This is indisputable. For me Parker was instrumental in fostering my interest in wine and as a bonus my tastes in wine aligned pretty well with his. Were his reviews without fault, of course not. But for me they were the best guiding light of the day.
While the quality of the education obtainable by traveling the discovery route yourself and learning first hand from the producers may be unmatched and the experience valuable in its own right, it’s not practical or possible for many. Especially when there’s an intervening ocean.
I disagree with the bolded above. The argument that no money for travel means no money for wine is reductive. I can try a lot of critic- or friend- or berserker-recommended wines with the thousands I would have to spend visiting just a few producers in Europe. If I’m part of a tasting group, the cost sharing expands the tasting and opinion sharing opportunities immensely. I may lack some of the depth of knowledge gained from tasting with the producers. Some of that can still be learned second hand from others who have or by reading.
The wise man learns from experience.
The happy man learns from the wise man’s experience.
The fool drinks Meiomi. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
As a bonus, apparently RMP has re-reviewed some of his 100 point wines. Has anyone with a Decanter subscription checked it out?
It’s a pretty nice article I would say. And Jefford did a fair job.
This explanation of his scoring system is actually logical and defensible. What the article did not mention was that Parker insisted that he was tasting wines blind for many years after he had stopped doing so. That harmed his reputation and called into question his general honesty, which was a shame.
‘I was dissatisfied with the 20-point system,’ he told me in March 1995, ‘because it didn’t give me enough latitude, and the 20-point system as formulated by the University of California Davis just takes points off for faults and defects, and I just didn’t like that kind of system. I felt that wine criticism had to be both analytical and hedonistic, and I would lean more to the hedonistic. It is a beverage of pleasure, let’s never forget that.’ Scores may be philosophically untenable but they are, in the practice of wine assessment, inevitable; Parker just used them more successfully, consistently and systematically than anyone else. He turned them into a universal short-hand for wine quality, though he always emphasized that the words were more important than the scores.
And interesting was the comment on oak - he’s accused of loving oak but actually loved the wines from CdP because they had less overt oak and more overt fruit.
All in all it’s a fair piece.
I never played in those leagues, but '90 Leroy Bourgogne was one of the legendary QPR buys of all times. $10 maybe? It had a lot of buzz on the wine boards back in the day and I bought my share of it. All long gone by now, of course.
He bashed the 82 Petrus, calling it a tragedy. Robert Parker’s view today: As perfect as a young Bordeaux could be from five-to-six barrel tastings in 1983 and 1984. From bottles, a diminished product: thinner, and seemingly stripped by aggressive filtration. A tragedy.
Still loved the 82 Mouton, 82 Pichon Lalande, 90 Duffau-Lagarrosse, 89 Haut Brion, 90 La Chapelle et al
Fantastic thread, and I agree with the OP that putting Parker in Decanter’s Hall of Fame is LONG overdue - must have been an oversight, really. Perhaps they themselves assumed he was in it already 
I know this might sound a bit crazy, but I have the felling that part of Parker’s notoriety and widespread acceptance - even beyond the borders of the insular wine ‘clos’ - is due to his great name: Robert Parker. I remember being a poor student and buying wine from supermarket shelves every now and then. I didn’t know Parker and had no idea who he was, but seeing a wine with “90 points Parker” on the label gave me some kind of subliminal reassurance; his name too good-sounding and authoritative to be doubted. It is the kind of name that is common and easy to say. Makes for a catchy brand. Think about Tim Atkins, Jancis Robinson, Lisa Perrotti-Brown. Try saying “Lisa Perrotti-Brown gave this wine a 90” to someone, and I bet you’ll hear back: “who?”
Now say Robert Parker. I bet the person in front of you, even without having no clue about him, will nod his head, “ah, Parker, yeah”.
Quite a crazy musing, I know, but one wonders what is in a name.
I agree! When I was learning about wine in the mid 2000s, 90 points Parker was an important “shelf talker”, and influenced many buys, especially in French GSM. Napa came later, because at that point I could not afford the best of Napa. I do miss his reviews, no matter the “hindsight is 20/20”, with that said I think my tastes align with Antonio Gallioni. Additionally, if anything, I rely on Wine Berserkers and Cellar Tracker to help me make buying decisions.
William,
you talk about Burgundy and in Burgundy almost anything has gotten expensive lately. Burgundy is special because the wines are produced in such tiny quantities. But Burgundy is only a pretty small wine producing area. Every experienced retailer will tell that wines without scores are hard to sell these days so the scores may be an information for consumers but they are the most important marketing tool for producers and merchants also. Sure – you can put your focus on the information aspect alone. But that is not even half of the truth. I am aware that we can not be in the same boat because you make a living being a wine critic and I am a rather old wine lover who “is into wine” for almost 40 years now. I have seen and experienced what happened in the industry. Some of my relatives are or were wine producers and merchants.
David,
there were times before the internet and beside traveling people could look for a good and trustworthy retailer. Due to the internet and wine critics many producers get into the focus of buyers worldwide. With the effect that these wines explode in price. That is how the market works. A lot of wine lovers are not able to afford the wines any more. I do not consider this effect as an advantage for wine lovers. The people with very deep pockets do not care. That is clear. The advise for people with average income is: look elsewhere. That is social Darwinism as its finest and even cynical IMO.
It beside the point that Burgundy is small. You said that critics are responsible for the price escalation. William said that this might indeed be a factor but might not explain the entirety of the price increases, proof being wines with escalated prices which didn’t get good scores or got no scores at all.
