Vinography- review of new wineries since 2015

From the article.

“Of the roughly 75 wines I tasted and considered for this piece, 25 of them were low enough in quality that I did not choose to feature them or their wineries. Seven of those wines rated below 8.5 on my scoring scale were all priced above $120 per bottle.

Just like every wine region around the world, there are still a lot of mediocre wines being made in Napa. Less discerning customers may be at lower risk of disappointment, but higher prices definitely do not correlate with quality in any way that is truly helpful to consumers.”

Always wish there were more reviewers posting about the wines they don’t like. In some ways it can be more valuable to screening out obvious crap when trying new things.

I love that it names/shames the wineries using heavy bottles. I wish more publications would do that!

To gain some insight maybe it would be helpful for you to ask your local wine shop what they tasted and stock that they think is obvious crap.

Not sure I follow. I would not expect a shop to disparage their own stock as doing so would hurt their own interests. Are you suggesting that a blogger who writes bad reviews will not get new wine to review? I thought one benefit of independent reviewers was their ability to source wine outside the industry channels, and that site is explicit in that, ‘We do not and never will accept advertising from wineries, winegrowers, or wine production companies, and as a rule we do not permit commercial plugs for products, services’.

You miss my point, which was ironic. No retailer will purposely waste shelf space to carry wines they warn customers away from. Why should critics devote the time and space to reviewing wines they categorically could not recommend? Check just about any critic’s FAQ for how they treat wines that don’t measure up in whatever regard. I don’t see where the Vinography ‘policy’ is relevant to my remark as nowhere do I mention advertising, or commercial ‘plugs’.

why do movie reviewers review bad movies? Hearing positive and negative comments on things help people form an opinion. Critics are trying bad wines, obviously some reason they don’t warn people off them. I understand why, but I do think there is a niche for someone to trash bad wines. Its why I enjoy watching wineking on youtube, they’ve done a pretty good job at it.

Still not sure I understand, not trying to be difficult either. It’s seems obvious that retailers would not sell wares they do not support, but critics are in the business of reviewing all market participants. Why would they not provide negative reviews, seems like the incentives for retailers are in whole different than they are for critics.

So if the score is an 8.5 - 9 on a 10 point scale, does this means wines are scoring 85 - 90?

Is the author getting a commission when you Click to Buy?

To be fair, it’s not exactly the height of criticism to call Apothic Red or some bourbon barrel monstrosity a load of shit. But I do appreciate that the YouTube channel does try to highlight both the good and the bad of the wine world.

Most of the big name critics these days are the equivalent of “access journalists”. They are so afraid of burning bridges and losing access that they will hold their tongue and not actually be critical. The state of wine criticism nowadays has such perverse incentives for critics to set their objectivity aside and essentially become part of the marketing arm for producers.

Dan,

I would highly doubt that he is getting a commission, but I do not know for sure.

As far as posting ‘negative reviews’, I do see some value in doing so. In some ways, by NOT posting them, you get the sense that they were not well liked, but unless they are specifically listed, you wouldn’t know.

To Doug’s point, most stores will not knowingly carry wines that have gotten terrible scores from specific reviewers - or if they do so, will certainly not ‘advertise’ them. But then again, why should the store owner assume that they ‘know’ what the customer will want?

I understand Doug’s ‘limiting space’ concept - but with electronic publications, that should not be a problem anymore, right? What’s another 10 pages in a PDF? Nothing.

Cheers.

And what if Apothic Red was given a 90 by a reputable reviewer - who cares?

Cheers

It’s been that way for 25 years or more. No one actually wants to be a critic anymore, just a promoter. I would love to see someone actually do critical reviews and write up wines that their readers should avoid.

Unfortunately there is no money to be made in being an objective critic. You see this with review sites for consumer products nowadays; they all eventually backslide into affiliate spam in the guise of honest reviews. Wine has got to be up there with mattresses in terms of the sheer uselessness of reviews.

It seems like this is one problem that the free market is not able to solve on its own. It’s not enough to say “Well if everybody thinks Suckling is bad then nobody will use him” when the next guy and the next guy after that are just as bad.

In my very humble opinion if you haven’t built a relationship with a wine store that will tell you when a particular wine won’t fit your palate you either need a new wine store or should start buying local and not all online.

The owners of my local bottle shop give me candid opinions all the time. Because they know what I like and don’t and want to give me good recommendations so I come back. I’m also not afraid to tell them if I didn’t like something they suggested. I trust them more than the critics.

I lived in a major metro area for 27 years and all the “local” wine stores were really just retail establishments with guys and gals that would just come and go. No one really cared if I bought wine or spit in the corner.

I moved to a town of 65,000 and within a visit or two to the shop three miles from my house, the wine buyer introduced himself to me, told me how he sources his wines (personal tastings) and helped me find wines to my liking.

They also carry allocated wines I couldn’t get in the “big city”.

So +1. Could not agree with you more, but you need to have the luck of finding that local source who gives a rat.

Larry, If I only needed to concern myself with publishing a digital copy, and a downloadable PDF, I still wouldn’t spend time writing reviews on wines I find inferior. In addition to those two formats, I also produce probably the only independent full-color hardcopy in the industry and have since day 1. With that art catalog-quality hardcopy, there is a maximum page number/weight limit that if exceeded is about 10x as expensive to mail. I’m positive I would get pushback if I needed to double the price for the print edition because I was ‘obliged to write about all of the awful wines I tried’. That’s like a winery being expected to keep 1000 gallons of juice they would have bulked out just so they could show their mailing list what volatile acidity tasted like.

Thanks for posting, Lee. Many of these were new to me also.

And FWIW, in Galloni’s Napa review for 2018/2019, he listed about 10 new projects. The only one I tried was Heimark’s 17. Pretty good. Mike Smith is the vineyard manager and Francois Peschon is the winemaker. Fe and Bella Oaks, along with Seven Apart, were also mentioned in Galloni’s article.