Robert Parker vs. The Blogosphere
Creative Commons licensed image from Flickr user kiki99
Dr. Vino led a charge last week in posting an email exchange pointing out that an employee of The Wine Advocate, the uber-publication run by uber-critic Robert Parker, may have gotten a little hook-up on a recent tasting trip.
In a recent thread, Jay Miller was shown to be on a road trip that included three dinners at Bern’s restaurant in Tampa Bay in the presence of, among others, three importers (Eric Solomon, Patrick Mata, and Jose Pastor) whose wine he reviews for the Advocate.
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Some people commenting on the post got all in a tizzy, both asserting surprise and outrage.
Look, Robert Parker takes a fair amount of crap out there from people trying flying the “trust your palette” flag. Lots of people don’t like that a 98 from Parker means the wine is immediately scarce and selling for $300 a bottle. But, there’s so much other wine out there that I don’t understand why you’d even bother pounding away about it. So one of his guys allegedly took a kickback down in Argentina. Big deal. Almost everyone who started a wine blog got into it so they’d start getting free wine in the mail (Memo to VA/MD wineries: I’m still waiting).
But what made this launch kind-of cute was that Parker threw a little where-did-that-come-from jab back at the very bloggers who are at the gates with pitchforks. In a response to a thread on his own forum, Parker wrote:
.looking at that [North American Wine] Bloggers Conference, it does look like a big and free sloppy kiss and then some from the California wine industry...with much more than minimal hospitality offered…love to see some transparency from the bloggers(how many of them are paying for travel,car rental,hotels and meals?).
Emphasis mine because it is awesome. Entire conferences have been held about how wineries can harness social media and reach all these people with keyboards and WordPress installations (again, still waiting. My email address is on the about page). Maybe some winery employees met up with some Bloggers at the Wine Bloggers Conference. Maybe they didn’t. The wineries want to get the wine in the hands of people spreading the word and they’re working conference, Facebook, and Twitter to do it. Is their goal to taint the professionalism of the Blogosphere? Probably. They’re trying to sell wine, after all.
I have, though, found that Bloggers (a rather insecure bunch) are usually all about full disclosure about wines they receive as promotions, comps, or gifts. Most Wine Bloggers are trying to look, sound, and feel legitimate and therefore stamp disclosures on their posts like a badge of honor.
I received this wine as a promotional sample from the winery… and you didn’t.
In summary: everyone is on the take. Trust no one, except me because I haven’t received any promotional samples.
