Archive for the ‘Wine Media’ Category
Seven years of blogging about wine will produce some interesting changes in a person. With this, my 2,361st post on Fermentation, I mark the seventh anniversary of maintaining this platform. My output over these past seven years amounts to 6.5 posts per week for 364 weeks. I'm not sure what kind of an achievement that is besides perseverance and habit maintenance. However, it has produced in me the formation of some ideas about wine blogging, writing, journaling, the media and…
My recent interest in the work of Robert Parker flows from the recognition that in my 20 years working in wine marketing, this critic has ranked among the most influential forces in the American marketplace. It's a remarkable story insofar as the Wine Advocate was not begun by Robert Parker to so impact the marketplace. And yet, there he stands. In addition, along with the Wine Spectator, Wine & Spirits Magazine and the Wine Enthusiast, Robert Parker has been an…
This post continues a series in which I look at the meaning of Robert Parker's Wine Advocate's ratings of California wines. In these posts I assume that the Wine Advocate's power is important to the California wine industry and that the percentage of wines within a category that are rated 90 points or higher is an appropriate proxy for the Wine Advocate's overall view of the quality of a category. A funny thing happened on the way to the 2002…
It was an astounding 78% of 2009 California Pinot Noirs receiving 90 Points or more from the Wine Advocate that got me thinking more about Robert Parker's history of rating wine and what it meant. I've come to the conclusion that the percent of wines within a category that received 90 points or higher from the Wine Advocate is a reasonable proxy for a reliable assessment of that category by Wine Advocate reviewers and Robert Parker in particular. The above…
The nature of "90" isn't an easy thing to nail down. On its face, a wine ranked 90 points or higher should suggest that it falls into the top 10% of all wines of its type. But we know that's not what a 90 means because we know there is no such thing as a 20 or 30 point wine. Perhaps it is enough to say that a wine ranked 90 points or more is a wine the critic liked…
