Friday, April 23, 2010

5 questions for Robert Parker

This blog entry by Steve Heimoff is a very informative discussion of wine reviews. It discusses how wines are reviewed: blind or open and shows how the wine industry is pressured by the reviewers scores. When a reviewer tastes with the winemaker at the winery and subsequently reviews the wine it is not an objective review at all. An objective review is performed blind (the reviewer doesn't know who produced the wine). Make sure you know how the review was performed and whether or not the reviewer purchased the wine or if it was given to them by the winery.


Be sure to read the comments.

It is critical that wine reviews are performed blind in a controlled environment with purchased samples. This produces an unbiased evaluation of the wine.

As a winemaker I hold monthly tastings where we taste our wines along with others we have purchased in order to get a feel for the marketplace and our position in it. We do everything we can to keep it blind and unbiased, otherwise it is a pointless exercise.

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