Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Robert Parker's Bitch


Robert Parker's Bitch from Josh Hermsmeyer on Vimeo.

Tina Caputo, editor of trade pub Vineyard & Winery Management Via Dr Vino's Blog
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

4 comments:

  1. MadwineApril 9, 2009 at 11:42 PM

    How out of touch is Paul Wagner, a columnist of the publication that put this out? To say people (the consumer) don't come in saying I only want to drink 90+ wines. Then to blame distribution outlets for not selling anything but high scoring wines. Then there is karen MacNeil from the CIA napa. Her excuse for high alcohl on the Sun? Really?!? Really the Sun? This is scary that CIA's Wine Studies Chairman has no Idea what she is talking about.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ryan MullinsApril 12, 2009 at 9:55 PM

    Brian,

    Thanks for your comments!

    The distributors and retailers are always easy targets that are all too often blamed for providing what the consumer is looking/asking for.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TheoApril 20, 2009 at 4:00 PM

    Ryan,

    A great story, but isn't it ironic that the journalist, Tina Caputo, also rates wines on a 100-pt scoring system for WineReviewOnline.com?

    ReplyDelete
  4. boydApril 29, 2009 at 6:53 PM

    Brian, I don't think I agree with your assessment on Paul Wagner. I actually enjoyed his perspective and thought his description of the challenges wineries, particularly small wineries, was quite accurate. In my experience, these guys live a holy hell trying to get any info about their wine out.

    And personally, in my years serving people, I never heard anyone request a 90+ point wine. What I did hear was a lot of sommeliers and retail shop owners closing a sale by pushing the points on people. What a lot of people in the wine business don't get is that many of the folks buying these wines don't even know who Robert Parker is. They are on expense accounts and just want a trophy. Or they have lots of money and just want a trophy. When they are made aware of the points, they then want that trophy because it's been hyped. God knows why it works, but it does. But at the end of the day, there are very few purists. And for the purists, the points rarely matter anyway.

    Overall, I think the point system has it's flaws and benefits. I do find it funny that if you watch enough of these videos and read enough of these articles knocking it, you start to see the same folks popping up again and again. To me, it's just their way of getting the word out about their juice. Some people do it by chasing the scores. Others do it by knocking the score whores. I do think the lesson of "be true to your wine style and your location" is paramount, but many will never do that. No matter what they're doing, at the end of the day, all they all are trying to do is sell their wine one way or another.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)