Month: August 2019

We just republished a piece we did more than a year ago that we called ‘score wars’ that spoke of our concerns as merchants about how more reviewers were tossing more and bigger scores into the collective well and how that might adversely affect the public psyche moving forward. In other pieces we have tried to present balanced views of what a ‘score’ actually meant and how the process of evaluating wines en mass, as most of the writers do, can yield much different results than someone evaluating them one or two at a time.

We realize there is no perfect system. But the massive amounts of information that most of scribes have generated over the years is of definite benefit to the consumer in terms of education and guidance. We can still remember the days when most wine reviews came out in the local newspaper on a Thursday (usually as a part of a high-end lunch paid for by the purveyor) or as some adjunct list in a monthly non-wine publication (which were usually way too late for any real market relevance as many of the selections were long gone or blatantly commercial).

The current review environment that has served the industry and consumers reasonably well over the last couple of decades is however at something of a crossroads. Previously consumers had a narrower but more predictable group of reviewers to rely upon. There weren’t that many publications that had significant impact, and you knew the ‘players’.
Whether or not you agreed with, say, Robert Parker, you knew where he was coming from and could calibrate the information within your own tastes.

Nowadays there are many more voices hurling a wide and sometimes disparate range of scores. Also there are significantly greater numbers of wines coming to market, so the amount of information the consumer has to digest to be really informed is daunting. We can tell you this. A few years ago, we didn’t have to know when a publication was due to release a new report (though we usually did). The phones would tells us. Nowadays a publication coming out and causing the switchboard to light up are extremely rare. Why is that?

Granted a lot of publications have changed the personnel doing the reviews and there are more reviewers out there being quoted. That can certainly be numbing to the consumer, especially those that are just getting into it. We like to think we do a lot to parse that sea of info and present it in digestible nuggets. But there is so much. Also, thirty years ago a great friend and mentor told me that ‘great wine is like a bus…if you miss one another will be along.’ That has never been truer than right now. There is an astonishing amount of great wine out there now, and maybe the sense of urgency in light of that is ebbing a little.

We are still believers in the reviewer-based info simply because, for better or worse, you have a body of knowledge and a track record that provides a consistency. We are very specific when purveyors present us score that they show us in print. Far too many times the truth gets ‘lost in transmission’. In the end though, you find out who said it and can calibrate accordingly.

While we are still on board with reviews, however, there are some disturbing trends that could derail a publication’s relevance, particularly with new consumers. Elitism seems to be growing among the ranks of reviewers, particularly if you believe as we do that they are beholden to their subscribers. It is bad enough that the same few labels always seem to come out on top, and they are usually the rarest and most expensive. But lately the ‘historic tasting’ is on the rise. Just who exactly is an article like “Drink Your Idols: Roumier’s Musigny 1976-2008” supposed to appeal to? It’s a small group to be sure.

Another review site has been a little slow on posting their reviews because they are spending a great amount of energy hawking their ‘glamorous’, globetrotting wine shows. No offense but we subscribed to get wine reviews, not to get sold on some other agenda. As Bill Belichick might say, “Do your job.”

In the ‘old days’ competitions and fairs were more relevant. But you don’t know who the people judging the competition are so the ‘findings’ are somehow less significant. However if the reviewer ‘system’ continues to degrade or collapses altogether, what will people do? As we look at the world around us, and the current proliferation of the ‘public forum’ for everything from doctors to mechanics to restaurants, the prospects are a little chilling.

Things like ‘Yelp’, while we have some personal misgivings about the system overall, can be useful in finding certain things. Auto mechanics, for one. Someone can tell if their car runs correctly or not. It’s something everybody has some experience with. Allowing for the fact that the ‘naysayer’ types will respond disproportionately, the public forum may provide useful information in making a decision.

But when the subject is less black and white, and more subjective, the public opinions provided must be taken with a few grains of salt. Like those judges at the country fair wine competition, you have no idea who the people posting on a restaurant on Yelp-like sites are or what their experience/expertise is. A guy could bag on a place just because he didn’t get a free dessert, or say it is ‘hideously expensive’ because he usually eats at Olive Garden.

For all of the reasons we named, and many more we didn’t get into, it is quite possible that the world of ‘wine reviewers’ might not resonate with the next generation. It may well cease to be highly relevant with the current one if things continue as is. Then what? Wine reviews in the public forum where anyone with a keyboard can anonymously pass judgement whether they are knowledgeable or not? Vinous Yelp? Oy!

In January of last year we put out this piece, but we think the message is still relevant as well as a background for a couple of things we will be generating as the next chapter of this ‘story’.

It wasn’t that long ago, in a place not so far away, that we expressed concern about what would happen to the wine world as the media continued to expand.  This was pretty much back when James Suckling left the Wine Spectator to set up his own shop, and our fear at the time was that there might be a certain rise in overall scoring as this new entity tried to garner a readership.  After all, it is axiomatic that consumers do not concern themselves with wines that get a B+ (89 point scores), so one of the ways to get your name in front of a new audience was to become more ‘quotable’.  How does one achieve that?  One way is to issue ‘enthusiastic’ scores on certain wines that would surely be quoted by those of us trying to sell said wine, which in turn would give a certain credibility to the reviewer.

Selling by third party endorsement became a growing industry tool back in the late 1980s as certain wine media sources, mainly the Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator, made inroads into consumer wine awareness by virtue of their easy to digest 100 point scales.  Yes there were words, too.  But the familiarity of the general populace with number grading because most experienced it in school, and the quick evaluation a consumer could make just by quickly looking up a number, embedded the system in the collective wine psyche.

