Good thing I haven’t had to test that then isn’t it?
Why should someone spend 4 minutes sniffing and spitting an ounce of a wine I spent years producing, toss off a tasting note, and then utilize the content of that note and a thousand others so they can collect a fat check at my expense without needing to get permission?
Meaning the publication, as we have determined reviewers don’t make a ton of money.
It’s ridiculous to expect a business to participate in a process they can’t follow if the process offers them little to no real upside.
Because there are people who want to read it. You can spend years writing a novel, too, but that doesn’t entitle you to pick and choose who’s allowed to write a book review.
Not necessarily, in my world they called this intellectual property. When I was much younger many years ago and had no money we would buy what we called “emmy videos” from thrift stores for practically nothing and profited greatly selling them online (long story). It was not long before we had Warner Bros lawyers crawling up my arse telling me to cease and desist. Sounds similar to me?
Not a reason.
Also, while Faively sued Parker for 1 franc over the word “…Ummm!” it should be noted that Parker changed the TN. Not a court ruling but one that would suggest that your confidence is an opinion rather than a fact.
I doubt that any publication really wants to deal with a winery crying foul over their process and publishing, costing them legal fees, and ranting to other publications about being wronged. Easier just to accept the offered submissions and bypass the wineries that decline to help pay the rent with their product.
Which is why the WS is posting about wishing the First Growths would go back to participating rather than buying the wines. In my opinion.
Not even remotely similar? What some are suggesting is that you go and buy a product off the shelf, write a review that is entirely subjective, publish it, and hope people are willing to pay money for your subjective opinion. That is how majority of review businesses work, just not necessarily in the wine industry. Movies, books, art, restaurants, you name it.
There is no intellectual property involved when you simply state your opinion about a product you paid for.
The issue might be that some people consider reviews as objective facts (well some are such as Terminator 2 is a better movie than Terminator 1), but reviews are what they are, opinions.
Who cares for WS tastings???
Wha?
Terminator 2 is better than Terminator? Crazy talk but certainly proves that reviews are just opinions.
But as much as a person can say what they think about a movie, most of us assume that a movie reviewer can speak well or ill about a movie as they wish, if movie reviews weren’t good for the studios then movie reviewers would have no jobs.
A movie review can make tens of millions of dollars for a movie, so the risk reward of using reviewers as promotion for movies is weighted heavily to using them. If a good review makes you $50,000,000 extra and a bad one costs you $8,000,000 it’s pretty obvious you should submit. With movies there is no limit on how often you can replicate the movie for someone to buy a viewing. So any avenue to more “buy” is good.
But the First Growth chateaux all have a maximum # of copies to their product, and only 365 days until the sequel comes out. So, if they sell everything in a timely fashion, the best financial path for them is to maintain their price point and avoid risks while doing so.
btw-most of us assume a book reviewer reads the whole book, and a movie reviewer watches the whole show, but a palate blind tasting 100-200 wines is tasting 1oz for 4-8 minutes. Often with no one to advocate for the wine or even an actual understanding of what the true influences on the wine are. Though perhaps this is how you came to the opinion that T2 is somehow better than T1 
That may sound like me whining, but please keep in mind that I mostly care for the wines for multiple years before they’re released.
Terminator 2 is one of the very few exemptions to the rule that a sequel is never better than the original. That is an undisputed, objective, factual statement where I will allow no differing opinions, because they would be completely wrong.
Of reviews that tear a product/service apart, I think this is a classic example. I’m not sure if NY Times got sued over this.
“Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?”
I don’t think it sounds like you whining at all, I think it sounds like you have a very personal connection to your wines, and that can only be a good thing. But I don’t know if I agree that you could sue a reviewing publication if they bought your wine and posted a review. Just like I don’t agree T1 is better than T2, although the first statement is an opinion, second one is a fact 
The Ummm incident was to ruled in a French court, and I understand there are very different libel laws. Parker was convinced that he had no chance of winning, and settled out of court. More importantly, the context was that the wines tasted on the estate were different to the wines tasted when they arrived in the US. The Uummm! suggested that there was some nefarious switching of wine, and Faiveley sued for that.
We had some fairly long and boring meetings about what we could and could not write. The bar apparently was pretty high; if we bought wine, we could absolutely review it, and if we did trash it, the winery would have to prove malice to have any chance of winning.
In fact the Texas beef industry sued Oprah, about some disparaging comments about the meat. The case was adjudicated in cattle country, and she still won.
Isn’t there a big difference between a reviewer giving a wine a lower score because the reviewer did not like the wine and the reviewer accusing the winery of fraud, which is what Parker was accused of doing by Faiveley? You seem to be equating the two.
On a different note, we used to arrive in Bordeaux for the en primeur tastings. The dates were pretty strictly adhered to, but somehow Wine Spectator was treated differently to everyone else, and got to taste before us. Most years, the notes came out on the day we arrived.
So yes, the Bordelais did treat Wine Spectator (and the Advocate) differently, and it royally pissed off the rest of us. It seems that Wine Spectator can no longer expect special treatment, after all it is a huge amount of work to put it together for them.
That being said, the blind tasting question became a hot topic some years ago, and I think it was Michel Bettane made a big deal out of it The UGC then offered open or blind tastings to the journalists.
I opted for open; it made absolutely no sense to me to taste some wines open, and then go around many, many chateaux who did not submit samples, and know exactly what you were tasting.
A smart business decision, I think. Much more to lose than to be gained.
No, there is no world or universe in which those things are similar. You don’t see the difference between selling bootleg video tapes and writing a movie review?
My knowledge of the Faiveley lawsuit is minimal but I know enough to know:
It never went to trial. Parker basically lost.
Not bootlegged created by the studio and bought in a second hand store.
First, good for them.
Second, WS shows its true colors here. This is a bullying tactic, plan and simple. It’s obnoxious. They expect free samples, AND for you to take out an ad? No thanks.
WS is too stupid to realize they need the First Growths more than the First Growths need them.
Isn’t Wine Spectator saying that for years those wineries have submitted samples to be included in blind tastings, but for 2020 vintage, have not? Your statement and WS’s seem directly contradictory.
Yeah the person providing the review is selling his/her subjective opinion and writing, i.e., their intellectual property. I think your suit would almost certainly fail.