I’m too young to have witnessed this whole phenomenon, but it seems to me that someone stepped into a market vacuum. People liked wine and wanted to be told what to buy. It’s only natural that there would be market leaders and smaller voices to fill the more specialized niches. Sometimes I think this entire conversation gives him entirely too much credit. Sinatra indeed.
Observe how many times “at least here in the U.S.” qualifies posts above, and how virtually everybody wants to limit the discussion to the small band of high-end wines popular in the U.S. where wine publications can clearly move some wine. (Ask any retailer if selling 2009 Bordeaux put the retailer’s kid through college or even paid the light bill. You will be told that no, a high volume of less-heralded wine does those things.) The number of non-trade readers of WA and WS in the rest of the world is miniscule. The assertions about their influence are myopic, save Bordeaux for Parker. Parker’s scores help move Bordeaux in several countries, dominantly the U.S. and the UK. In the U.S., you see the Clape Cornas and Pontet-Canet phenomenon because U.S. buyers are fighting over a tiny amount of wine imported here. Many in Europe and elsewhere got their allocations at cost plus a reasonable markup. You can credit both WA and WS for driving domestic feeding frenzies from time to time, and the U.S. market is a significant one for a wide range of wines, but nobody here is offering any hard quantitative proof of exactly how much of the total world supply of any given wine is being moved by any given wine publication. It is what you choose to believe based upon personal experiences, frustrations in sourcing wines, spiraling prices and anecdotal evidence. It is largely an American point of view, and not entirely wrong for certain wines. However, America is only one slice of the pie, a slice filled with points-driven conspicuous consumption that does not exist elsewhere, and, despite appearances to the contrary in the American market, does not always drive worldwide pricing. Had I wanted it, I could have found the 100-point Clape Cornas at its normal price. It will still be found at that price plus a modest markup in many European restaurants. It is true that, post-Parker 100, the U.S. trade begins to scour the world in search of more of the wine, and that can cause the price to spike, as wholesalers and retailers all take a piece of the action. You can give Parker full credit for that if you like, but I am not sure that the lemming-like behavior of American consumers at times, coupled with those ITBers who may profit disproportionately from a short-term supply-and-demand problem equates perfectly to “WA and WS move wine, period”. Did Monica Larner move wine in her last job? Is she moving any in her new job? Is Neal Martin moving any Burgundy or Bordeaux? Is Jeb Dunnuck or David Schildknecht moving anything? This issue is far more complex and has many more moving parts than many people on wine boards are able or willing to factor in. I do not make the argument that Parker has or had no influence. I make the argument that the influence is deep in a couple of spots and negligible or non-existent in most others. To say the word “Burgundy” is to prove the latter argument. Tiny quantities of wine, worldwide demand, no WA or WS voice above the village wine level…
Greg, yours is more of a “shelf-talkers with high numbers on them sell wines” argument, which I agree is true. The problem is that it is rarely important whose name is on the shelf-talker if you are buying wines because of shelf-talkers. In that, you are running roughshod over the importance of subscribers. You are right that Parker’s influence is wider than his subscribers, because his name is on some of the shelf-talkers and blast e-mails, and retailers pimp him in order to sell wine. However, it is the subscriber base that is buying SQN because Parker says to…
The history of Parker is the history of faith-based purchasing, never a good thing…
[quote="Bill Klapp. Nobody questions that WA and WS are the two most prominent wine publications, but their audiences are tiny, and in the case of WA, shrinking because of Parker’s hijinks. If you count those who subscribe to both only once, and cut out the doctor’s office and ITB subscriptions, you might have 100,000 total subscribers on earth. Anecdotal evidence of what producers tell you does not change that reality…[/quote]
What some actually in the business report does not change the figures you’ve stated, but it raises a red-flag on your theory that WS and WA don’t move boatloads of wine. First off your audience numbers are off. Many more people read the WS than 100,000. But that distinction does not even matter. Does anyone believe that one can count the number of subscribers to the paper versions of those publications and come up with the wildest guess as to how many bottles of wine the reviews actually sell? Walk into Costco’s wine department, see the shelf talkers, and observe people’s discussions. I’m there once a week. Go into most wine shops or grocers (who these days sell a good amount of over $20 wine) and look for the same or listen to how clerks sell. Go onto the website of endless producers, and see the reviews replicated. Read advertising in other publications. Open up the flyer that arrives from wally’s, visit their website or subscribe to their email list. Ask someone in wine sales whether the reviews are provide to them by the wineries or in-house. Scan the content of the place that hates Robert Parker more than any on earth and notice mention of the scores. Google the name of a wine and on the result page you probably see the WS or WA score.
