To be honest, the relationship between us, the industry, and the wine press has been a varied one over our three (plus) decades. We started Winex (such as it is) in 1982, roughly about the time The Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator gained substantial enough readership and influence to ‘move the needle’ with respect to sales of a particular wine. The emerging, expanding wine-drinking population was looking for guidelines to help them select from among the increasing array of wines in the marketplace. These two publications in particular were in the right place at the right time with formats that were palatable enough to generate substantial followings. In turn, those ‘followers’ began to have more impact on the marketplace as they reacted to reviews and bought up the lauded wines.
Now that we are about 35 years into this process, and possibly witnessing a change in the landscape, it seemed a reasonable time to assess where we are. It started simple enough with the reviewers giving their opinions about various wines they tasted, and people heeding that advice. As a greater number of people started to follow these scribes, the intensity of the reaction elevated. A big review was like that proverbial magnifying glass focusing the ‘rays’ of demand into a white hot flashpoint that burned up the existing supplies of showcased vinos faster and faster.
The industry had the opportunity to hold their own in the face of this growing phenomenon, but instead largely accepted that it was easier to just paste up reviews than generate their own sales programs. For most of the time since, buying and selling based on reviews was the only program for most retailers. Still is. Exploring most wine web sites, you will find cut-and-paste reviews almost exclusively on most, and virtually no original text.
The introduction of the internet increased the power of the press and made their chosen sites more accessible more quickly. The whole buying/selling process became much quicker accordingly. What took a particular wine a few weeks to sell through before could now sometimes go from start to finish in an hour or two thanks to the internet.
The wholesalers/wineries/importers, reacting to getting blindsided by people buying up reviewed wines (and nothing else) did what they always do…overreacted. Tie-ins (which aren’t technically legal) and abuse of the ‘allocation’ process were chosen as the best defensive tools for purveyors to make sure peole don’t corner too many of the ‘cherries’. That is loosely where we are today, although it has been a little easier to get some of the high-demand, highly reviewed goods simply because the market is so fiercely competitive thanks to greater variety, higher quality of goods, and a much more widely educated buying public.
As most of you that have followed Winex over the years, we are about as fiercely independent as a merchant can be today. The wine writers’ hype is a tool for us to use when we like something to get the message to buyers. But they have never been something to be blindly followed without question. We have turned down many wines over the years that we could have sold through in a nano-second simply because we don’t think the wines are good enough. We have had a love/hate relationship with the press for all of these years, which we will explain in a minute.
First let’s give credit where it is due. The reason that we have a more educated wine-buying population these days can be attributed to a large extent to the wine press, which has explored, explained, and helped develop a broader understanding and appreciation of a number of genres that were not en vogue back in the early days. People are aware of, and more comfortable with a much wider range of wines than ever before and, because of that, are presented with even more to choose from by virtue of that broader receptiveness. A lot of this can be credited to the press covering those formerly off-the-beaten-path categories and educating the consumer. If you write it they will read?
Also the press has revved up the discovery process. It took years for a brand to develop in the marketplace, even decades. But a new wine or winery can be an instant icon with some timely press coverage and a couple of big scores. Yes the ‘waters’ run faster in today’s wine news cycle and things can pass by rather quickly. But there is plenty to be had if you swim fast enough, and really even if you don’t.
Our point is that, while we sometimes get a little miffed with the wine press, and have pointed out a number of things we see as flaws in the ‘process’, in all fairness they have been a big part of the development of the wine market over the past quarter century. Now that there are a few more players in the ratings game we’ll see how it shakes out. More opinions shouldn’t hurt the message, though it could dilute the impact of a particular review.
That being said, we felt the need to mention a couple of things to the writers themselves. We would ask the banal question ‘who pays your salary?’ Consumers and the trade presumably are using ratings services to help them evaluate choices in the marketplace. Do they have the same objectives? Perhaps, perhaps not. But the ‘why?’ isn’t the issue. So much stuff hits the market every year at such a high rate, every byte of usable information can help sort it out. It is the definition of ‘usable’ that we are debating today.
