Comments on: One Robert Parker

By: Michael Pleitgen

Michael Pleitgen — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:29:47 +0000

Dear Thomas,

very interesting point: “house style”. I worked with one of big importers and distributers in Germany. When you taste for years with the same peers, even blind, you agree very quickly on a wine. So from time time you have to take some time off or taste with a different group and see wether you stand their arguments. For a buyer it’s relatively easy to see wether he’s right: he follows the sales of his products.

Michael Pleitgen

Weinakademie Berlin, Germany

By: Thomas Matthews

Thomas Matthews — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:57:03 +0000

Should a publication be consistent regardless of who reviews the wines, or should a critic be consistent, regardless of anyone else’s views? Neither position is entirely satisfactory. I would say we at Wine Spectator have a general “house style,” shorthanded as preferring ripe fruit, balance, concentration, typicity and lack of flaws. Yet the editors often taste together in blind flights, and usually there is some variation among scores. So ultimately readers have to trust the individual tasters, or at least trust the publication to choose tasters who are well-qualified for their beats.

Thomas Matthews
Executive editor
Wine Spectator

By: GregT

GregT — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:18:10 +0000

Parker was faced with two choices – limit coverage or add more people. In the early 1980s there were maybe 6 wineries in Virginia; today there are over 125. That’s Virginia of all places. Washington State has somewhere between 520 and 550 wineries today, against a fraction of that several years ago. California has even more. Spain has simply exploded – there were many growers for centuries, but they weren’t exporting and many sold their product to co-ops whereas today they make their own wine.

So Parker could have continued to cover Bordeaux, the Rhone, Napa and Sonoma and maybe all of California, and one or two other areas he knows and loves. But his workload can’t possibly allow him to cover all regions any more. So if he wanted to cover more regions, he needed to bring in additional help.

TMs method of introducing a new critic isn’t bad. Another way is to fold in other existing critics with expertise in specific areas. The Wine Advocate did that by bringing in Galloni for Italy and Schildineckt for Germany and white wine regions. Those people may not have the same palate as Parker, but they’ve established their own palates and reputations. In some new and emerging regions, there are no widely recognized experts, so you don’t have that option. I believe that he brought in the other critics because he felt that their palates were fairly aligned with his, and that’s not a bad plan either, if one wishes to maintain a consistent approach. He was faced with a tough choice and there were pitfall with any approach he took.

Because WS was subdivided much earlier, it seems more accepted, but as an experiment, it would be interesting to have the critics at both publications all rate a number of the same wines and then to compare the scores. Ideally, they’d be pretty tightly clustered for every wine and then you’d know what “grassy” meant. If they weren’t consistently clustered, you simply need to understand the individual critic. I doubt that many people have the time or inclination to do that.

By: adamjapko

adamjapko — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:20:29 +0000

Thomas, thanks for the excellent update and video link on the tasting beat approach at the Wine Spectator. Suckling and Laube are credible guys with consistency on their side. I have been a subscriber to both the Spectator and Advocate since the 80′s, and greatly respect the depth of new release coverage and, mostly, industry news and personality presentation. Along with my regular tasting group, I cut my teeth more than twenty years ago learning Parker’s language, as one taster, as a benchmark in shaping my personal preferences without converting to his. My point in the “One Robert Parker” post is that things were more straightforward when every review was the result of one palate and one author (Parker); year in and year out.

I remember noting the growing list of new correspondents at the WS and Advocate over the years as they joined, and each time recognized that I would need to work harder at developing a reliable interpretation of any one review. Your point about Wine Spectator staff palate calibration is quite interesting, and recalliing the shaping of our tasting group’s palate over time, it absolutely works. Multiple correspondents appear to be practical and necessary for comprehensive coverage considering the global reach of the industry, so it appears wine enthusiasts will just need to work a little harder and root for staff calibration and extended tenure in the editorial staff ranks of leading wine review media.

Adam Japko
WineZag

By: Thomas Matthews

Thomas Matthews — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:34:07 +0000

At Wine Spectator, many tasting beats have been covered by the same editor for decades: James Suckling in Bordeaux, for example, or James Laube in California. When we do give a beat to a new taster, there is an extensive transition period where both editors work through the wines together to calibrate their palates. And before we allow a new taster to assume any beat, there is an apprentice period of several years of wide-ranging tastings and extensive testing. I think the Renaissance art studios is a fine corollary to our practice.

For a good introduction to our methodology, please watch our free video, “Inside the Tasting Department.”
http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Free/Video/0,4258,353549858_1527680295_1374431132,00.html

Of course, in the end, each taster is responsible for his or her regions (signing reviews with their initials), and ultimately has to earn readers’ trust on their own.

Thomas Matthews
Executive editor
Wine Spectator