The information from WA and WS gets disseminated like wildfire. Calculating influence using subscription numbers is totally unsound. And it isn’t just 500 case cabs or Bordeauxs. Again, check out people in front of the Beringer PR Chard, or Mondavi Napa at Costco. The shelf talker and clerk aren’t mentioning Bonne scores, their mentioning WA and WS. Right now Costco has a bunch of Peter Lehmann Clancy’s on end-caps. It boasts a modest price of $13 and touts nice scores on the sign. Not many people know anything about the brand, and I don’t think Shiraz is necessarily a top varietal at that price, but that stuff is flying into people’s carts. Next month it will be another wine. And don’t discount smaller 1500 case productions. The vast number of wines the WS and WA review in a year, multiplied by a couple thousand case average, is a huge number. If one elects to include box wine and two buck chuck in the pool, yes the influence of reviews is lessened. But those wines aren’t particularly relevant to this group.
Isn’t a part of many people’s complaint about Parker or WS that they influence and tend to homogenize the style of wines made? If so isn’t it logical that the vehicle of that influence is not merely penning an opinion to paper, but that scads of people follow the mandate by buying the wines? I don’t see how one can at one moment mourn Parker’s influence on the market, and in the next moment contend that he has no influence.
Lastly, I say “in the U.S.” because I am quite positive of the way things operate here. I would not be so positive elsewhere, knowing the wine-buying conditions in Asia and I would be pretty secure that influence abounds there as well. Also frankly, if one lives in the US why would one not focus primarily on the way wine is sold in the U.S… That there is some tiny restaurant in a small Austrian village with the Clape Cornas at $80 has zero impact on an American’s market. But even if we did want to consider the world market, wine-searcher could give a little insight. The 100 point Clape is at a minimum $196 in the world. That is clearly a significant bump from what we paid for the 2009, or can get the subsequent vintage for. We are not talking about an extremely old wine here and it is moderate but not tiny production. So the current ask in europe does not seem to indicate that the American market is that anomalous.
Paging Roberto? Roberto?
To clarify, I meant here and while people won’t discuss it that much, plenty of berserkers pay attention to WA
scores.
I think you need to look at it from a long term historical perspective. Mine is about 40 years, and maybe that’s not even enough. There were wine writers who were important and moved the market in the 1970s, but they wrote about France and almost nothing else. There was a famous article in the Times by Frank Prial in the 70s in which he wrote, as to five or 6 wines, “If you like wine X and don’t want to pay the price, you can buy wine Y for much less and get almost the same thing.” I do not remember the Xs for certain, but I seem to recall that the Ys included Chs. Gloria, Figeac and Gaffeliere. At least in the United States, that moved markets. A lot. Especially, I think, for Gloria. However, as always, it was French wine. I remember a Prial article about Musar, which caused me to buy a few bottles of early 70s Musar, but that was rare. They all wrote about France. You might see a bit on Port, Italy and Germany, but that is as far as it went.
California wine was declasse. and then came the judgment of Paris and some writers started to take California seriously. I suspect that a small group of winemakers did the same thing, or recognized the potential that the public would do the same thing, but other than Ridge, I don’t remember enough on the subject of winemakers. This is where WA and WS made a big dent, by gradually giving US wine respectability. Hugh Johnson certainly had nothing to do with that. But it was almost entirely in the US. You still can’t find any more than a handful of US wines in almost all European wine shops.
Asia? I don’t know enough about the market to be sure, but based upon conversations I’ve had with a few producers, they seem to think that WA and WS virtually define the market there. Get big score, sell a lot of wine.
People have been making " faith based purchases" long before Parker or other critics for that matter. The difference is is that the faith is/was based on what’s on the label.
