It’s my understanding that they blind taste to make sure that there isn’t any connection between who’s paying for ads and submitting wines so that it was neutral.
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that’s really interesting. i wonder if anyone cares? or if they did, do they still?
aside from the church-and-state aspect, there’s certainly value in tasting blind otherwise.
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They also say they do so because psychologically, if you know the producer/price point of the bottle you’re tasting, that can influence your perception of what you’re tasting. We all like to think we can be completely objective, but we’re only human.
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Others probably know more than I do, but I think they use the word “blind” quite liberally. They are not lining up 50-100 wines at random. I think it’s more like, here are 2019 Chateauneuf du Papes, here are 2020 Mosel Rieslings, etc. Which kind of establishes the general scoring band they are in. I’m surprised WS hasn’t strained itself from patting itself on the back so hard.
why can’t it be both?
wineries submit samples, provides a service to consumer, it also promotes winery and help sales.
why can’t one action produce several desired outcomes?
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Mark,
Exactly right. Jeff is talking about a winery’s intentions - which are undoubtedly based on sales. But, if you believe that an independent reviewer (such as Jeff or WS or on and on) provides a benefit to the consumer then it goes without saying that winery submitting wines to those reviewers also benefits the consumers.
Adam Lee
Clarice Wine Company
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We are in complete agreement, Adam. Reviews are a 3-way street. They help consumers, critics/publishers, and the winery. My initial response was that wineries are not altruistic in providing samples.
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My issue, then, is that in choosing not to submit to WS (in this case), the First Growths are putting their interests over what benefits the consumers. Obviously, that is not unusual (otherwise wine would be free), but it is a change in the First Growths priorities.
The First Growths do find WS to be beneficial enough to them to donate a substantial number of cases to pour at the Wine Experience. But now not beneficial enough to submit two bottles for reviews? That seems like an odd calculation to me.
Adam Lee
Clarice Wine Company
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Hi Adam,
You make a good point, but I don’t think that it’s outside of what I was saying above.
Wine doesn’t just belong to the winery, we all would like very much for consumers to support what we do. Megan and I make about 3000-4500 cases annually, well more than I can drink or afford to make without selling the wine. And critical review has been a big part of introducing our wines to many consumers. I have also used reviews to make my choices as a consumer.
One of the biggest problems in this thread is the lumping of all reviewers together as if all were equal. They are not. No more so than all wineries are equal.
I have lots of respect for the Wine Advocate, it is IMO a premier source for critical reviews. But it was extremely frustrating to have 6 different reviewers in the brief time span of 2005-2017. If all 6 of those reviewers resided in the Willamette Valley and were recruited with a full expertise in Oregon wines that would be one thing, but none of them had a SIGNIFICANT level of expertise when they began reviewing OR. Talent and lots of experience in other areas, absolutely. Having Erin Brooks review Oregon since 2017 has been great, experience matters alongside all of the other qualifications a good reviewer must possess.
None of this post or my previous posts are meant to disparage critics or critical review, but rather to point out that my work is my life, and when it comes to submitting wines for review-it’s like in a boxing match “protect yourself at all times”. No one in critical review is trying to fight dirty but if you get hit in the groin no one will stop and apologize.
Also, regarding the Siskel and Ebert comparison, I think this is apples and oranges.
Movies don’t change and evolve in bottle the way wines do. Same with dinner(well your meal at any restaurant will “evolve” if you cellar it for 3-5 years.)
With wine it’s imperative that the critic has the capacity to see where a wine will evolve to, whether via their own previous experience or possibly by seeing a similarly produced older wine at the same time. While I didn’t open any Matello wines for Tim Fish’s visit, I did open Goodfellow all the way back to 2012. I couldn’t fathom sending any critic samples of 2019 wines without having them aware of what previous vintages of this type evolve into (2005, 2007, 2010).
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And in not being altruistic, it follows that we should make choices that provide the best opportunities for the 3-way street to function for all parties involved.
100% agreement.
If I pretend to be a critic, can we open a bunch of old bottles the next time I visit? 
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so this is where the network effect / gatekeeper part comes in. benefits which consumer and how? the consumer of the WS may overlap with the consumer of your wines - but not always (not usually, statistically). the incentive structures are not totally aligned. as a winery, you may feel that your best chance of reaching your end consumer is to go through a reviewer - this is a very reasonable assumption. but the reviewer’s incentives is to sell reviews - the supply of which comes from samples, visits, etc. - the more reviews the reviewer has to sell, the greater the chance they can sell the bundle. but as the winery, you’re just one of many in that bundle. there’s a version of this relationship that you may decide to control and cultivate yourself. or manage the mixture (are you sending samples to all reviewers or only ones with x amount of subscribers?).
we see this with restaurant reservation platforms. we definitely see this in cable / streaming. i think we also see this with wine-searcher.
