I came after you guys, but this is exactly my take as well.
Most American wine writing isn’t for the sophisticated, so much of it can come across as pandering, or having some kind of agenda (or even an axe to grind). As you know, Parker has been a piñata for much of his career. One would have thought that would have stopped all these years after he retired, but alas, some people just can’t put the axe down.
Ask anyone making California wine right now how much the phone rings when any critic, including the people at Wine Advocate, gives a huge score to their wine. When Bob rated it, they would sell out. Now? Maybe a handful of inquiries, at best.
I largely agree with you, but disagree that Bob’s rise had something to do with retailers. Bob followed his passion. Retailers jumped on Bob’s bandwagon. Bob had been writing for 20+ years by the time he was able to trigger sales at retail in a meaningful way.
Parker loves wine. If he tasted a wine and thought it was great, he wanted readers to know so they could enjoy the wine as well.
Parker gave big scores to the wines he liked the best. Consumers bought the wines based on his scores, tasted them and most agreed. That is why he was successful. It’s that simple.
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These are two very interesting points.
First, I really think it was in bad taste and bad form to not allow opinions in an opinion based website. Thank god for someone like Todd that knew the wine world was a better place when you allowed freedom. Thin skin or not, allowing people to speak their mind is important.
Your second point is sadly true. Bob was loyal, and to two people that didn’t do right by him. Part of history I wish I could forget.
It’s nice that good things came out of it.
I remember Finnegan in the mid 90s on the alt.food.wine board–or whatever they were called back then–fulminating against Parker and raging against the dying of the light. He was beyond all reason at that point, at least. I don’t know if he was still an active critic.
For a brief period in the mid-2000s, he also had another writer covering Italy who also worked for the Veronelli organization – David someone, an American, I believe. There was some falling out and the guy was gone fairly quickly. But, as a consequence, the WA never published reviews of 2001 Barolo and Barbaresco, even though the guy had rated them for Veronelli.
That was three really bad hires: Rovani, Miller and what’s his name.
And then there was Galloni, who must have thought he’d be able to take over the business. I guess he was just outbid. But another relationship with an underling that didn’t turn out well.
I knew Rovani slightly when he worked in DC. He seemed a nice and knowledgeable guy. He turned into a Frankenstein’s monster on Parker’s board, of course. But Parker never thought of him as a bad choice, for a period even speaking of him as the heir apparent. On line, at least, they both agreed that it was his choice to step away. I have no idea if that was the true reason. And, truth be told, I don’t that much care.
We can disagree. Parker’s influence peaked because of retailers’ use of his shelf-talkers. It drove his traffic in a way that his print newsletter never did. He became influential as a result of the '82 vintage, which was four years after he began TWA (and when it was still in its nascent format). I was a subscriber then and watched the Parker phenomenon take place in real time.
In the States perhaps. The British critics were also fans.
I started in retail in 1999, and Wine Spectator was KING. Average retailers were not using Parker, and it was really people who sold 2000 Bordeaux Futures in 2001 that really started championing Parker. Within a year or so was when you really started to see Parker go beyond Bordeaux (remember Falesco???) and other items started to see his influence. People would have never bought an ocean’s worth of Aussie wine if he hadn’t been right about Bordeaux.
I think he was being honest as well, those were the wines he liked. My point is more that he literally changed the wine market with his taste, sometimes for good, more often not so much. I speak from experience, having followed some of his reviews and even bought some of the wines he recommended. But I also experienced the transformations directly.
Take Australia, for example. For some peculiar reasons (I had a boss, and his boss the GM, along with some colleagues, all Aussies, all heavily into Aussie wines, so I learned about and drank the wines) I became unusually immersed in Australian wines in the early/mid 90s. I drank many of the “classic” Aussie wines of the time, then saw how that market changed when Parker got involved, started rating certain wines off the charts, etc. The wines changed. New producers, even entire import portfolios emerged to meet the excitement generated by Parker, all very modern, very “Parkerized” wines. Prices went up. Eventually it all crashed down in a heap, but there can be no doubt that Parker drove the frenzy, and the market responded.
