I am all of the above. 
This was really a good piece of writing. Loved this. And my dad only drinks Vendange even when I offer much better…but he is 90 and I am lucky - still my dad.
Mike is a terrific guy; tres cool article. Loved it.
I’ve never been more proud to be part of the alienated and disaffected.
Mike is a good guy. I have only gotten to know him since the Yellowtail article, but I did meet him at his NY book signing and launch party.
His new book on Restaurants in France on the decline is very interesting.
FYI, I did post this link, first…on the Rogov thread. 
I think the article spends way too much time on Parker and not nearly enough on all of the internet activity that is democratizing wine.
It would be nice to read a full article on how people are sharing their wine experiences - posting, tweeting, cellartracking etc - and how this is creating a “long tail effect” for wine discovery. It is now much easier to learn about small or new wineries, wine styles and obscure regions. This is very beneficial to wine and will ultimately change the wine world for the better (more diversity etc).
Like all revolutions maybe the public needs the catharsis of a public hanging but the Parker part should be a subnote and not the majority of the article (or maybe I am just tired of the endless 
).
He could have bashed even more, if he wanted to…Parker and friends got off very lightly, in light of how Michael was treated by Squires and Parker.
Thanks for sharing the article. It’s amazing how much ‘information’ there is out there that would not surface if not for those more active than me on the net . . .
I think it was well written - and I as well am saddened as well as happy that all of this has occurred. I’m hopeful that out of all of this will come ‘better’ wine resources for all.
I’m also hopeful we can all (on ALL wine boards) use our shared passion for this stuff to help get even more people excited about wine . . . drinking it, talking about it, tweeting about it, using 3rd party software to track their wines, using it as a reason to get together and share and have a good time . . .and NOT continue to focus on ‘negativity’ . . .
Time to get to the winery, but just wanted to add to the conversation.
Cheers!
Its being written; not to worry! ![[basic-smile.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/83717c74df9b0ce202453063bc4f11baf0ee6b8a.gif "smile"){kind=small}
It just goes with the territory. As my Dad used to say, “The higher up the ladder that you climb, the more people can see your ass.”
I can also highly recommend Steinberger’s book Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France. A very interesting read.
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I dunno Glenn… Freakmount is a master of the internet, but still has the palate of a Yak… I think the internet brought a little democracy to the discussion of wine… but Freaky can have all the confidence he wants, for the most part, he gets it wrong… I am not sure he is even north of 70% when guessing color in a clear glass >
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Love you, man… 
I think the article is OK as far as it goes, but the Internet also has increased the reach of reviews by professional wine critics. Since wine retailers often lists scores and reviews on their websites, and they usually do in their emails when the score is 90 and above, the retailers have used the Internet to vastly expand the reach of reviews by professional wine critics.
Not to mention the inevitable thread, every year, on almost every wine board, about people’s speculation over the Wine Spectator WOTY/Top 100 list.
While the Internet does provide regular consumers a chance to have their say, I’m not yet convinced that the Internet has rendered the professional wine critics irrelevant as implied by the article…
Bruce
I don’t think the article implied anything that black and white. Rather I think you inferred it.
I suppose I wish Mike had addressed how a true democracy in wine drinking would require a better pricing structure - I don’t mean “I hate the three tier system”, I’m British after all - but rather fewer name-justified enormous sum wines.
And yeah, he only really said pro critics will find it harder to charge for their services online with more free resources, not that they were irrelevant.
Eric–Here’s one quote: “CellarTracker hasn’t usurped professional wine critics, but it is forcing them to justify their existences to an unprecedented degree.”
The author hasn’t provided a single bit of evidence to support the assertion in the second half of the sentence. I’m not aware of a single independent study or analysis that would tend to indicate that CT scores are having an appreciable impact in the wine market as a whole.
Indeed, when I get the avalanche of retailer email offerings, no one mentions CT scores at all. The only website I can think of which mentions CT scores is winebid.com. Again, I don’t know of any study or analysis that shows that bidders on winebid.com tend to give CT scores much weight in their bidding decisions, and frankly I would be surprised if the typical bidder gave much (if any) weight to average CT scores.
Let’s put aside CT for the moment–it’s really more of a platform for people to post their TN’s. Let’s look instead at ALL of the consumer TN’s posted on Internet wine discussion sites across the board–EBob, WB, WS, WCWN, etc. If you look at all of the consumer-generated TN’s across the board, I’m not aware of a single study or analysis that shows that consumer-generated TN’s are having an appreciable effect on wine sales. There may be individual instances where consumer-generated TN’s spark interest in an individual wine that has NOT been reviewed by an independent wine critic, but it’s at best a drop in the wine retail bucket.
Overall, I think the article starts from the unique case of Jay S. Miller and attempts to extrapolate from there. I think that extrapolation is misplaced, in large part because JSM was not a widely-respected independent wine critic BEFORE he was hired to write for the WA. By contrast, my impression from the Internet chatter is that people generally have high regard for writers such as David S. and Antonio G.–I don’t see the Internet as having hurt or undermined their careers as wine critics.