Whatever one’s opinion about the notes and scores of Robert Parker, it is rather absurd to underestimate his continued influence.
For the past few years, across France, when buying at the foires aux vins at supermarkets like Auchan and Cora and Leclerc, you see Parker scores. Mai oui, même pour les Francais.
These scores do not have as big an impact as in the US - “Ce qui, ce Parker?” - but their influence reaches way, way beyond subscribers - and worldwide, not just in the US.
What does the future hold? I spoke to a merchant from Total Wine recently over lunch and he told me that that is a good question. Obviously today’s world is very different from the 1970s and 1980s.
There is far more “white noise” as the merchant put it, with bloggers and writers galore.
Some writers will get more credibility over time, if they regularly taste and post and earn respect for their honest opinions and taste profiles.
So we will see a multipolar world of wine writing and criticism. It already exists. But still the Parker points count most (still) for Bordeaux. And beyond just the US.
I suspect that we will not see anyone like Parker emerging, with as strong an influence, once he retires from criticism.
And I believe that the best merchants will post their own notes in a way that garners as much consumer respect as possible: based on actually tasting the wine and explaining their assessments.
For fine wines, this essentially reflects an increasingly educated consumer.
Of course, merchants need to sell the wines they purchase, so they will not be as critical as independent critics. But there are merchants and there are merchants.
Buyers will need to go to stores they “trust” and meet merchants who actually go to the vineyards and buy wines to sell that are good.
And that is a nice thing, is it not? Encouraging people to taste more, to question their local merchants more, to encourage store tastings.
Perhaps I am being too optimistic?
Bill, a large part of my point is that Parker is the reason why shelf-takers are willing to rely on ratings. He is the authority that made them acceptable. If people have been buying widgets for 200 years, they wouldn’t suddenly start using rankings because some random person put them up - Parker’s authority made it acceptable. Once people started following Parker, that gave retailers and distributors (and winemakers) leeway to charge more for higher rated wines, because consumers would buy them. That doesn’t mean Parker is responsible for the trajectory of wine in the last 30 years, but the effect of the 100 point scale really shouldn’t be underestimated.
Of course Parker has influenced wine greatly, but in what direction?
I brief, I think he has turned wine into a competitive sport and an object of conspicuous consumption
I catch a lot of flak around here for complaining about the way things used to be when I was involved with wine while living in France 40 years ago.
Let me give you one example:
Friends invited me for dinner in the elite community of Montecito. They invited a friend since they knew I was into wines. This turned out to be a nouveau rich who brought 2 bottles of Cos D’Estournel of different vintages and spent a great deal of dinner time in Parkerspeak, talking about his other bottles of Cos, oriental spice boxes and sous-bois olfactory components, and of course, the scores. My two friends, both modest college professors, had no interest in this, and me neither, but he didn’t seem to care.
A few weeks later, I was back in Paris, at dinner in the home of an old friend, from my Paris days. He opened two bottles of Cos of the same vintage (much better year and older than the wines of Montecito) . The wines were not mentioned once the whole night; they were just an offer from my friend to enhance this evening of great times and conversation.
History tells us that it not so much the power of one person but the situation that leads to ascension of such a person. Culture was ripe for a Parker at his time and if it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else filling this need.
Sometimes it’s worthwhile to strip something down to its most basic form. As has been said many times before, the value of a critic to any one person is to know that the two palates are similar in stylistic preferences. As competent as a critic might be, if you don’t care for the kinds of wines that he prefers, then what’s the point. That said, as they say in Zen, it’s up to the consumer not to confuse the finger pointing to the moon, for the moon itself.
In some segments of the wine market he has almost absolute power in others far less. In Bordeaux they don’t set the prices until he posts the points. That is power. In Burgundy, not so much. And his power is fading. The damage to the brand over the last few years is irreparable. Couple that with the internet and many other reviewers/sources. I would say it is something more than a “cold”. More like the flu with a touch of pneumonia.