Similarly in Chateauneuf, where 2007 is the poster child. Yes, climate change is impacting wine growing, but 2007 was a pretty average year temperature wise, compared with long term averages (apart from a 2-3 day minor heat wave in late August). Parker had been ramping up scores in CdP for several years, with producers responding, some even creating special cuvees that were obviously more “Parkerized” to exploit his ratings. I can still remember going to an extensive tasting of 2007 CdP at a prominent local retailer (sadly, now gone), with a couple dozen producers present. Parker’s impact was clear, the wines were ripe, many overly ripe, pancake syrup ripe. That was “the vintage of his lifetime”, and I don’t think it’s overstating things to conclude that many producers catered to Parker’s tastes to make it so, even though the wines were far from what was traditional CdP.
There is no doubt that there are a LOT of people who like these kinds of wines (though I would argue most of them weren’t and aren’t reading the Wine Advocate). That’s why brands like Prisoner, Meiomi, even producers like Caymus who were once more traditional, are so successful. There is a mainstream market for these wines. But we’re talking about fine wines here, not brands that appeal to the mass market.
Parker’s palate may have changed, who knows. Maybe it was from so much tasting, maybe just his own evolution, maybe he was always like that. I can say from my own experience that it’s physically impossible for me to taste the number of wines he tasted in a day, and make any sense of them. And he did it day after day on his sojourns to different regions.
Anyway, these are discussions that have been hashed through so many times, but we haven’t had one in a while 
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Eric,
I sold American wine in the UK from the late 80s. to the beginning of this century and one thing I liked was the cacophony of voices. Here it was the Spectator and Parker.
Finnegan was big in the’70s but never recovered from ‘health’ issues and his battle with parker over the '82s.
My point was that when retailers used Parker to sell wine they also sold folks on Parker. In other words, if every store in town touts what he says, then he must be a genius.
Many people were new to wine back then. I remember talking to a grower who thought that Parker’s scores were the final word. No room for Sly and the Family Stone.
I also sold wine in Switzerland where Parker was popular. I asked somebody why and he said that he felt all their local publications were compromised in some way but that at least Parker was honest.
Of course, a lot of English wine writing was done by the trade because nobody else could afford to make all the visits unless somebody footed the bill. This has changed but that’s the way it was before the early '80s
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Just because they get big points don’t make them over the top wines. What wineries are making these wines other than Quilceda Creek?
No doubt many back in the 90s and early 2000s looked forward to those print editions, myself included. Certainly, bought a lot of wines that I might not have with the reviews and like many with the evolution of Cellar Tracker and different wine sites out there those pro scores are not that important today. No one can discredit his legacy of getting us into wines around the world! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
The Punch Article on Parker & Parkerization oozes with notes of boysenberry, vanilla, oak and tobacco with gorgeous nose of crème de cassis and Asian spices. The intense purple core of color explodes in the glass. When fully mature, it will be interesting to see if this article will have the longevity of the similar articles written in 1996 or 2000. 99 points. Read now through November 2022.
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THIS.
Think how many wines are sold at Total Wine with the James Suckling 95 points or higher. New wine drinkers are looking for any data and then eventual they discover Cellar Tracker and make better decisions.
Slight thread drift. My first wine retail job was at PWC at the Washington St. location in 1984. Hope Mike is doing well.
A lot of the conflict on Squires Board was about just that. A lot of people bought huge quantities of wine they didn’t taste. It’s not that they didn’t taste at all. It’s blue chip age-needing wines they bought to fill their cellars. This was a phenomenon of era. He had a stellar track record, so they’d come to trust his recommendations and felt no need to throw money away cradle-robbing undrinkable wines. They bought huge amounts, case quantities of each wine. Then…15 or 20 years down the road, when they got into his recommended drinking windows it was their turn to be opened. But, in some cases, the winemaking had changed drastically. Some were DOA by their beginning drinking window, others just were very good.
The grumbling was around a long time by the unfaithful. But, we hit a point on the Parker forum where it was his long-time subscribers noting expensive wines they’d bought on his recs had turned out to be duds. Those were as common as the “my wine was shipped hot” and “Premier Cru is an obvious scam” threads. Us forumites knew these people as long-time valuable contributors who were decades-long WA subscribers. They were attacked as nobody noobs trying to make a name for themselves.
Imagine that, having hundreds of cases of Bdx you bought on a critics rec, then starting to recognize a pattern that some hadn’t aged well, from the point a given chateau had changed their style.
That’s why we saw a bubble in style - a lag effect. And yes, many consumers like bigger, riper wines, and many producers are masters at making great, age-worthy wines in that realm. So, the correction we’re seeing will normalize to consumer preference that includes those, not revert to the '80s.
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