It didn’t help that most merchants were lazy and quick to adapt to someone else providing sales avenues via published reviews.  Using third-party press relieved them of the responsibility of actually doing their own work and removed their liability in actually giving their customers their own opinions.  This indemnification made the retail trade the writers’ biggest fans and the constant attention that the majority of retailers gave to third party reviews gave the media tremendous power.

Remembering back however, what was different back then was that the scores themselves seemed to have honest intention on the part of the media to give the consumer the appropriate perspective.  Back in the day, a 93 point score was a pretty enthusiastic endorsement, a 95 was a must have, and ‘88’ and ‘89’ were still viewed as positive prose for wines that were value priced.  There were shockwaves in the industry when Robert Parker issues his first ‘100-point’ score for a domestic wine, the 1985 Groth Cabernet Reserve.  Such scores were quite rare then.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and the value of individual scores gradually depreciated.  Sadly after the turn of the century, no matter how glowing the prose, a 90 point score barely elicited a response from buyers and ‘92’ became the new ‘90’ for value wines.   Giving a wine ‘89’ these days is like a witness protection program…no one will find the wine because they won’t look that for down the list.  All kidding aside, this is what we have observed behaviorally for a while now.  But the worst it seems is not over. 

Part of it has been predictable given the way the James Suckling site established itself.  Suddenly however there are a lot more ‘players’ competing for consumer attention.  Antonio Galloni worked for Wine Advocate, then left to set up shop on his own, subsequently purchasing Stephan Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar and incorporating that writing team into the fold.  Most recently he hired away the Advocate Bordeaux specialist Neal Martin.

Jeb Dunnuck was brought on to Wine Advocate to focus on Rhones and then got other responsibilities on the domestic front.  Jeb left to set up his own service (or more correctly re-setup as he had his own service prior to his engagement with Wine Advocate), knowing full well that his own service would benefit from his exposure with wine’s most influential review source.  He just recently kicked off his own program.  Given the ‘defections’ and the fact that Robert Parker himself has greatly scaled back his post-sale involvement, editor Lisa Perotti-Brown, MW expanded her role in the Wine Advocate review writing.

So where are we now?  Well it is fair to say that previously there were two main review services being followed, 2.5 if you count the respected but not always ‘quotable’ Tanzer publication.  Now there are five that directly resulted from the initial two and a number of others that are at varied stages ‘market penetration’, but arguably have much less clout.  There are likely some ‘startups’ we haven’t even run across yet that are U.S. based.   All of them have plans to become, or in some cases retain a powerful voice among wine consumers.  Sadly, it appears that another dangerous score escalation may be in the offing.  It has been coming for a while.

A few years back, after the sale of the Advocate, Robert Parker did a ‘second look piece’ on 2002s from Napa Valley.  Now here was one of the most powerful critics of any kind, someone who had been generally judicious in handing out triple digit reviews (with the possible exception of elite Bordeaux and Guigal and Chapoutier  speicalty bottlings).  But in this particular issue in June, 2012, in one section, ‘The Bob’ handed out nineteen 100 point scores!  Now granted, one could argue that this was the beginning of Parker’s ‘farewell tour’ after a storied career and he was making friends.  One could also point to the lineup (Abreu, Harlan, Sloan, Schrader) as the Napa Cabernet version of the ’27 Yankees. So what’s a few 100s among friends.  That was unprecedented at the time and we saw it as a departure from the conscientiousness of Advocate’s prior history.

But it is what has been happening recently, with reviewers operating in new positions or trying to establish new services, really has us concerned.  Lisa Perotti-Brown’s first significant foray into the Napa Valley generated fifteen 100-point final scores and 32 that were either 99 or had a range score that touched perfection (98-100).  Perhaps a little surprising to some is that three Chardonnays were awarded triple digits.  Pretty rarified stuff.

Not to be outdone, there was plenty of firepower to Jeb Dunnuck’s opening report of the Napa Valley.  Now one of Robert Parker’s strengths was his enthusiasm which he could convey through the written word.  Jeb showed plenty of numerical excitement in his inaugural work, handing out no less than 31 ‘100s’ and a good slug of ‘99s’ (21 actually).   Thirty one ‘perfect’ wines?  In a single category? Really? Someone used the term ‘jumping the shark’ for this opening salvo/love fest.  More important, if the perfect score becomes commonplace, it also will seem less special and have less impact, not to mention how it undermines all of those poor souls that only got ‘96’ which, ‘back in the day’, was a very good review. 

We could make a few, albeit less sensational examples to illustrate what we are talking about with respect to the current round of ‘score wars’, but it’s the overall impact that is the problem.  With more publications slinging around more 100s and other lofty marks, perspective goes out the window.  The consumer will start getting confused, even numbed (a number of the trade already have), and sensationalism will rule the day.  With so many more items pushed up against that finite ceiling (since you can’t have more than 100 points) separation becomes much less clear and it all starts to lose meaning. 

In the end, if this proliferation of over the moon scoring continues, where does it end?  People thinking the only way to get a decent bottle of wine is to pay $300-500 on somebody’s mailing list? Does ‘95’ become the new ‘89’?

Is there really that much perfection in the world or are all these writers trying to win friends and influence the marketplace for their own agenda?  It’s hard to say but it is clear we are entering dangerous territory. 

These publications are supposedly designed to help consumers sort through the myriad of wine choices out there.  Passing out big scores like Halloween candy might get the writer ‘in big’ with the wine elite.  It might help Andy Beckstoffer charge even more for his grapes. But we fail to see how it helps the consumer very much, and they, my dear reviewers, are the ones that pay your bills.  If, for whatever reason, your audience stops listening, it’s nearly impossible to get them back.