Is High-Alcohol California Wine Inevitable (Robert Parker’s Bitch, Redux)
“The industry has done everything wrong” – Paul Wagner
Well… this is interesting!
1WineDude
The documentary that takes an informative and entertaining look at the subject of whether or not California winemakers are making wines for Consumers, for themselves, or are producing busty high-alcohol bombs in order to chase the almighty dollar that comes from pleasing the palates of a few wine critics, thus achieving an influential high point score and subsequent boost in sales.
Many excellent and educated opinions are offered from standout figures in the California wine world, including author Karen MacNeil, winemaking icon Randy Dunn of Dunn Vineyards, and my new marketing hero, Paul Wagner of Balzac Communications.
Let’s just say that the topic is… complicated…
And the documentary takes an admirable stab at trying to breakdown enough of the complexity to make the topic palatable. Personally, I loved it, despite the lack of explosions, fist-fights, and nudity.
The vid is worth checking out if only to hear the comments of Paul Wagner, who clearly understands the topic at it’s most fundamental levels and matter-of-factly (and correctly) states that the wine industry has basically gotten wine marketing wrong for long, long time – and that there is a new generation of wine lovers emerging that don’t give a crap about scores, established critics, or the “rules” or wine appreciation / recommendation.
Amen, brother!
The 25-minute gem is embedded below – highly recommended.
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Robert Parker’s Bitch from Josh Hermsmeyer on Vimeo.
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Cheers!
March 17th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
thanks for the heads up on the video Joe, that was great and right on point
March 17th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I watched this video the other night and found it very interesting (although a little one-sided). I personally never buy wines based on numbers; they don't mean anything. Everyone's palate is different, so these reviews are completely subjective.
Gary V told an interesting story how they made up reviews and numbers and posted them in front of their wines at his store. It was just a test and most of the reviews and numbers were bogus (this 91 point wine will make you invisible when you drink it – Hank the Wine Expert). He found that people purchased these "rated" wines much quicker than anything off the shelf (most of them not even reading the review). He also said that he has a lot of clients that aren't wine drinkers, but buy from him in large quantities for events and parties. Most of them buy purely based on parker's and spectator's ratings… Wine is an intimidating thing to most; if you don't have much experience or interest in wine, then it makes it "easier" to buy on ratings.
March 17th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Thanks, guys. I found the video less interesting in terms of the points / ratings debate, and more interesting in talking about how "wrong" the wine world has gotten its marketing approaches.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
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