Transcript:
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:27:13
Hello bonjour and welcome to your new Bonner private wines video. Today, I’d like to start with you a bit of a wine video series, another one, about the most influential wine critics in the world, the most famous wine critics, and introduce you to the people who have shaped the wine world over the past few decades. So I’ll talk about Jancis Robinson, the Wine Spectator, Decanter magazine and some other names.
00:00:27:13 – 00:00:56:20
But today I want to give you a quick overview of the story or shall I say, the history behind the absolute goat in the wine world, unequivocally the most famous name and figure in the world, in the wine world of all times, Robert Parker. What is Robert Parker up to these days and what has his famous publication, The Wine Advocate publication, become since?
00:00:56:20 – 00:01:52:05
Have you heard about him lately? You’re probably wondering what’s up with RP. Let’s dive into it. Let me give you a brief history of Robert Parker. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1947. His father was a construction equipment salesman. Nothing to do with wine. Humble beginnings. Fast forward his youth, Parker graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law at age 26, in 1973.
00:01:52:05 – 00:02:28:01
Apparently, he discovered wine as a student visiting the famous Alsace wine region of France, where Patricia, now his wife, was studying. That’s the legend. While working as a lawyer in Maryland in 1975, he started writing a wine guidebook, which remained very confidential for several years. In 78, he published a direct mail newsletter called The Baltimore Washington Wine Advocate, which was later renamed simply The Wine Advocate.
00:02:28:03 – 00:03:01:00
From this humble beginning in the wine world, it took Robert nearly ten years to break through the establishment of wine critics when around 1983-84, he predicted that the vintage 1982 Bordeaux would become a collector, owned all the wine publications of the time, all the most influential magazines had said 82 had been too warm a vintage, climatic conditions too hot, that the wines were too fruity and not acidic or austere enough to age well.
00:03:01:01 – 00:03:28:19
Over time they said it would just be a short lived vintage. Decent wines while young, but with no aging potential and no real long term draw. Parker, on the other hand, tasted the wines and liked them, and for the first time in the history of wine critics, he saw the potential of wines made from greater grape maturity bigger, richer wines with more alcohol and body.
00:03:28:19 – 00:04:11:21
And he told his readers of the Wine Advocate to buy the vintage en masse, which they did. Vintage 1982 in Bordeaux, you have to know, turned out to be the best vintage for the region of the whole 1980s essentially, as we had to wait until 89 and 1990 to find the next legendary years for Bordeaux. Robert Parker had seen it all before anyone else and disrupted the established, established critics wine scene from the mid 1980s onwards.
00:04:11:21 – 00:04:43:08
Robert Parker’s influence on the wine world just grew and grew bigger as he became the wine tasting wine reviewer people trusted most to identify promising vintages and promising wineries and producers as well. So following his vintage 82 revelations, his publication, The Wine Advocate, became extremely followed in the US, first before the rest of the world caught wind of it and of this visionary and started following Robert Parker in his comments as well.
00:04:43:10 – 00:05:05:14
I would like to go back to this phenomenon that affected the wine industry from the 1980s to the end of the 2000, called the Parkerization of Wines in a future video because it deserves more time, an entire video time that I haven’t got here. So make sure to stay tuned and subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss when we discuss this.
00:05:05:14 – 00:05:31:06
But let’s just say that over the next 30 years or so, Parker’s ratings the first to be on a 100 point scale and this is important. You can watch more about how wine scores are established in another video right here because we discussed it in the past. Robert Parker scores became the gold standard for wine consumers and wine producers alike.
00:05:31:06 – 00:06:13:12
Wineries started chasing those high scores from the wine advocate, often pushing grape maturity further and further into October. Riper richer grapes to produce bigger wines, often oaky wines to please not only Robert Parker’s tastes because he favored those types of wines, but also what has been referred to as the American palate favoring larger, sweeter wine expression. And as I said, we’ll get back to this.
00:06:13:14 – 00:06:38:22
If you haven’t been living under a grape vine and haven’t followed wine news in detail over the former few years, you have to know that Robert Parker’s influence has been gradually fading away for the past 15, 20 years. In short, in 2006, Parker chose a group of staff members to cover the majority of the world’s wine regions in his place.
00:06:39:03 – 00:07:04:16
They would go out to taste the wines, not him anymore. Robert Parker scores weren’t really RP scores anymore from then, but at least there was still the wine advocate. But in December 2012, Robert stepped back from his full time position at the Wine Advocate, naming Lisa Perrotti-Brown as the publication’s new editor in chief.
00:07:04:16 – 00:07:49:00
Lisa and her team did a great job, but from there, the Wine Advocate scores got a little diluted among other wine publications, since it clearly wasn’t Robert Parker at the helm anymore. Famously, that’s an anecdote, but it’s telling one of Robert’s wingmen, Antonio Gallo, who had been tasting and rating wines from Italy, California, Champagne, Burgundy in place of Robert Parker for the wine advocate from 2006, one of his tasters abandoned the ship in 2013 to start his own competing wine publication called Vinous, a move some have called a betrayal.
00:07:49:02 – 00:08:20:16
Several years later, Parker retired formally in 2019. Business-wise, in 2017 Michelin, the famous culinary guide, acquired a 40% stake in Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. And in 2019, Michelin became sole owner of the company. Writing-wise, in 2021, Perrotti-Brown stepped down as the editor in chief and former managing editor Joe Czerwinski became the new editor in chief.
00:08:20:16 – 00:09:04:09
So everything has moved and evolved, let’s say. Robert Parker, wine advocate, currently employs nine wine reviewers each assigned their own one area of the world. William Kelly tastes Bordeaux in Burgundy, Chevalier, Champagne, etc.. Erin Books, for example, reviews the Oregan and certain parts of California and so on. The other seven taste other regions Italy, Spain and more. Today, the Wine Advocate is still a very respected wine publication, many subscribers and also many wine producers still read and listen to what their nine local critics are saying.
00:09:04:11 – 00:09:37:07
But it feels that there is a much broader wine scene of wine critics now and that the influence is more spread out between historic wine critics like Jancis Robinson, Antonio Galloni, who we mentioned, the Wine Spectator or Decanter magazine that are still here and more newcomers that are more significant now, which is why I would like to make more videos for you, introducing you to some of those very other alternative publications that are significant.
00:09:37:07 – 00:10:08:15
Now we’ll cover those in ongoing series for future video, so stay tuned to the channel for those. But in summary, Robert Parker’s and the wine advocates era of absolute domination over the world of wine reviews has come and gone, and perhaps for the better, the world of wine is diverse. At the end of the day, and wine publications maybe should be as well, but we’ll get back to this in future episodes.
00:10:08:17 – 00:10:28:24
Thanks for watching and I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine. Cheers.
