New Wine Advocate Service - Wine Benchmarking...

WINE TALK
21

Its a win win situation.

TWA gets money and the wineries get (more) points and coverage.

Difficult to fault the business model.

Ethics aside…

22

And the consumer wins because they get more wines with lots of points. What’s not to like?

23

I don’t doubt that. What I question is why anyone would subscribe to the Wine Advocate at this point. I put it in the category of the Wine Spectator these days. And if you have to ask… [swoon.gif]

24

[rofl.gif]

25

It’s an infinite feedback loop.

26

well, now they have truly jumped the shark. Glad I dropped the subscription a couple of years ago. Does anyone in the business believe that they can just taste a sample of wine and address what needs to be done from the vineyard to the cellar to improve the wine? Parker must be dead, they are just propping his body up somewhere and Lisa is moving his lips.

At least taking advertising is more honest. You can see the ads in the publication and calibrate the influence for yourself.

27

A couple of points:

  1. Enology got its start and continues to advise wineries but analyzing ‘high scoring’ wines and ‘recommending’ changes to wines/winemaking to hit specific parameters. And yes, plenty of wineries used to use this service, including lots of ‘big players’ up in Napa (and no, I do not mean mass market wineries).

  2. Many a ‘consulting winemaker’ are hired because they are known to either a) produce great wines, b) get great scores from some or all reviewers, or, ideally both a) and b). Is this a ‘bad’ thing that an owner is basically ‘paying’ to get great scores? Many here would not think so, but there is more than one way to look at it.

  3. For those who think that the Wine Advocate is not important to wineries (or heck, ANY reviewer for that matter), check out the number of wines that were reviewed recently. For the most part (or possibly all), these wines were ‘donated’ and either sent off to be tasted in a specific setting (could have been in wine country or back in their offices) or were tasted personally with the winemaker present. This is not waning - regardless of what anyone here wants to believe . . .

Cheers.

28

Yum, delicious points!

29

This is a bad idea on many levels…

First, it would mean that if some winery subscribes to the service and their scores do not go up, then the advice was worthless.

Second, if their scores go up, then one would have to wonder if the tail is wagging the dog in terms of scores, hurting credibility.

Third, who at WA knows what winemaking and vineyard steps to take to improve a wine? Please.

I hope this is a bad April Fools joke that came out on the wrong day by mistake.

30

It’s all about more micro-oxygenation. That makes everything better, just ask Rolland [whistle.gif]

31

Improving WA scores is as simple as using more new oak for hedonistic rock star juice. Sneak a little cocoa powder in there when nobody is looking too.

There, I just saved a bunch of inexperienced wine makers $800 each.

32

[rofl.gif] [welldone.gif]

33

I’m rather amused that the professional wine critics deem themselves expert enough in winemaking to tell a winemaker what they are doing wrong in the winery and what to do to fix it. I suspect many would view that as rather presumptuous.

Why? We do it all the time here.

Don’t even charge for it!

As to the ethics of it - that disappeared when the website talked about the importance of blind tasting and keeping distance from the trade and then he acknowledged that he hadn’t done either for years.

Larry’s second point is the most salient - the reason consultants are hired is because they know how to hit the “benchmark”.

34

This is obviously a major conflict of interest. But more baffling to me is that the Wine Advocate sees an $800 service to a limited audience as a serious money-making opportunity. What an embarrassment this is for TWA and Robert Parker.

35

World-wide, there is a lot of audience for this and the potential to make a good amount of money is there. Most wineries are small operations. If you’re getting high 80’s score and this gets you into the coveted WA 90+ score range your sales most likely will go way up. $800 is a tiny price to pay if that happens.

36

I am seriously curious as to whether there is a thread about this on their board. Surely they are being called on this

37

I have asked Kyle on his blog and will ask away again here:

How did you find out about this? Is this something that is posted on their website? Is this something that was emailed or mailed to specific wineries?

I am not a subscriber so I did not receive nor was I familiar with this. Curious whether folks like Adam Lee or Brian Loring or Morgan Twain-Peterson, who do regularly submit their wines to the WA, received this or not.

Cheers.

38

Curious about this as well. We know that there are some here that continue to subscribe and may be active on their board - please chime in . . .

Cheers!

39

Neal,
there is a thread " Benchmarking ".
The author is asking: Can anyone tell me how this will work ? and Monika larner responds later: No clue here.Sorry.
Thread started at 1.48 a.m. No more traffic.
Cheers
Rainer

40

Thanks Rainer. It is telling that Monica has “no clue” about this. This smacks of a Lisa project, and I bet the others were caught unawares as we were. I can imagine some serious soul searching going on among the contributors.