Oh Marcus, some movies age very poorly. One of the most cited is Peter Pan with the scene around the campfire and the derogatory stereotypes of Native Americans singing the song, “What Makes Red Man Red.” – The aging argument can be a good one, but also perhaps not. I remember some years back Asimov putting a Chave Hermitage in a blind Syrah tasting and it didn’t show well. Once it was revealed there was much backpedaling saying that it was just too young and, had they known what it was, it would have fared much better as they would have accounted for ageability. Perhaps that is true-- perhaps a winemaker simply didn’t do well in a certain vintage - who knows? Only time tells these things and they best a critic can do, IMO, is rate the wine the way they see it at the time.
Adam Lee
Clarice Wine Company
btw…without any intention of sending the wines into Tim (presumably from your comments here), and knowing WS only reviews wines blind, what was your reason for showing him the wines?
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I think that’s a far bigger part of the reason than the advertiser thing.
Adam,
My argument is that movies do not change, not that they age or do not age.
The fact that Peter Pan is now hard to watch for most of us, doesn’t really equate. It’s why I said society can change around the movie, which has happened with Peter Pan. But the movie is exactly the same today as it was on release.
Wine changes and evolves. And separately from society’s evolutions as well. My first wines could not suddenly be “no sulfur” any more than Peter Pan can remove offensive stereotypes. But my early wines are very different now than on release.
Also-in my winemaking we try to achieve better than “only time will tell, the best the critic can do is…”. That means the level of investment I have into knowing if our wines will age, and the degree to which they’ll change is something Megan and I focus a lot of time on. We’re asking customers to hold our wines for years(and years), and to drink them over multiple days, and opening a lot of bottles to determine the truth of this question. So forgive me if I prefer not to submit to blind tastings, where this knowledge is completely absent, vis-a-vis having reviewers come to the cellar.
And flatly, the Chave analogy is a good one because it is both likely that the wine could still need to be in the cellar, or just simpky need to have been consumed by itself over a couple of days. Or that the winemaker may have had an off vintage. Only time would tell, but a better tasting format, more focused on each wine as it’s own wine would probably yield a better answer.
And yes, seeing the label is it’s own issue with superstar producers. But after 30 years of blind tasting, my preferred format is single bottle at lunch. We do this during harvest and it’s an enjoyable exercise but also has yielded the best analysis of wines in a blind format.
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Marcus,
I am not really arguing with you (although I would posit that your first wines are now no free sulfur). I feel that it is in my consumers interest to show a wide range of critics my wines and you have a far more narrow range. We are just different in that regard. – I still am curious as to why, with no intention of submitting wine, you chose to show all those wines to Tim Fish.
Adam Lee
Clarice Wine Company
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Why is everyone assuming WS could go out and buy 2020 First Growths to conduct their own tastings? Did I miss something? Is this vintage available in your areas? Only availability I’ve seen is pre-arrival. Even if some are now available, were they when the tastings were performed by WS?
Obviously WS and the First Growths are having a pissing match. I don’t mind WS “defending their turf” by sneering from their bully-pulpit, its the only power/recourse they’ve got. It’s also the FG’s prerogative to control their product tasting while they can (pre-release), I do find a minor fault that they’ve changed their tune after submitting for previous WS reviews.
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Adam,
You may have me on the no free sulfur…funny.
Regarding Tim. I’ve no adversarial attitude towards critics. I would prefer to support them in any way I can. Through out this thread I have referenced the workload and effort put forth by critics. So I tasted with him:
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because he asked. And I have a standing policy that we’ll do our best to accommodate anyone who would like to come and taste our wines. He was also very courteous, and had heard of the wines from friends in California, and I had no intention of being rude to him.
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I’ve been wrong before. And critical review is in evolution just like everything else. They may change their format, or who knows what might change. I’m not dogmatic in my winemaking, or in my ideas for critical review. And, on meeting and tasting with a critic, my thoughts could change.
If nothing else, having tasted with Tim, he has a much more personal knowledge of our vineyards and wines than previously. And could knowledgeably judge whether the format was working or not for our wines. By seeing him, his visit did a lot to add confidence in whether or not we would consider altering our stance on submissions for blind tastings.
The relationship between critics and wineries has lots of layers to it. While there’s no direct relationship, there definitely are layers to the connection and, IMO, having both your eyes and your mind open is a good idea.
Cheers,
Marcus
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More ethical than “host us at your Chateaux, maybe put us up in a hotel or pay our way there, pour us a couple thousand dollars of wine for free.”
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