Book Review
The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste
By Elin McCoy (New York; HarperCollins Publishers, 2005)
Reviewed by Donald Calvert*
July 15, 2007
The next time you’re in a bookstore, make your way over to the magazine section on food and spirits. There, you’re likely to see several wine magazines, including Decanter, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and Food and Wine. A subscription to any of these, supplemented by your own trusty palate, would probably tell you all you need to know about wines.
What you won’t see in the stacks of magazines, however, is a bimonthly newsletter called “The Wine Advocate” written by a mild-mannered, middle-aged, everyday guy by the name of Robert Parker. A former lawyer who lives in rural Maryland far from the hubs of critics in New York, London, and Paris, Parker is widely believed to be the most influential wine critic. In fact, some say that no other critic in any industry wields the kind of power that Parker (and his rankings) have on consumer, retailer, and producers.
Consider this. Last month, The Financial Times wrote a story, "The Power of Parker Points," which underscored the enduring power that Parker's famous (and controversial) 100-point rating system has on global wine consumption and production trends. The article concluded that, "Parker remains the most powerful voice in the global wine investment game." In addition, this month's issue of Britain's leading wine magazine, Decanter, gave Parker the number one ranking in its 2007 Power List of wine journalists that exert a direct influence over current and future wine consumption trends.
It seems hard to fathom how an obscure American with no formal wine education could rise to dominance in a multi-billion dollar global industry whose soothsayers are traditionally a handful of mostly European critics. How did Parker become such a dominant force in the industry? Why is he now so respected by many—but also feared, and even loathed by others?
Such questions are explored in The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste by Elin McCoy, herself a respected wine journalist. McCoy's book details Parker's transformation from lawyer to wine critic; examines the controversies surrounding his rating system and his persona; and concludes with some personal reflections on these issues after having known Parker personally and professionally for 25 years.
Parker's Ascension to World's Top Wine Critic:
McCoy explains that Parker enjoyed a happy, but modest, upbringing in Monkton, Maryland, not far from where he lives now. In 1967, as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, Parker traveled to Europe to visit his then girlfriend (and now wife) Pat, who was spending a year in France. Not only did Parker fall more deeply in love with Pat during that trip, as McCoy notes, he also became hooked with French culture, food, and, inevitability, its fine wines.
No sooner had his plane landed back in America from the trip did Parker take to learning everything he could about wines, setting up tasting groups with college friends, and taking meticulous notes on each glass drunk. In time, Parker had absorbed everything he could from the existing wine literature. Even with his newly-acquired understanding of wines, Parker found himself at a loss as to why some mediocre wines (in Parker’s estimation) commanded top dollar, while other, more-savory wines sold for a fraction of the price.
Parker endeavored to create a reference system for consumers that would be straightforward and cut through the generalities that peppered the wine reviews of the day. Accordingly, Parker created a simple 100-point system that would give each wine a numerical score (100 being the "perfect wine") and include a brief narrative assessment to each wine tasted.
Parker's system was unique not only in its quantitative methodology, which had never been used before in wine rankings. His narrative critiques of wines gave consumers his take on a wine's value for investment purposes. In other words, Parker's system was aimed at two consumer bases: one being people seeking to get the best wine for their immediate consumption; and the other being "wine fanatics" who sought to buy wine in quantities as "futures" where they would put money down while wines aged in barrels. Like financial futures, wine futures offered investors significant windfalls, but also carried serious risks. If their purchased wines went bad in the aging process, their investments could go south. Parker's two-pronged ratings, therefore, appealed to wine consumers and investors alike, and were unprecedented in their exactness and frankness—which many would eventually come to appreciate, while others would detest.
As Parker developed this system in the late 1970s, McCoy relates, two obstacles stood in the way of him getting his rankings to consumers and investors. First, he needed a publication to showcase his findings. In 1978, Parker started a mail newsletter, The Baltimore-Washington Wine Advocate, with an initial base of 600 subscribers. Nearly 30 years later, it has become The Wine Advocate, and has some 40,000 subscribers in the United States and 37 countries around the world.
However, by the early 1980s, Parker was still an unknown voice in the chorus of wine journalists. With The Wine Advocate in place, McCoy points out, Parker's second challenge was to find some kind of pivotal, watershed event that would propel him, and his newsletter, to a more national, even global, base beyond the Washington-Baltimore corridor. That opportunity came in 1983 during an historic debate about whether the 1982 wines coming from Bordeaux, France represented “vintage” wines worthy of consumption and purchasing for investment purposes.
In March, 1983, Parker had visited Bordeaux and felt that the 1982 wines he sampled represented a turning point for the region, which had fared poorly during the 1970s due to poor climate conditions. Certain other, and more established, critics at the time wrote off the 1982 Bordeaux wines as being "disappointing" and "very odd." Parker’s take on the Bordeaux in early 1983 became a turning point for him; for, as the year went on, more critics came to agree with Parker. More importantly, wine consumers, investors, and retailers followed suit. Stock prices of Bordeaux wines took off.
