[question] Question submitted by Meng Woie, Singapore Our taste and appreciation for wine is today affected by the few ‘super-evaluators’ like Robert Parker. Where can we find objective sources of information appraising wine? [/question] [answer] In an ideal world, the more people learn about wine, the more they should trust themselves. Given that most people can’t get to taste the number of wines that wine writers do, it’s also a good idea to hunt down a critic whose palate preferences most resembles their own. But that doesn’t really answer your question. I’m just back from a visit to the US, where the opinions pushed by Robert Parker and The Wine Spectator carry an inordinate level of influence. There are other wine critics in the US of considerable note and ability, such as Dan Berger (http://www.vintageexperiences.com) and Steve Tanzer (http://www.wineaccess.com/expert/tanzer), whose views I respect greatly. There are also several magazines such as Bon Appetit and The Wine Enthusiast that are circulated nationally. However, everywhere you seem to go where wine is important, Parker and the Spectator are the two big guns. I’m not so sure the same sort of thing could happen in Australia, where the public is perhaps more suspicious of according too much power and influence to individual tasters. In that country there are several nationally followed sources of wine opinion like James Halliday, Huon Hooke, Campbell Mattinson, Tim White and myself for people to pick and choose between. More Australian newspapers carry in-depth wine and food sections than you typically find in major US cities. There are three national wine Australian magazines, and dozens of individuals who write about wine for at least part of their living. In other words, the diversity of opinion is sufficiently great that a Parker-like figure would have difficulty emerging from the Australian market. Perhaps it’s an American thing to identify and follow a leader to the extent that your own opinions hardly matter at all. I once met an American (a Microsoft millionaire from Seattle) who retired early and spent much of his time going from one international diving spot to another. I asked him which ones they were, to which he simply replied; ‘The eight best in the world’. So I asked him what made them the eight best, only to find that some magazine had made a list of them. That was all that mattered; nothing more, nothing less. There’s a similar danger of just buying wines by their scores or by their presence in ‘Top Ten’ lists. These are usually cobbled together by critics meeting the so-called ‘modern’ requirements of their editorial departments, and are generally close to meaningless. I’d like to finish with the same cautionary note with which I began: at the end of the day there is no more independent source of opinion for you to follow than yourself. [/answer]