Panos, it is even more absurd to make assumptions about Parker’s influence that facts and history will not support, which I see too much of in this thread. I submit that a shelf-talker in a French supermarket is hardly true global reach, but rather, merely evidence that somebody decided to put up shelf-talkers with Parker’s name on them to see if anyone would pay attention. You would need proof that the wine is flying off the shelves because French housewives know and trust Parker, and could distinguish his shelf-talker from any other name or number found next to it. The notion that Parker is a household name, even in the country whose wines he has helped so much of in the U.S., seems absurd to me, my friend, and you conceded as much above. One should not muddle “presence” with “influence” and “impact”, and all but a few people on this thread refuse to accept the obvious and readily provable fact that Parker has no influence at all in many countries and with respect to most wine regions. The myth has swallowed reality.
The only point that I am making, apparently lost on the faith-based buyers, is not at all that Parker has no influence, or did not once have even more influence than he has today, but rather, that his influence has ALWAYS been sharply limited, in time, geographically and by wine region. I said that Parker drives BORDEAUX in the U.S. and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the UK. He should also be gaining Bordeaux traction in Asia, or else his investors are wasting their time and money. I agreed that shelf-talkers and blast e-mails spread the names of Parker and other reviewers and their publications far and wide, but all of that activity, for whatever impact it does have, has NO impact on the sale of California mailing-list-only wines, high-end Bordeaux and items like special-cuvee Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Parker’s (Flannery’s 45-day aged) meat and potatoes. Why? Those often highly allocated items never make it to shelf-talkers and blast e-mails. The audience there is subscribers, individuals and ITBers, who pounce upon the scores the very minute that they are released. That said, I do not see how anybody can look at the stratospheric price increases in Bordeaux, along with the entry of the Chinese and other new buyers with massive disposable income into the global wine marketplace and recession/depression in the U.S. and Europe, as well as the younger generation all but turning its back on Bordeaux, and not conclude that Parker’s influence is very much on the wane. Add to that his alienation of much of his own remaining customer base with his Howard Beale-like raving, poor health and the fact that he is cashing out and cashing in (with the tour) at the same time while he still can, and it should be clear that the end is coming soon. It seems to me conclusive on the subject of the breadth of his influence that his “world tour” includes a few stops in Asia, a couple in the UK and then how many get booked in the U.S. As they say, small world, isn’t it?
As noted by someone above, he has also wielded enormous influence in CA, but a lot of people have tired of his preferred style, and we are witnessing a growing anti-Parkerization movement there (producers like Rhys, not the “natural wine” types that he rails against, to be clear). He sold a lot of Australian wine, then people dropped the wines, and his advice about them, like a hot potato. In turn, Parker dropped Australia like a hot potato, first on Jay Miller, and then on Perrotti-Brown. I am not sure that New Zealand could even be said to have ever been on his radar. People cannot offload their unwanted Aussies today. He never had much traction with Spanish wines, although nobody did in the U.S. for a long time. He dumped Spain on Jay Miller, then Neal Martin for an hour or so on a Thursday afternoon, then on the new guy. The WA history with Burgundy is net negative…it was so bad, reviewer after reviewer, that even the faithful rejected it. Parker’s bungling actually created new careers for Allen Meadows and others. He pushed Alsatian wines for a while, and helped sell a little, and then he dropped Alsace like a hot potato because nobody liked big, heavy, sweet Alsatians except the Alsatians. Zero influence on German and Austrian wines…worldwide. Always. He had a brief fling with Italian wines in the early 90s, and bailed there, too. He is a total unknown among the Italian populace. Riccardo Cotarella and a few other fruit bombers probably remember him fondly, however. Portugal? Oregon? Washington? New York? Virginia? Greece? Switzerland? Lebanon? Israel? Am I missing any other wine-producing regions or countries where Parker has no influence? Lastly, consider duration of the Parker phenomenon. The Wine Advocate was a hobby until 1984, when he was able to quit his day job. There was the launch of his career with the 1982 Bordeaux vintage. By his own admission, he was scraping by for some time after that. That was followed by a period in the 1990s when I suspect that he was helping move some volume of many of the wines he reviewed, albeit to a relatively small subscriber base at the dawn of the proliferation of shelf-talkers and Internet wine sales. That was followed by what we might call The Golden Age of Parker, which lasted maybe a decade, 1995-2005, give or take. By 2005, there had been several too many vintages of his lifetime and/or of eternity, Parkerization had a name, there was personnel turmoil at the WA, and the growth industry became Parker criticism and skepticism. The Squires board closed, Parker went nuts with his reviews and his critics, he cashed out, etc., etc., etc. he is fond of trumpeting his 30+ years on the throne, but even that is myth if you analyze his career path.
