial has written, "I resolved to downplay the technical side of wine, the minutiae of grape growing and winemaking, along with...long lists of tasting notes." He continued, "Like every other part of the paper, the wine column should offer something that all or most of its readers can enjoy or at least find informative." He concluded, "You should not have to be a budding enologist to enjoy reading about wine."
As a French-speaking francophile who has maintained a Paris apartment forever, Prial embodies the Gallic, the European, approach to wine. (He attributes his passion for France, which he visits three or four times a year, to "youthful wanderings, perhaps my recessive Huguenot genes.") In conversation, he often says, "It's only wine," but says it respectfully. He shuns elitism and hifalutin' romantic effusions.
With its coast-to-coast reach, The New York Times is America's best, most influential newspaper; as it featured Prial soldiering on every Wednesday in the Living (later Dining) section, he blossomed. Two of his three books (most recently Decantations, 2001) are collections of especially pleasing columns.
"A Twilight Nightcap With Alastair Cooke," his account of a last whisky with an old friend, brought tears. In a letter to the editor calling it "extraordinary," an Alabama reader said that "the ingredient that jells is the affection toward another human being that shines through."
In a column about dining at Taillevent, the three-star Michelin restaurant in Paris, Prial singled out the "affable Jean-Marie Ancher, a solidly built, easygoing captain who can make guests feel at home in half a dozen languages and recall what they ordered 10 years ago."
Like the Hollywood and boldface-name crowds, wine-industry professionals are kissy-kissy. Their public showiness, implying that "you are one of lucky us," sucks in many wine writers who thirst for acceptance by hotshot producers. I have never seen anyone peck Prial's face, because his subtly standoffish body language conveys a professional message: I like you, and your subject, but I am not in your game, and I'll keep some distance. (Though Prial and I come from Essex County, New Jersey, and have known each other since the early 1980s, we have not been close friends and have never socialized. Rather, we have been distant acquaintances with a mutually respectful and correct professional relationship.)
The wine trade thrives on snow jobs. Virtually every vintage is a vintage of the century; the best wines every vintner ever tasted are the ones he is currently selling; and the pricing has never been more reasonable. Prial has long been an antidote to such overstatement.
Prial and skepticism, Prial and common sense, are synonymous. He listened politely to big and little shots "flogging" - a favorite verb - their wines, and then delivered columns that were rich in understanding and perspective, entertainingly informative and devoid of leaden gravitas and sugary flattery.
The essential Prial shone through in a review of wine books: "There are many fakers. Anyone can pick up a bit of the jargon; anyone can drop an apparently learned phrase. Anyone, nose in a glass, can frown and sniff and mutter something to impress the gallery. In private, it's another matter. Few of these poseurs can tell a Pommard from a Pomerol, distinguish a port from a pinot noir."
Prial's natural fluency, especially as a storyteller (his Irish descent at work?), is striking. An almost Hemingway-like spareness opens an article on Ice Wine: "The nights are long in Germany's Rhine Valley in November, and growing colder. The autumn yellows and reds that splashed the vineyards have faded to the ochers and rich rust browns of winter. The chill wind rustles the remaining leaves; a fox hurries through the rows of leafless vines, unseen in an empty landscape."
At heart, Prial is what his generation of newspapermen calls a news hawk: He has reported from 30 countries for The Times and, earlier, for The Wall Street Journal, and at The Times was a general assignment reporter and spent some years on night rewrite.
Prial genuinely likes people, enjoys swapping stories and has the gift that is indispensable for good, sensitive reporting: He's a terrific listener. He pays attention to what is said and done, egging on his subjects with a seemingly approving "yeah, yeah, yeah," and leaving the impression that he truly cares.
Empathetic, nonjudgmental, collegial, street-smart, a private man with a ready smile, Prial tends to avoid the spotlight. Sharing a television series with the crisply vocal British writer Jancis Robinson, he seemed like a fish out of water. At a microphone he seems vaguely uncomfortable, his somewhat gravelly voice little more than monosyllabic, his manner hesitant, his message brief. On panels, as one of the guys, he appears more comfortable.
Frank J. Prial has savored the finest Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne known to man. He would, I think, equally relish an honest Beaujolais, slightly tinted by oak chips, poured from a screwcapped box into a milk glass. As you drink him in, you appreciate that he is the very definition of a class act.
Howard G. Goldberg, who contributes wine columns to The New York Times, is author of All About Wine Cellars, a guide that is part of The Complete Wine Cellar System kit (Running Press).