Bruce
I hope you’ll provide citations for every single assertion you make then.
Come on Bruce, the demand for citations of studies is one of the lamest counter-arguments on the entire web. It’s always used as if the lack of a citation works in favor of the person raising the need for one and yet that person usually doesn’t provide citations for their arguments.
I think there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence out there that wine boards and places like CT have influenced the top end of the market. I’ve not been on eBob for years but I remember threads all over the place about various mailing list wines and seeing darlings of the board pop up and become hot. I distinctly recall one thread where an Italian wine was raved about, a poster mentioned that a NYC store (Italian Wine Merchants IIRC) had some… and 100 cases disappeared in a few days. Is that significant in the general wine market? No. The web will not become influential in that respect for quite a long time and when it does it’s likely to be more of a web version of word of mouth than this board, CT etc. But is the web becoming more and more influential in the high end, enthusiast section of the market? Absolutely. Answer me this. Is the web more influential in the wine market now that it was in 1999? In 2004? I think the obvious answer is yes. So why would that trend stop or reverse?
However, wine critics will always be around since they provide a couple of services that wine communities do not. One is a relatively comprehensive look at a given region (Napa Cab, Burgundy, etc). If you’re looking to learn about that region or are buying in it, that alone is an important function, but critics also provide a single point of reference that you can calibrate against. And lastly critics are a known quantity. Agree or disagree with one, but they’re a consistent touchpoint whereas a community isn’t… some members of CT write great notes, some don’t and you have to do some work to figure that out. All that said, though, I think the nature of criticism will evolve into more of an expert-led community. I was sad to see Galloni and Martin go to the WA because I think they could have been at the forefront of this evolution. They still might, but it won’t be while they’re there - Parker is relatively set in his ways (and face it, he’s done very very well). None of that generation of critics will lead the way to the next step in wine criticism. Who will? No idea, but someone will.
Rick: Good, solid post.
Thanks,
Dan G. (itb)
Sorry, Rick, but if a journalist writes an article claiming X, then it’s the burden of the journalist to provide some evidence to support X (unless they’re just doing a “this is my opinion” kind of piece). While I agree that the Internet DOES provide consumers the opportunity to disagree with the so-called professionals–the Sierra Carche incident is a good example of that–it doesn’t really get to the thrust of the article.
While there is no doubt that a favorable consumer note will, from time to time, result in a bump in sales, I see no evidence that on an industry-wide basis that consumer notes on the Internet have anywhere close to the effect on sales that you see from WA, WS, IWC, or Burghound reviews.
Bruce
Nice dodge Bruce, but your call for independent studies is the problem. You want some evidence and that’s reasonable but insisting on a study isn’t. For this sort of assertion it’s perfectly reasonable to make the assertion after hearing this from a variety of interviewed sources (though one needs to watch for conflict of interests of course).
If you’re going to demand citations of independent studies then let’s see them for everything… let’s see them from you when you make an assertion or refer to someone else who makes an argument. This is one of those things that either needs to be applied all of the time or it’s nothing more than a red herring that makes the claimant sound as if all the want is The Truth. Sorry, I’ve seen this tactic used far too often - people insist on hard evidence if they disagree with a point but never if it’s a point with which they agree.
It’s a feature article that makes a claim which, on the face of it, is reasonable - the web is increasingly influential in the world of wine. I notice you ignored my questions above… again, nice dodge. The degree to which the article’s claim is true is open to discussion, but I don’t really think it’s an unreasonable stipulation. Put another way… where’s the rigorous independent study that shows there isn’t any effect?
Frankly, I think you know that no such study is really possible - calling for one is just a red herring. There’s no real way to quantify the influence of tasting notes on boards. If someone sees several positive notes for a given wine and then runs across it in a shop or on a restaurant list, buys a bottle, likes it and buys a case… how do you attribute that? In very few cases is there a direct TN>Sale link that’s traceable. Even if there is (I see a TN on a wine, think that sounds amazing and order some right then) we can’t trace that action since the TNs don’t have links to merchants usually. If they did, the person buying the wine might decide to hit another web site or to call a local merchant… and even if we can track the fact that they clicked on a product link from a TN we have no way to know if they actually bought any of the wine (presuming the TN source and merchant are different sites). We could survey people… but that’s not much better than anecdotal evidence really and you get into matters of interpretation and memory.
PS: Honestly, most of the places you cite as providing sales bumps don’t either. The WS and WA will if the wine is highly rated, but not if it’s, say, a 90 point score. I know several wineries who’ve gotten scores in the 91-93 range from IWC and seen no measurable sales bump (this is pre-recession). The wines that see big bumps in sales are the ones that get scores above 95 or that belong to a region and vintage that’s raved about (2000 Bordeaux, 2001 Sauternes). So if you’re going to complain that web sites don’t drive sales industry-wide, I’d argue back that this is also true for the critics in general. Their effect is on the high end of the market in most cases.
Bruce, I’d say I suspect that “the web is having a profound impact on x” is the DEFAULT position nowadays; if you’re saying it’s not, the burden of proof is on you.