Wine Critics

(See also: Robert Parker, James Suckling)

The wine critic as we know her or him is a rather new phenomenon related to the popularization of wine consumption in the English speaking world during the 1960s and gaining momentum during the 1970s. There is no official training for wine critics and they tend to come from artistic or intellectual backgrounds. However, the most influential wine critic of modern time, Robert M. Parker Jr., was a lawyer and therefore named his wine newsletter The Wine Advocate. That made him seem less snooty and more reliable to his readers. Along with his use of the 100 points scale that was a major factor leading to his breakthrough in the 1980s. Gut Hermannsberg receives all the serious wine critics, but we also worry about a tendency towards “judgment inertia”. By this we mean the scores a critic gave to previous vintages of a wine influencing the score they give the new vintage of it, regardless of the wine’s actual quality. Since the Financial Crisis the majority of wine critics have declined in influence as the Social Media have grown in importance, but the reliability of many wine recommendations on the Internet is dubious.