We were reading the Wine Spectator the other day and happened to notice their review of the 2014 Ramonet Montrachet at 98 points. The piece stated that ten cases were imported. You can only imagine our relief at knowing that someone had tasted one of the rarest and most collectable white wines in the world, in an outstanding vintage, and deemed it worthy. We can rest secure in the knowledge that if we had $1100 to drop on a single bottle of Chardonnay (if you could even get it for that) and could find one of the remaining 119 bottles that came into the U.S., it would be OK to pull the trigger. Is this usable knowledge?
We can say the same thing about a number of other highly reviewed icon wines. Does it really matter to anyone if Sine Qua Non gets a 98 or 100? OK maybe to Manfred Krankl, though the guy doesn’t really need the hype to sell wine any more. It might matter to the few guys that buy wines like that to ‘flip’ so they can seek a higher resale return. But to most folks, what is the message? That the reviewer got to taste the wines and you didn’t? That you should start thinking about getting on the waiting list to be on the waiting list? Is this usable knowledge for most folks?
We grabbed a few ‘special report’ titles from Wine Advocate to further illustrate our point:
–A Retrospective of Barone Ricasoli’s Vin Santo del Chianti Classico -30 tasting notes
–Sunday Prayers with Trotanoy 18 tasting notes
–Tenuta San Guido – Bolgheri Sassicaia Retrospective 47 tasting notes
–Chateau Montrose 1893 – 2014 62 tasting notes
–Valandraud Complete- 45 tasting notes
–2007 Southern Rhônes – Living Up to the Hype at Age Ten? 192 tasting notes
–Bordeaux: The Pauillac of Margaux – Brane-Cantenac 1971-2013
It didn’t take long to get that list, and we could dig deeper into multiple publications and create the ‘mother of all lists’ regarding this sort of thing, but the point is that the information in many of those articles isn’t necessarily actionable or of any real value to most readers in a conventional context.
Is there an audience for these pieces or is it writer’s self-indulgence? If you are telling me in detail about wines I have little likelihood of seeing, let alone tasting, how am I enriched? By sharing in your experience vicariously? Thanks a bunch. I would question how many subscribers were actually seeking this kind of information when they signed up. But since the publication already has the money, readers don’t have a lot of say about they are being served.
There will be arguments that these kinds of tastings augment the tasters’ experience and therefore their ability to assess wines oveerall. Street cred. To that we would rebut that such experiences can have just the opposite affect and jade the palate beyond reason and make everything else such people taste seem ordinary. We know people like that.
A ‘consumer report’ that delivers the message that virtually everything is banal or ordinary, except a few things that you likely can’t buy, doesn’t really help those consumers very much. Yet this is the direction such publications seem to be leaning over the last few years in particular. If writers view their role as being the de facto sales department for winery-only, boutique wines or the guy with the 119 bottles of Montrachet, let them pay you, too.
We say to the wine press, come down off your high horse. Reviewing page after page of wines that most folks will never see, except at a restaurant at three times an already hefty price doesn’t benefit most consumers. Climb down out of your high castle and be among the little people. We drink pretty well ourselves and still think a lot of this stuff you writers do is indulgent and over the top. What’s next? Jayer Cros Parantoux vertical? The 1947 Bordeaux 70 years on? Favorite 5-case production wines? We’re sure it will make for compelling reading, but really what is the point?
Simply, when writers take up space with this kind of stuff, we don’t believe they are serving the best interests of the majority of their clients. We can say for ourselves that we read much less in these publications than we used to. Are we jealous? Would we like to get paid for our detailed notes on the 1985 Romanee Conti lineup? Sure! But we can’t imagine who would pay for that, nor do we really need such info from somebody else. It is more likely, if we adopted that business model, we’d end up on a freeway off-ramp with a cardboard sign that says, “will pontificate for food.”
