NEWS: Parker fully retires from Wine Advocate

The writing was on the wall, but there's no denying Robert Parker's influence. He has stopped writing wine reviews, for the first time since the "Baltimore-Washington Wine Advocate" was published back in 1978.

https://winejournal.robertparker.com/ro ... e-advocate

He was clearly ahead of his time, with leisure activities of all kinds now focused on the "best", preferably as quantified by independent experts, rather than finding one's own taste and believing that there is more diversity in palates than quality. Why have some 84 (or lately, 89) point mediocre wine of a style that suits the cuisine when you can have a numerically superior cabernet sauvignon? Why visit an obscure European town that aligns with your interests when you could visit a certified UNESCO World Heritage site? I believe those who came before that technical faults were much more common when Parker came on the scene, but by the time I started tasting wine seriously about 20 years ago it was exceedingly rare to find something that was loaded with VA or oxidized or truly flawed.

[Jenise]

She said he basically retired two years ago and we all pretty much know that he's been ineffective of real influence for longer than that. Which isn't to denegrade him, it's just so. Wonder if there were some legal complications that required them to formalize it in this way. And it's interesting that she doesn't mention his health issues, which I've understood are pretty major.

Early on, Parker's schtick was that he was an independent outsider--not part of the wine biz like the prominent critics of the time (late 1970s). And indeed he started out by visiting local wine shops, buying what was there and what his budget allowed, and reviewing those wines. But by the early 1980s he was doing barrel tastings at the Bordeaux chateaux. He came to national prominence with the 1982 Bordeaux vintage. I subscribed to The Wine Advocate for about 10 years starting in 1985. At the start of that period he was still reviewing whatever he could lay his hands on locally. By the end of that period he was no longer an outsider, but rather an integral cog in the international wine marketing machine. I miss his wonderful turns of phrase for truly awful wines. For example, a 52-point cabernet he called "the vinous equivalent of Liquid Plumber". I had the misfortune to taste that wine, and he was right.

I think Parker will be remembered most for killing off the "food wine" fashion. He claimed early on that a lot of weak, insipid stuff was being explained away as "food wine", and I think he was right to some extent. Unfortunately he managed to replace it with the "over-oaked fruit bomb" fad.

Being educated as a scientist, I had the concepts of accuracy and precision in reporting numeric measurements beaten into me. I therefore have never liked numeric scores for wine, as I feel that they claim more precision than is warranted. Parker's 50-point system is even worse than the UC Davis 20-point system in this regard.

I met Parker in person once. His enthusiasm for the enjoyment of wine is infectious.

Like him or not, this is the passing of an era.

-Paul W.

Web wine sellers over here don't seem to have heard this news. My inbox is still full of offers for wines with high "Parker" scores. I find these a real turn-off even though the individual WA critic concerned may have a palate more attuned to mine than was RMP's.

[David M. Bueker]

Web wine sellers over here don't seem to have heard this news. My inbox is still full of offers for wines with high "Parker" scores. I find these a real turn-off even though the individual WA critic concerned may have a palate more attuned to mine than was RMP's.

The publication is (still) officially called Robert Parker's Wine Advocate.

So they are all "Parker scores."

I'm still kicking myself for not asking RMP about that 52-point cabernet he reviewed when I met him in person. I've always wondered what he awarded it those two points for. Maybe because it was red, and it wasn't actually poisonous?

-Paul W.