Who are International Wine Report critics?

WINE TALK
21

So it’s just a coincidence that Joe’s Report is the only one that reviews the obscure wines that WTSO tends to sell?

22

I totally confused the International Wine Review with the the International Wine Report

The Review (example above) seems to mention that they have tasted a wine, and omits a score/note, if it doesn’t meet their grade. I think that’s a reasonable approach – I respect the tension that reviewers must feel when they can’t praise a firm’s work that could have taken years to assemble.

I suppose in the end, people will just have to taste the wines, and see if they agree with the reviews, and over time, find out who they are in sync with.

It was nice for Joe of the IW Report to participate in the discussion.

23

I wonder if WTSO sends Joe wines for review?

24

Hi Joe
Welcome to the forum.
You are welcome to decline to answer this question, but I’m intrigued that if you provide reviews free to all readers, don’t accept payment from the wineries you review, and don’t make advertising revenue, the that seems like there are outgoings and no revenue - am I missing something?

It’s a fine balancing act of how to commercialise a wine review business, yet still maintain enough independence. In Utopia, the wine reviewer would buy all the wines themselves, run an advertising team entirely separate from the review team (or take no advertising), print all reviews - good or bad and utilise a scoring scale that operated from 0 to the top of the scale (be that 10, 20 or 100) and didn’t bias the majority of results to the top few points of that scale. That’s the utopia but utterly impossible due to commercial reality. It’s a real challenge to make sensible compromises that preserve the integrity of the business, whilst keeping it’s staff reasonably well paid for what they do.

regards
Ian

25

And even if a reviewer is able to pull all that off that’s still no guarantee they will be accepted.

Look how Mark Squires excommunicated and exiled Alice Feiring from the eRP boards.

26

Maybe if Alice showered every day things would be different. [snort.gif]

27

Bump.

I ran across this thread from last year because Luca Currado was touting some very positive reviews from International Wine Report. Still no bios on the website. Still no clue how they make any money.

28

More importantly, what happened to Dennis?

Did Squires put him in the carbon freeze chamber too, as punishment for yet another unnamed sin?

29

You need some type of revenue model to make it sustainable. For me that meant subscriber-based, pay my own way for transportation, lodging and meals and accept no advertising. I also don’t charge wineries for including images in the magazine. I also don’t pay for advertising rather choosing to grow it organically. Sometimes that means giving away access to a specific group for a limited time. Luckily I launched my publication with somewhat of a running start built on the lessons I had learned, and the niche I had developed over the previous two decades. I have been in the black since day one. Regarding leaving wines out of publication, I find it is rare. If a wine doesn’t get to an 80, I will include a title header and <80 and move on. Seldom do I find wines that lead me to silently recite The Serenity Prayer.

30

This post reminds me of a story a winemaker friend told me over a beer several years ago about an offer they received interested to come and taste their wines by a reviewer they had never heard of based on the east coast. Apparently the reviewers (yes, there were two of them) were already in the area attending a wine festival. When my friend asked for more details about setting up a tasting the response was that they would only do so if the winery paid for their plane flights.