McCoy argues that Parker's enthusiasm brought new life to an industry that badly needed a boost of adrenalin. In fact, in 1983 the New York Times praised Parker as having come along in “the nick of time,” adding that wine retailers around the world needed a “Simon Says, someone whom the public would believe.”
Parker’s ratings had a broad appeal to consumers, retailers, and producers alike. That appeal was most likely the system's simplicity; it gave reluctant American (and other) wine consumers and investors a simple, quantitative assessment that helped them to make sense of the seemingly endless numbers of wines on the market. Perhaps, she notes, Americans could identify with the 100-point system from their school days. Or, maybe it was their admiration of an ordinary American guy who had the gutsy determination to make his way into an elite world of “more learned critics” in far away vineyards.
Whatever it was, Parker was on the rise. By the late 1980s, he was tasting up to 10,000 wines per year and according them ratings in his newsletter. In addition to the newsletter’s expanding subscription base, Parker also wrote six books on wines, all successes, from 1985-2005, which continued to cement his position in the industry.
Controversies Surrounding Parker & His Ratings:
The second half of McCoy's book explores the controversies surrounding Parker that grew concurrently with his influence. At a practical level, she notes, the wine sales affected by Parker's ratings had both winners and losers, depending upon his rankings. Some smaller wineries who were judged low in his ratings took a hit financially. Even larger wineries came to love and fear Parker's visits. Eventually, McCoy points out, Parker’s visits to wineries sometimes resulted in shouting matches where vineyard owners would contest Parker’s ranking of their wines, while he often retested—and seldom changed—his original scores. In time, Parker even received death threats, was sued by certain producers, bit by dogs at chateaux's he visited, and forced to hire private investigators.
To the other prominent, mostly British and French critics, Parker was increasingly seen as an overly dogmatic, self-appointed judge of wines that had been cultivated in vineyards for years, decades, and even centuries. To some, he became known as the "100 point pulverizer." One British critic, McCoy points out, called Parker's ratings "full of over-assessment, under-assessment, and just plain hype." Another admonished him in print, telling him that "a little humility is now in order, Mr. Parker…"
As McCoy points out, there were valid critiques to Parker's 100-point system, which some see as a gimmick approach that oversimplifies wines. His rankings, one could argue, are reductionistic, relegating wines to either "winners" (the ones he likes) and "also-rans." Given that a person might react to the same glass of wine differently depending on any number of factors, critics argued that there simply was no way that Parker—or anyone for that matter—could accurately and fully gage a wine's value and taste with the kind of finality that Parker's ratings purported to do. Others noted that wines could change character in the barrels, so that Parker’s take on a wine from a barrel in Rhone might be quite different when it reached the retailer in America. These critics argued that his system distorted prices and; paradoxically, contributed to the steep prices that he had so long railed against. Finally, wine producers making wines to “please Parker” seemed hardly in the interest of the wine consumers that Parker had for years sought to champion.
McCoy concludes her book by noting that perceptions of Parker tend to be polarized—people tend to feel strongly for or against him. She concludes that Robert Parker, more than being seen as a wine critic, has become a lightening rod for debates on the way in which people make, sell, and drink wine today; and how they define (or choose not to) their own taste. The final pages of her book reveal a self-evaluation on McCoy's part about the qualities that have made Parker such a success; and the downside to his influence and approach.
Conclusion: How The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. Stacks Up:
The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. is a well-written, highly-compelling tale about an American icon. It contains interesting, seemingly first-hand anecdotes that transport the reader into Parker's world. Such stories alone are worth the book's price. At a deeper level, however, McCoy's book deftly wrestles with the questions surrounding his influence. McCoy is initially on Parker’s side, before struggling with the paradoxical impact Parker has had on the industry. On the one hand, she points out, although he has long argued for the inherent value of individual tastes, Parker has become the supreme and sole judge of wines, at least in his mind. Further, while Parker had long lamented high wine prices, his judgments have driven up the prices (and profits) of the beneficiaries of his positive ratings.
Like McCoy, I found myself taking my own sides on Parker during the book. As with her, I feel a certain level of pride in the self-determination and courage that Parker, the outsider in the 1970s, used to propel himself to the ultimate insider wine critic status forty years later. Even this month's issue of Decanter struggles with this dichotomy in naming Parker the top of its Power List, noting that while "many readers will groan" when reading its number one ranking of Parker, "consumers are free to make their own choices" and that the backlash against him "itself only serves to show the impact of his verdicts."
Whether you enjoy wines or not, treat yourself to McCoy's book. It is a fascinating portrait of an enigmatic American figure whose influence in the global wine industry is unlikely to ebb anytime soon.
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*Donald Calvert holds degrees from the University of Virginia and George Mason University. He works on international trade issues at the U.S. Commerce Department. The views expressed herein and any errors are his alone. Suggestions can be forwarded to him at: doncalvert2@msn.com.