If they did, there’s a name for that…
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The article strongly suggests that they did. I think (going from memory, I get the magazine at home but don’t have it with me) the writer notes that they received a very similarly-worded letter from each of the five estates.
illegal? i’d be curious how that works.
i brought this up in one of the burgundy threads in the context of DTC. this applies often in other luxury goods and wines don’t seem any different to me. as a brand comes up, they need intermediaries to help with discovery. those intermediaries often as as gatekeepers, however (in the retail wine world, wine-searcher is a good example - K&L notably absent from wine-searcher). but if the brand grows, they can lose by being in that intermediary / gatekeeper network. the gatekeeper will make the argument they also provide “discovery” services - which is sometimes true and sometimes illusory. free marketing so to speak.
but if you are an in-demand brand, you can easily and more efficiently engage with your audience directly now via many channels that weren’t available to you prior. so the combination of the brand’s popularity and new marketing channels, allow you to more easily skip traditional avenues such as a dedicated print publication.
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Not an expert, particularly in the EU, but generally speaking, there are lots of things a mfr/seller can do in a marketplace, on its own initiative, that it cannot (legally) form an agreement to do, with its competitors.
This is correct, and he also states the five estates have consistently submitted samples for tasting in the recent past (a quick check on my end shows this to be true), so seems they all banded together and decided not to do so for 2020. Strange.
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I wouldn’t guess that five wineries deciding together not to send free samples to one magazine would be an antitrust matter, in the way it would be if they set their prices together.
The sad thing about our system is that some people do spuriously resort to filing lawsuits.
Our system protects Free Speech, responsible or otherwise. But libel is also a reality, and if you damage someone’s reputation unfairly they have a right to making you responsible for your speech. If your business is publication and you overburden your reviewers and give them unrealistic workloads to maintain profitability(not the situation with WS as far as I know but definitely a worry with some others) is that just free speech
And this is yet another “internet” expression of free speech-which is to say it’s blather with little recognition of reality.
Notably in the real world Wine Spectator didn’t just buy the wines and plow on forward. They quite respectfully put the situation into the court of public opinion, but noted that the system had previously been workable for everyone. That shifts the pressure to the wineries to continue to participate by noting that perhaps WS reviews have previously contributed to the wineries profitability, and WS would like the wineries to continue to contribute to the publications quality(not having First Growth reviews is definitely a blow to a vintage report) and profitability.
In that, I actually side with WS. If the first growths have never submitted then they should feel free to continue to do so.
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I would guess that one could make a non-friviolous argument that if the five market participants who command the highest prices in a particular market agree to simultaneously pull out of a long-standing product comparison in which they’ve previously all participated, during which a third-party reviewer compares their products to one another and to the products of numerous generally cheaper competitors and publishes its reviews to allow the consuming public to make buying decisions, that there may be an issue with EU competition laws and/or US anti-trust laws. But of course that is just a hypothetical, and just a guess. Now, whether such a violation, if it is one, would strike any regulators as important enough to to worry about is a different question.
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From the outside perhaps. But peer groups do talk, and they definitely make decisions as groups.
With rare exceptions wineries are regionally bound in a way that many other businesses are not. We all operate on vintage and climate together. For Americans this can be a difficult thing to accept as we prize our independence and tend to view our work as “our work”. But my wines are absolutely affected by the quality, pricing, and reputation of all of the other Willamette Valley wines made.
For the First Growths, they’re in a place where blind comparisons are less beneficial to them, either keeping status quo or being a net negative. None of the businesses that own the First Growths are in the business of subjecting their brands to processes that don’t have significant upside. So the five of them determining that they should stop doesn’t seem crazy. It’s not very nice to do to a publication that has helped them build a lot of value in their wines and elevate their price points very, very, very significantly.
