Story By Ch'ng Poh Tiong

All of us should not have to be afraid to do our job. A postman delivering mail, a nurse cleaning an open wound, a policeman chasing a robber, or a journalist filing a story.

Each year, when we rate the wines I taste during the primeurs in Bordeaux, we give them from 1 to a maximum 5 stars. We also have a "Too Closed to Taste" section for those wines I have difficulty in assessing because they are too tight or too dominated by the structure for the fruit to show. And as I visit Bordeaux four or five times each year, I know I have the luxury of revisiting those wines again in order to get a more accurate picture.

For those wines I consider overly extracted or overly oaked wines that are hard, mean and green I describe them as "God Have Mercy On Us" wines.

In a sense, I am a fraud because I disawow religion and, theoretically and technically therefore, have no right to involve god in wine.

I use the expression because, tasting such wines, I feel my lips, tongue, palate, gums and teeth bashed in by the merciless hardness of the wines. So abused, my knee jerk cry is "God Have Mercy!"

As some readers, mistakenly, think that time will soften such hardness in a wine it won't I feel it my duty to warn them accordingly.

I like to think I am doing my job. And should not have to be afraid to do so.

Last year, this was what I wrote of the following "God Have Mercy On Us" wine:

Chateau Angelus 2007*
Oak/wood and merciless. Major HELP!
Second worst wine of the Primeurs.
Where's the angel in this?

Some time after that, Hubert DE BOUARD DE LAFOREST, one of the proprietors of the Saint-Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classe, circulated my tasting notes to several other influential chateau proprietors, chateau representatives, and members of leading Bordeaux wine associations.

Hubert DE BOUARD DE LAFOREST

De Bouard de Laforest also sent me an email detailing the names of a list of journalists who gave his wine very high scores and favourable ratings. He also suggested that, next year (meaning 2009), I should, before tasting the primeurs, learn from them how to taste.

I have all the regard, even respect, for anyone who disagrees with me because I do not, for a moment, assume that my views are universal.

If De Bouard de Laforest had written to say that I was a dumb ass because his wines are far from extracted and that they are, instead, very elegant and angelic, that would be a fair response because he would be criticising the criticism. He has, however, not deny (nor, I have to also admit, affirm) my views of Chateau Angelus 2007.

Anyhow, if so many other more distinguished journalists think his wine is so fabulous, I fail to see why De Bouard de Laforest should be so concerned that I, on the other hand, think his wine sucks (literally, because the extraction makes your mouth feel as if someone has plunged a vacuum cleaner into it).

I am a journalist. It's my vocation of choice. I don't like being intimidated when doing my job.

In a sense, we are fortunate that Hubert de Bouard de Laforest is only the proprietor of a chateau, not the president of a country. Otherwise, intimidating journalists who disagree with how he is running a country or making a wine would mean the world has to put up with one more Robert MUGABE type.

*The wine was tasted blind. When I discovered it was Angelus, only then did I add the line "Where is the angel in this?"