What you, Jürgen, forget is that in the past 30 year, the world middle class increased by more than 500 million people and in addition, the number of millionaires increased threefold in the past 20 years. Supply and demand. There you have your REAL reason for the increased prices of wine. Btw, you can see similar price increases in most other luxury goods too.
Isn’t it an “advantage for wine lovers” when thanks to the internet, critics and information no longer just a small group who travels to all the regions, a small group of insiders or locals can drink these wines? Today, you can buy and drink these wines all around the world. As with everything else, the internet and vast information it contains (incl. all the content of the critics) democratised the wine world, levelled the playing field. So I would disagree with your point that internet/critics made wines less available for anybody. To the contrary, they made it more available.
Of course the prices increased for many wines, making these highly priced wines impossible to reach for many (the reason being the growing wealth and middle class, not the critics/internet). But is it again the critics and the internet which show those who cannot afford the most highly priced wines the next big brands and less pricey alternatives.
I liked the article, thought it fair and revealing. I liked that he acknowledged his Burgundy blind spot. The picture it painted of Parker more closely matched his real-life persona (from the few occasions I had to spend time with him) than his on-line character on eRP.
Parker did a lot of good for the industry and for my personal appreciation of wine during the first half of his career. Promoting cleanliness without sterility, greater ripeness (to a point), and democratization of wine enjoyment.
He had more negative effects later on: notably increased prices and Parkerization. Neither of which were attributable solely to his influence. He did drive greater interest in wine and greater demand, but without consumers buying his recommendations, and re-buying them once they found they liked them, neither would have taken hold the way they did. He’ll deny Parkerization until the day he dies, but there’s no question he was a significant factor in the shift to ever bigger, riper, more extracted wines.
Overall I’d say he was a major net positive for the industry and for wine lovers. Most of his positive influences are sticking, while at least some of the winemaking excesses are being dialed back. Unfortunately, it looks like increased pricing is one that’s here to stay.
To Jurgen, I think you paint with an over-broad brush when you say that those with deep pockets don’t care. Some do. They love the wines for what they are as wines, not status symbols, and are happy to share with less well-heeled enthusiasts. But I doubt I’ll ever again be able to afford many of the great wines that were easily accessible when I was starting out. From that perspective, I share your disappointment with pricing.
Andy,
let´s play a game. Vinous, WA, Decanter, Jancis all rate Lafite 2019 below 90 points. Do you think this will have no effect on the price of this First Growth Bordeaux? This scoring should not play a role if the influence of the critics is as little as you suggest.
Maybe that’s not a good example. The 2019s are going to be hurt by the virus.
As to the influence of critics, there isn’t one like Parker was. So it would be a really interesting study to see how it works today when you can find one of many many critics to support your wine. Overall I don’t think any of the critics writing today have the influence that Parker did, partly because there are so many more people who enjoy wine today, and more importantly, there are so many people who know wine and don’t rely so much on a single voice. The US wine industry exploded during Parker’s tenure and towards the end of it the Chinese market exploded.
The British critics never had much traction in the US market, at least insofar as they drove sales.
I would just add that I think the sheer number of critics, most using the 100-point scale, has eroded the influence of all critics. There is no single, trusted voice as there was with Parker for two decades. Most consumers have no idea who these critics are now.
Plus, every wine is above average, which is about 93 points today. Twenty years ago, when Parker handed out 94 or 95 points, it meant something. Today that’s the baseline. That undercuts the impact of writers, I think.
I agree with John and Maureen. Bob’s willingness to reflect on his prior mistakes, and confess error, is refreshing and admirable. His place in the wine world is almost unequaled; if he isn’t in your Wine Hall of Fame, why have one?
I hope he is feeling well and enjoying his richly deserved retirement.
Jürgen, I find the “influence of the critics” to be more significant when it’s universally positive rather than negative as in the scenario you proposed.
I don’t think negative reviews these days affect the desirability or pricing of wines nearly as much as they did in the past, especially for longstanding well-regarded brand names like Lafite. I mean suppose a future vintage of Lafite scored sub-90 across the board, it’s not like it’s going to be priced at the level of a similarly rated Crus Bourgeois chateau.
Don’t quote me wrong. I’ve never said that critics don’t influence prices of a single wine. They do upon release and later the average score every wine drinker gives the wine (as mirrored on Cellartracker) is a further influence for Continous price development.
But you complained about the high price level for wines in general vs the much lower levels 20, 30 years ago. And the main reason here clearly is the growing wealth and wealth concentration and certainly not some critics and their scores. As said before, you can see these similar price increases with basically all luxury goods out there (and they never had critics with scores to rate them)… it’s just limited supply vs increasing demand. Simple economics.
Your mistake is that you mix up the influence a critic and score can have on the price/performance of a single wine in a single vintage with the fact that general price level of fine wines/luxury goods increased due to the wealth effect.
I do not deny that the world has changed the last 30 years and that globalism has and had an economical impact. And it is true that nobody can blame critics alone for rising prices. That would be way too simple. But as I said – some of my relatives work(ed) in the wine business. And for them the influence of scores on demand and price is very relevant. Ask people ITB und you will get a picture.
I think that if we play this game, we also have to entertain another counterfactual—one that I evoked above—whereby Lafite release the 2019 “Grand Vin” not as Pauillac but as a red Vin de France. And if you concede that that this, just like a negative critical consensus, would lower the price; then presumably from your perspective, in the interests of consumers, we should also abolish any kind of hierarchical AOC system in France? Because it is clear that appellations have definitely augmented prices for many French wines, and arguably much more appreciably and for longer than professional wine criticism.