Influential wine critics
The silver tongued
Is the pen mightier than the buy-oneget-one-free special? It depends who’s wielding the pen. Joanne Gibson considers the influence of international wine critics and profiles some of the most important.
Who wouldn’t want to be a wine critic? Free samples, boozy lunches, travelling through beautiful parts of the country and indeed the world... Not to mention the occasional helicopter flip, lunch aboard a private yacht, FIFA World Cup tickets and, a personal highlight in my career, the Italian F1 Grand Prix at Monza in 2002 (perhaps hosts Eurowines would be gratified to know that I remember their wines better than who won the race).
Given all this VIP treatment, is it any wonder so many have inflated egos? But as the numbers swell, especially in the blogosphere where anyone with Internet access can share his or her self-declared expertise with the world, the question increasingly becomes: how much influence do they really have? A survey of 1 500 regular UK wine drinkers by market research consultancy Wine Intelligence in late 2008 revealed that 29% of people were influenced by wine critic recommendations – but far more people (64%) based their purchasing decisions on in-store promotions or simply grape variety.
According to Wine Intelligence, the best-known wine commentator with 18.2% of the votes was author and television personality Oz Clarke (well known to SA fans of Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure on BBC Lifestyle). However, this didn’t mean that people acted on his recommendations. Though Jancis Robinson MW was far less of a household name (in sixth position), she wielded significantly more influence on those who did follow her – but still nothing near that of American critic Robert Parker Jnr.
Selecting which of the world’s most important critics to highlight is no easy task. Will the ‘leading authorities’ on wine in South Africa take offence that I have left them out? I hope not (I’m not including France’s Michel Bettane or Australia’s James Halliday either). Taking nonproducing countries, Tomoko Ebisawa may be big in Japan, likewise Cees van Casteren in the Netherlands, Bengt- Göran Kronstam in Sweden, Beppi Crosariol in Canada, Subhash Arora in India, Jenny Tan in Singapore, and so on – but Parker and Robinson still hold more sway than most domestic hacks (according to Meiningers, www.wine-business-international.com).
Apart from some very important Americans, I almost certainly have a UK bias, not only because this remains SA’s most important export market, but because I was based there myself for five years. Not long, but long enough to develop a lot of respect for the likes of Tim Atkin MW (who I must point out was my boss at weekly wine and spirit magazine Harpers), colleagues like Neil Beckett and David Williams (now editor and deputy editor respectively at The World of Fine Wine) and contributors including Andrew Jeff ord (www.andrewjefford.com) and Anthony Rose (www.anthonyrosewine.com). Their writing surely inspires more readers to visit wine regions and try new wines than any newspaper columncum- shopping lists or ratings, even if the latter do shift more wines off shelves.
ROBERT PARKER JUNIOR
www.erobertparker.com
Parker is without doubt the most influential critic in the history of the wine industry. Having started out as an attorney in Baltimore, where he still lives, he launched a newsletter called The Wine Advocate in 1978. His approach (“judging wines for what they are, without respect to price, pedigree, branding or prestige”) and descriptive tasting notes were revolutionary in a traditionally polite, measured industry, but his real rise to prominence came with his declarations about the 1982 Bordeaux vintage – a vintage which coincided with the start of a 20-year bull market in the US that at least helped Bordeaux prices go stratospheric. Today his publication commands the loyalty of over 50 000 subscribers, with an estimated five million people reading his work on a monthly basis.
Despite having outsourced much of The Wine Advocate’s international coverage in recent years, how a wine scores on the 100-point system he introduced can still make or break it, leading some to despair about the so-called ‘Parkerisation’ of wine – ie winemakers attempting to produce wines deemed most appealing to his palate (big, bold and fruity) at the expense of regional subtleties. Describing most wine blogging as “useless noise”, he commands a strong online presence – having subsumed websites like the excellent Wine-journal.com (along with its British creator, wine writer Neal Martin, who is apparently now responsible for SA wine coverage, though sadly it seems there is nothing scheduled for the 2010 editorial calendar...).
Now 63, the man with the million-dollar nose says that his worldwide influence is “personally gratifying” but “often greatly exaggerated” (Harpers, 9 September 2009). Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely that any individual will ever again have, in his words, the same “mythical omnipotence”.
OTHER CRITICS OF NOTE
Parker’s 100-point system was adopted at Wine Spectator, America’s leading wine magazine, where recommendations are often made by panels rather than individual critics – and there’s much more to read here than tasting notes. Owned and published by MARVIN SHANKEN, senior editor JAMES MOLESWORTH is responsible for SA wines (www.winespectator.com).
STEVE TANZER of independent bimonthly publication International Wine Cellar is also highly regarded (www.wineaccess. com), as is ERIC ASIMOV of The New York Times (www.nytimes.com) who “likes SA wines very much” according to Rory Callahan, WOSA’s man in the US – good news considering the newspaper’s wide distribution.
GARY VAYNERCHUK
http://tv.winelibrary.com
Many young Americans may aspire to fill at least some of the void that Robert Parker will leave some day – ALDER YARROW of Vinography.com is one of the most influential bloggers (and has been covering SA wine regularly since his visit to Cape Wine 2008) while Veritas in Vino blogger ALICE FEIRING has even written a book entitled The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization (www.alicefeiring.com). But nobody is bigger than passionate (frenzied?) video blogger Gary Vaynerchuk.
