Dan, since you mentioned speculation - as for wine lovers less passionate and obsessive than many on this board, I suspect Wine Spec is their publication of choice.
Mostly speculation but I believe they are doing well in Asia and have cultivated a large subscriber base from that area, also they seem to value the brand more than the individual critic.
Good point, Dan. I don’t think anyone here knows. My comment was about the downfall in the quality of the product, not on its economics. I have my guesses about the latter but no facts
If you look at the free Alexa stats, robertparker.com has declined from a ~100K rank (lower the better) to ~250K from the beginning of the year to now. I would estimate that corresponds to a ~3x decline in terms of monthly unique visitors. How much of this decline is real / systemic as opposed to seasonal / an artifact of the measurement process I have no idea
Looking at vinous.com tells a different story with what looks like a sinusoidal fluctuation about the ~300K mark - but that fluctuation looks to be highly seasonal
Interestingly, vinous.com’s rank in Hong Kong is 16,974 whereas robertparker.com’s rank is 31,401. Vinous is therefore doing better in Hong Kong on a comparative basis, and I’d intuitively expect that to hold for Asia in general
Chart for robertparker.com below; take this with an enormous grain of salt:
Chart for vinous.com:
Maybe they can go “Spinal Tap” and dial up the top score to 101 for truly special wines!
I don’t see that as a joke, I see it as inevitable.
100+ POINTS
Maybe they can go “Spinal Tap” and dial up the top score to 101 for truly special wines!
Wouldn’t it be 110. Guitar to 11 based on 10. 110 based on 100 scoring system. 
And you know what score is in the middle of that scale?
93.5, which rounds to 94? 
I think there’s another element as well: The business model has changed. Subscriptions are no longer supporting these businesses. It’s events, sponsorships, critic-branded stemware, etc. So the “critics” are all competing to be quoted. That doesn’t happen if you write about an excellent 92-point wine.
Let’s not forget they only review an upper echelon, very select group of wines, only Spectator, Enthusiast and Wine and Spirits really delve into the $9-20 wine category, so of course scores are skewed high.
What happened to the consumers advocate?
Interesting. Do you really believe that wine is objectively better? To the extent that we get 34 perfect wines, when one or two used to be the indicator of a great vintage?
Personally I don’t buy the idea of perfect wines anyway. Certainly not at age two or three. But that song has been danced to many times here.
once i saw that all the 100 pt wines dont fit on a single page and i had to hit “page down” it became more clear that i do not appreciate WA any longer. yes farming has improved in napa, yes winemakers are more knowledgeable today etc etc. i appreciate all that! but… i do not believe 30+ wines merit a perfect score.
I also have tasted a number of wines which were given 98+ and several were good but nothing meriting above a 95. in my opinion score inflation is out of control and i can no longer take WA scores serious.
I remember when Merus got 94 points for their 1998 Cab, when reviewed in the 2001 WA.
It set off an explosion of interest that included an article in the NY Times and other magazines, brought Mark Herold two wineries to become a consultant for (Buccella, Kobalt), sold Merus out for years to come, allowed them to double their list price in 3 years, set the aftermarket at two to three times the list price and eventually allowed them to sell their winery for millions.
Now if you score 94, you are the 300th best Cab of the vintage and no one will ever hear your name.
I don’t have any insider information, so this is just guesswork. The BB is not a barometer of subscription numbers but the opinions expressed over the last year about TWA have been almost all negative, especially since Neal’s departure, which was handled rather badly. Many long term subscribers said they were leaving, so presumably they have. I suspect that TWA has a generational problem anyway - the original RMP subscribers are inevitably…getting old. The Parker brand has already lost a lot of resonance and TWA has yet to define itself as a separate brand. They seem torn between two strategies: having excellent writers, such as WK, who express their own opinions, but at the risk (eg SQN) of upsetting the old guard, or having other writers who are certainly very good, but who toe the line. Since all scores and notes are published as “RP”, it would seem that they have chosen the latter path - which makes it much easier when you have to change writers.
I have no bone to pick with Lisa Perrotti-Brown: she was hired to do a difficult job. The decisions are presumably made by the owners. Nobody could have guessed that first Jeb Dunnuck, then Neal Martin, would leave. When Neal left, I presumed that Lisa was merely a stop-gap decision for Bordeaux coverage, because she clearly has not got the experience, nor the time to acquire it. Her first Bordeaux report was an obvious realignment of the brand, away from NM and back to what RMP had become in his later years. One or two so-called pros have made lots of hay elsewhere by “cloning” RMP’s taste or just copying it, which is pathetic in itself, but as a long-term strategy, it cannot possibly work. Although there are still people who pay to see The Australian Pink Floyd every year, so what do I know?
All those 98+ wines are off to the lab to be analyzed against every measurable attribute to train the model that predicts greatness. The formula goes back to the consultant and the winemaker and you have a cottage industry of high end wine manufacturing. I’m sure the thought process isn’t unique to California or Bordeaux.
Insightful!
it’s both.