I rest my case. Where Parker slingeth not the 90+ scores (probably more like 95+ today), he is largely irrelevant, and those are concentrated in only three wine regions on earth. The bottom line reminds me of the old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: to paraphrase, “when [and where] he was good, he was very, very good, and when he was not, he was horrid!” (Not intending that as a Parker bash.) Peace, people. When OP Mike Pobega is the last guy to agree with anything that I have said, I should be happy with the huge win and call it a day! Good thread, Mike…
P.S. I know Sinatra, and Bob Parker is no Sinatra. Spiro T. Agnew, maybe, but no Sinatra…
…has a cold what?
It could explain the palate move toward Koo-laid ![[stirthepothal.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f40faec63ca1018898a40805efbf9f0066a3d205.gif "[stirthepothal.gif]"){kind=small}
Bill - your points (ha!) seem to cover 2 different scenarios and actually I think that’s the interesting issue.
Overall, US wine consumption increased over the past thirty or forty years. It’s still a “new” thing for a lot of people, whereas in Europe, it’s more part of the woodwork and maybe even considered grandpa’s drink by some of the younger people. E.g., wine consumption in France is supposedly falling.
How much of that US consumption increase had to do with Parker? I would submit that none of it had to do with him.
However, I think Parker influenced WHICH wines were part of that consumption. He still influences Bordeaux and probably will until he retires, so let’s leave that aside, but in the 1990s, his 91 points on a few $12 Cotes du Rhones and Spanish wines made millionaires out of a few importers. People on wine boards talk about high-scoring expensive wines, but the big money is made on the inexpensive wine that’s sold by the pallet.
So I think Parker had a big influence on some imports, both at the low end and the top end. For example, Peter Sissek was going to put his wine on the market at thirty to forty dollars but when he got those phenomenal points for Pingus, he added a zero. Whether anyone would have heard of his wine otherwise is an eternally unanswered question. By way of comparison, there is wine that’s even more expensive coming out of Toro of all places and I’m dying to know how it’s selling because I don’t see that Parker influence at the high end any more.
Does he have the same influence today on other non-Bordeaux and non-CDP wines?
That’s a really interesting question. I think at the lower end, yes, maybe in a more limited way these days but the phones still ring when a low-priced wine gets a decent score. At the higher end maybe, but my guess is that his influence nowadays is pretty much confined to Bordeaux and the South Rhone.
Interestingly, when I go into a store as a customer, more often than not, the reference is still to the Parker score, not the WA score and not the Monica Larner score. I assume that’s what the people in Singapore were interested in buying.
It has been a good thread. And now we have agreed twice. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I didn’t realize I could be frisked on entry. To state that Frank Sinatra was the voice of a generation or two ignores the oh so many black female singers that, in fact Sinatra felt indebted to, like Ella Fitzgerald. I could go on…
As for Parker, I’d say we’d be where we are now in the year 2014, with or without him.
I wonder if Parker´s influence was more on those consumers who tried to make money with wines? I learned over the years that many people on the old Parker board were speculators at least part time. And Parker was the guru. A high Parker score was the guarantee that the wine bought as a future is worth twice the price two or three years later. Today with the sky high prices for the wines Parker loves most this business model came to an end and I guess Parkers influence is no more the same – at least in the en Primeur business.
As someone who is working in the advertising business I can tell you that positive recommendations from consumers plays a growing role in moving products. The success of trip advisor and the likes is very telling. Therefore I guess models like cellartracker will have a good future. The trend can be seen at the leading German online retailers. They list many positive reviews to a wine they try to sell. The more positive reviews the better the wines. Parker can be among those but he is very often no longer the only listed person. This was different 5 years ago. The world is changing a lot and the internet where everybody has a voice is responsible for much of the evolution. The change is only at the beginning and in 10 years the business model of WA can´t be the same as today. That is my prediction. Parker sold WA at the very best time.