But since the publication tastes absolutely blind then any increase in price point was gained by the winery solely on the merit of the wines…I guess it’s a little bit of a grey area. I still feel that WS introduced and educated a HUGE number of current consumers, myself included, so loyalty for past reviews should validate continuing to submit.
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no doubt this is true, and in arguably the most important commercial market.
but things change. this is the crux of my dilemma in the burgundy realm, but likely applies to elite wines in every region.
how long is the “loyalty debt?”
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And features. At least when I was a subscriber in the '90s, there were lots of lavishly photographed multi-paged features on the Firsts and their owners, general managers, winemakers, etc., in addition to the reviews.
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I couldn’t tell you if you are right or not, but I would guess that somewhere at WS headquarters your post is very appreciated. And that this kind of conversation is what they were hoping to generate by making this situation public.
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this cuts both ways; there’s a reason the beatles and madonna rank among the highest in terms of rolling stone covers. WS needs to sell copies - this isn’t an altruistic endeavor.
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LOL - perhaps! But keep in mind that even assuming I’m not way out on a limb here, it’s the “agreement” in the hypothetical that would present the issue. They could certainly each independently decide to cease participating, without raising the same issues.
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another excellent point - how much behind-the-scenes diplomacy occurred prior to this public shame campaign?
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An opinion or review is not libel. You would lose your lawsuit in a dramatic fashion. For libel, you would need to prove an intent to harm, and you would need to prove that you were damaged.
My guess is, not only would you lose, but you could be held responsible for their attorney fees and court costs as your suit would be frivolous.
There are more than enough lawyers on this board that can walk you through that.
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I am curious as to where this conversion sides on the case of reviews via alternative and new media. I don’t imagine the wines that Andre Mack is reviewing on Bon Appetit were submitted for review, and he has fairly negatives comments for a large share of them. What about Konstantin Baum? He runs an independent YouTube account and gets hundreds of thousands of views on some of his videos. Can he be sued since he didn’t get consent for reviewing the wines he features? I think it gets even more tricky in the case of wine ‘influencers’ on social media, who, typically, purchasing wines and reviewing them to their audience (which can get rather large). I don’t see how someone could say that posting a review on Cellar Tracker is ok, but doing a video review on YouTube isn’t. They are functionally the same thing, just one has a larger audience.
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- Anyone “can be sued” for anything.
- I’m not aware of any legal significance to the difference between old media and new media, or for-profit vs hobby reviewers, for purposes of the issues under discussion.
- I’m not aware of any of any law that would support the notion that consent of the seller/manufacturer is required before a purchaser can publish a review of a product.
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I can see the conversation go something like this:
Haut-Brion: “Guys, I’m out - we’ve discussed this in the past. I make the best wine out of all of us, you all beg me for trades all the time, and it’s honestly a hassle. I never got the whole “blind tasting” thing anyway. And I don’t even have that much wine to sell!!”
Latour: “Yeah same. Btw, let me know on those mags I asked you about 3 weeks ago. Texted you and you have read receipts on so I know you saw it.”
Margaux: “Literally moved to Santorini - don’t care one way or the other. But I’m not doing it if you guys aren’t… btw, don’t mention any of this to Mouton. Seriously”
Lafite: “Is there a wine spectator in china tho?? asking for a friend”
Mouton: “Ugh… you’re killing me!”
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There is at least a dividing line here in some aspects of law, where personal use of intellectual property is fine, but use or reproduction for financial gain without prior written consent is a violation of the law. Like, you know, bootlegging a recording of NFL Films. No violation for recording it onto your old VHS back in the day. But make 1,000 copies and sell them for $8 a piece and you’re subject to criminal prosecution and fines of up to _____ along with civil liability.
The issue, of course, is that the hypo above is totally unrelated to what we’re discussing. In our discussion, we’re talking about someone sharing only his/her opinion, not the wine itself or even more specifically, the formula of the wine that would enable someone else to go make the exact same thing for next to nothing which could deprive the winemaker of the benefit of its hard work and effort.
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