While building his family’s small wine store in New Jersey into a $60-million-a-year business called The Wine Library, Belarusianborn Vaynerchuk is the first major wine critic of the YouTube generation, his highoctane Thunder Show attracting a daily audience of around 90 000 ‘Vayniaks’. He was one of the first to reach Facebook’s friend limit and he has nearly 900 000 followers on Twitter. Aiming to “bring wine to the masses”, his approach is at least as revolutionary as Parker’s was three decades ago, complete with throwing corks, eating dirt and sniffing armpits on camera.
Accused of dumbing down wine, he has described his detractors as “winesnob dickheads”, telling TIME magazine in June 2007 that he wants to “punch the wine bully in the face...I want to make sure this generation of wine drinkers isn't elitist and snotty”. But he does have the knowledge to back up his passion (indeed, none other than Jancis Robinson has endorsed him, saying that his taste in wine “coincides quite remarkably with my own” and that they “both love to introduce underrated wines to independently minded wine drinkers”).
Although some question his integrity given that he also sells wine, he vociferously maintains that he will pan any wine that he doesn’t like, even if it’s on his shelf. In any case, Brand Vaynerchuk is now far bigger than The Wine Library, which is why he is a sought-after consultant on personal brands, consumer brands and start-ups generally.
JANCIS ROBINSON MW
www.jancisrobinson.com
Meininger’s regards Jancis Robinson as the best wine journalist in the United States (though Robert Parker retains the ‘most influential person’ title). Of definite doyenne status among wine writers worldwide, the Oxford maths and philosophy graduate (and the first person outside the trade to have become a Master of Wine in 1984) is a prolific author, broadcaster and wine authority – not to mention adviser to Queen Elizabeth II’s cellar!
Not many others would have entered a ‘war of words’ with Parker (their difference of opinion over the quality of Château Pavie 2003 was well documented). Yet the Financial Mail columnist and Oxford Companion to Wine editor is surprisingly approachable, given her status, and always open to listen to new voices – take her (rather startled) appearance on episode 568 of Gary Vaynerchuk’s show, for example (not to mention a highlight of my own fledgling wine-writing career: “You wrote an article on Greek wine in Harpers a few months ago,” she recalled. “I must dig it out before my trip there...”). It’s little wonder she commands the respect of the trade, and of fellow journalists.
As mentioned in the Vaynerchuk profile, she loves introducing top-end but often under-hyped wines to her adventurous, moneyed followers – and follow her they do.
OTHER CRITICS OF NOTE
According to Meininger’s, as well as a straw poll conducted in UK magazine Wine & Spirit (no longer in print), TIM ATKIN MW “garners the most praise for influential writing” after Robinson. When his column (a “fairly free remit”) in The Observer came to an abrupt end after 17 years, over 1 300 supporters joined a Facebook campaign named Save the Wine Column.
He now writes a weekly 950-word wine column for a new food and drink section of The Times (where, despite dishing out occasional criticism, he is more of a friend to SA wine than long-term columnist JANE MACQUITTY, who famously dismissed a tasting of Platter’s five-star wines as a “cruddy, stomach-heaving and palate-crippling disappointment” and urged readers not to believe the “pro-Cape tosh in other wine columns”.
The SA industry reeled and immediately launched an investigation into the “burnt rubber” character she claimed was “typical”. But did UK consumers stop buying SA wines? On the contrary: sales recently overtook those of France...).
OLLY SMITH
www.ollysmith.com
Does the UK have a Gary Vaynerchuk? No, but it does have Olly Smith (famous for, among other things, having felt Ann Robinson’s breasts on a celebrity charity episode of The Weakest Link...). Having become a household name as the wine expert on popular husband-and-wife TV chat show Richard and Judy, he is now a regular on several shows and writes a number of wine columns, perhaps wielding most influence in the mass-distribution The Mail on Sunday.
Atkin is one of THE WINE GANG (www.thewinegang. com), an online wine ratings collaboration with four other respected critics: Anthony Rose of The Independent, Joanna Simon of House & Garden, Olly Smith (see above) and Tom Cannavan of Wine-pages.com.
Also influential is Daily Mail columnist MATTHEW JUKES who boasts a weekly readership of nine million and “definitely shifts wine” according to Jo Wehring at WOSA’s London office (see www.matthewjukes.com), as does JONATHAN RAY of The Telegraph, the UK’s biggest “quality” daily newspaper (www.telegraph.co.uk).
The UK’s leading wine publications are Decanter (which includes ratings, see www.decanter.com) and The World of Fine Wine (which doesn’t, being more a “cultural journal of the wine world” to quote editorial adviser Hugh Johnson, see (www.newinemag.com).
OTHER CRITICS OF NOTE
In terms of blogging, SIMON WOODS has recently celebrated “turning a nancial corner” with Drinking Outside the Box: Wines for People with a Life (www.simonwoods.com). But Wineanorak.com is the one I personally click on most, particularly for JAMIE GOODE’s thoughts on the science behind wine production and appreciation.
