Who is Robert Parker, really?

‘Parkerization’; how can a man who makes no wine and sells no wine be both so admired and vilified for driving global tastes in wine? As this week, we will be examining the outsized role of critics in driving trends in wine styles and the economics of the wine industry, I thought it would be interesting to learn a little about Robert Parker the man[1]. The man with “the world’s most prized palate[2]” and “the world’s most powerful wine critic[3]” is the 69 year-old son of an equipment salesman from Baltimore. After attending the University of Maryland and graduating from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1973, Parker worked as corporate counsel for a bank for ten years before devoting his full attention to wine. He first became interested in wine when, as a student, he visited Alsace and enjoyed the wines there. He started writing about wine in 1975. His goal was to write about wine from the perspective of a consumer and not as a wine industry insider. He started his now famous wine newsletter, the Wine Advocate, in 1978 using mailing lists purchased from several wine retailers.

He made his name by bucking the reviews of other critics, when he called the 1982 vintage in Bordeaux exceptional. He went on to earn a reputation as the world’s foremost critic of the wines of Bordeaux. Parker developed his 100-point rating system to bring some consistency to wine rating and to counter what he perceived as bias inherent in the ratings of other contemporary wine critics, many of whom had financial interests in the wines they were rating. Similar points rating systems have been copied and adopted by many other wine critics and publications. Parker has been accused of unduly influencing wine makers to produce fruit forward wines with low acidity made with very ripe grapes. He advocates reducing vineyard yields, late harvest of grapes to ensure maximum ripeness, and micro-oxygenation to soften tannins. Critics of Parker even have a name for these practices, ‘Parkerization.’ They point out that wine makers from around the world are making wines in this style so as to achieve the maximum possible score from Parker to boost sales, leading to an undesirable homogenization of wine styles.

Parker claims that he tastes 10,000 wines per year and remembers every wine he has tasted over his nearly 40 years as a critic[4]. Parker claims that he rates highest those wines which give him most pleasure, thus acknowledging an emotional component to his ratings. Parker’s rating scale is said to influence both wine prices and wine sales and a high score may be worth several million dollars to a wine producer.

As we heard in class today, there are now hundreds of sources of information on wines available to consumers and many non-experts are involved in rating wines, leading to the democratization of the evaluation of wine. Given these social trends it is hard to see another super-critic of the stature and reputation of Robert Parker emerging in the future. Thus, when he finally steps down from his still highly visible public role, his retirement will represent the passing of an era.

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[1] Robert Parker. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Parker_Jr.. Accessed February 17, 2017

[2] Edgecliffe-Johnson, Andrew (December 14, 2012), "Robert Parker, the American Bacchus", Financial Times

[3]  Teague, Lettie (December 10, 2012), "A Wine Advocate Hands Over Reins", The Wall Street Journal (paper), pp. B1;B3

[4] Langewiesche, William (December 2000). "The Million-Dollar Nose". The Atlantic Monthly. 286 (6): 42–70. ISSN 1072-7825.