Wine for Normal People Radio: Wine Chat 003: Parker v. Galloni, and the Loosening Grip of Traditional Wine Critics’ Influence

As we're making our way through edits for this week's podcast, we did a Wine Chat/Mini-cast to fill in. This is on a very important issue that I think is going to shake up the wine critic world permanently. Kind of a big deal.

Here's a link to the Decanter.com story that covered this:Parker v. Galloni

If you don't want to read it, here's the short of the story:

• Famed American critic Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate, who single-handedly sets prices and makes reputations for wines and who has arguably changed the way winemakers make wine so they can garner high scores, sold a large portion of his brand to a group of Singapore investors and shook up the structure of the subscription-only newsletter.
• His named successor for evaluating California wine, Antonio Galloni, stepped down after the move and started his own Web site. He decided to withhold all the scores for Sonoma wines he had conducted prior to the sale, stating that he would publish them on his new site free of cost. Galloni, like all the Wine Advocate writers, was a contractor and felt it was within his rights to keep the scores, as they were for the next publication cycle not the one for which he had been compensated.
• And I'm sure you can guess what's happening now. LAW SUIT! The problem -- Parker wants to retire. Now he has to cover CA wines along with Bordeaux and Rhône, which is no small feat for a guy who is on the doorstep of retirement. He's also faced with a vote of "no confidence" from a major player on his former team in a very public forum. Not great for the Wine Advocate brand.

M.C. Ice and I discuss what we think this suit will do to the wine critic industry and how it may just be the best thing that's happened in a very long time!


Enjoy and let us know what you think! 

Here's the link (click on the arrow to activate the player at the end of the post): LINK