Update to Review of The Wine Advocate 2007 Australian Segment  (4 December)

Since I wrote the original story, two significant factors have come to light that were worthy of investigation and reporting. This addition came about thanks to my interaction with a couple of wineries that read my review of the Australian section of the latest Wine Advocate. 

When researching this article, I had to check out the Southern Starz website and found something I was not looking for; I will cover that topic first.

I was appalled at something on their home page. (Disclaimer: I have broken bread with the two owners of this US wine importer on a number of occasions, and am reasonably friendly with one of them, but that does not preclude me from tipping a journalistic bucket on them if they deserve it; you guys shouldna done it!)

The original article stated, “In Australia, retailers who rely on points to sell wine love high scores from anyone whose name consumers will recognise. When retailers used to say “Parker rated this 97 points” and consumers would ask, “Who the heck is Parker?” there was a credible answer; “the worlds most influential wine critic.” They can’t say that with Jay Miller. Some have already used the phrase “Robert Parkers Wine Advocate Issue #173”, with or without Jay Millers name to try to “enhance” the score.”

It seems that “enhancing the score” is not restricted to Australian sellers. On the Southern Starz home page, there is this box:

Here is the issue. The scores for those Australian wines have not been written by Parker and have absolutely nothing to do with him. Claiming they are Parker’s points is disingenuous, lacks credibility and Southern Starz, who pride themselves on their honesty, should be ashamed of themselves. They know better.

Those scores are Jay Miller’s scores and not Parker’s. The publication they appear in is the Wine Advocate, or if you want to go so far, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, but claiming those scores are Parker’s is dishonest.

I can only wonder how many other retailers are, or will be doing the same thing, and if I spot them, I will “out” them too.

Onto the second topic! What I was looking for on the Southern Starz site was information about wineries that were not written up in the hard copy edition, but had apparently been posted online. My earlier research found six of the wineries from the Southern Starz portfolio fell into this category. This seemed strange so I emailed John Gorman and asked him what happened, and for his thoughts. He responded, “We were disappointed that several of our wines never made it into the printed piece and that several (in most instances the same wines) never made it into the web section at first. While we don’t like to admit it, a positive review for any wine at the start of November means an opportunity to drive business during the holidays. When we taste with these writers, we generate our own sense of what we think the wine is worth and if we’re really cheeky, we might even base our purchase plan on our perception of what that review might say. With that said, we understand fully, that the Jay is not under any obligation to post a review within a certain time frame, nor is he under any political pressure to empathize with our possible financial exposure should the news be either bad or non existent. That’s our risk and we accept it and roll with those punches. Pissing and moaning about it accomplishes nothing. It’s called rolling with the punches.

After noticing that several reviews of ours were missing, we made contact with Jay and asked him to research the matter. As a result it was discovered that due to a technical glitch, a number of reviews (not just ours) were not posted on the site. To their credit, the minute this fact became self evident, they remedied the matter and posted the missing reviews. This took place recently and those reviews are now on the site. Corrective action and journalistic integrity like this are at the core of their fiduciary duty to the public and accordingly they performed appropriately. How could we possibly complain about that?

As for the missing reviews in print, I think it’s important to remember that while we all hang on the edge of our seats waiting for the printed issue to arrive; they have a business to run. They budget to print so many pages and to fill those pages with reviews. A lot of wines have to be cut or the price of a subscription has to increase – simple economics. We got unlucky this year in that five or six of our brands never made the printed version. Yeah, it sucked. But I hardly believe that someone at their end dutifully sat down with the scalpel and sifted through the reviews looking to cull Southern Starz brands – business is tough but we have yet to stoop to that level of paranoia.”

This response raises a number of points that need to be addressed. Firstly, the importer relies on the scores of the scribes, so in responding to me, no one in John’s position is likely to say anything that is likely to get the scribe off-side, no matter how upset they were that it took weeks to correct the situation.

In my original story, I reported that six of the Southern Starz portfolio (as well as a number of other wineries) had had been written up in the previous Australian edition had been dropped from this edition. That statement only scratched the surface. The Southern Starz website shows the reviews and scores for all the wines that were shown to Miller. The following is a list of wineries that were reviewed by Miller but did not make the hard copy edition. There is not six; there is in fact thirteen wineries from this one importer alone.

So what does this mean?

First the importer has to get in front of Miller to get the wines reviewed, and not all of them make it. Next the wines have to score highly enough to make the cut off for the hard copy publication, but now comes the third, until now probably unknown hurdle. Even if the wines score highly enough, there is no guarantee the winery will make the publication and the decision to include or drop appears to be arbitrary. Since this information has come to my attention, I have spoken to some winemakers, and to say they are not happy about it is an understatement.

There is a further consideration. For many years the hard copy was the be-all and end-all of the Wine Advocate and up until recently, the publication of scores on the website came out days after the hard copy was mailed.  The rationale behind that was to give everyone the same chance to get the information at the same time. The print copy subscription base was the major revenue generator. There were, and to some extent still are, howls of outrage when some people have to wait longer than others for the snail mail to arrive. Now, given that there are so many reviews that are not published in the hard copy, is it losing relevance and is the website the most important component?

If the 13 wineries (and were there any others) missed was an oversight and anyone can make a mistake, then the Wine Advocate should apologise to the wineries involved. If it is not an error it begs the two questions. Firstly, if wines score over 90 why are they not included and what is the criteria for inclusion? Secondly, given that it looks like the online version is gaining importance and space is not an issue, why isn't there a list of all wines tasted on the website, even those that are not good enough to be written up?

Finally, it is interesting to note that in days gone by a mention of the Wine Advocate on this site would always draw lots of reaction, often by email. The latest review has yielded almost no response. That reinforces my feeling that the Wine Advocate’s impact on Australian wine sales will continue to reduce and become less relevant to consumers. 

Feel free to submit your comments!