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 When wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr. announced last week that he would no longer personally rate California's wines for his influential publication "The Wine Advocate," the wine industry was stunned. The bully who had defined California wine for nearly three decades was taking himself out of the game.
The release of American wine culture from the strongman's bearhug is a cause for celebration. Perhaps now California vintners will break free of the monotony and uniformity Parker has inspired, and a boring period in California wine can end. Sipping and spitting in his suburban Maryland home, the 63-year-old Parker has been considered an incorruptible, independent voice, judging wines along his self-defined 100-point scale. Yet while critics influence winemaking everywhere, in California, the tail has long wagged the dog.
Parker, for all practical purposes, created the high-end market for California wine with his lavish praise for the generous, expressive wines that come naturally to a region with abundant sun. His taste hit a sweet spot with his fellow Baby Boomers and his clever cheat sheet of Parker Points made the inscrutable world of wine accessible to nouveau riche American collectors. Starting in the late 1980s prices rose in lockstep with Parker's praise. In a region with a limited winemaking tradition, chasing Parker Points became a rational road forward.
Wine after Parker
Retailers and vintners say post-Boomer wine lovers consider Parker to be their parent's tastemaker, if they consider him at all. For them, food comes first, with wine playing a supporting role at the table. Parker-style wines, in particular, and California wines, in general, are often too big and blousy, too alcoholic, to fit that construct.
Yet Parker has continued to have an outsized influence because older wine collectors -- those able to throw down $100 or more for a bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon -- still rely on his judgments. And those Big Boy Cult Cabs define the wine style for the rest of California.
Parker will continue to review France's Bordeaux and Rhône regions, and he won't leave a void in California. His protégé, a young expert in Italian wines named Antonio Galloni, will be the Advocate's new California critic. Galloni gets high marks for being a thoughtful and talented critic in Italy and someone who appreciates authentic wines with nuance and balance. There is a good chance he will remain true to his own taste and throw out Parker's playbook to start a new chapter for the Advocate. If he does not, he will consign himself to being a shadow player with little credibility.
Reticent vintners
With such good news, where are the brass bands? The chorus of hallelujahs? Winemakers, even those who long ago declared their independence from Parker, say they are hesitant to celebrate. Despite his reputation for reliability, Parker can be vengeful when he feels slighted or insulted, punishing offending winemakers with lower ratings coupled with belittling comments in his newsletter and on his website. The bullying can tank sales of the winemaker's next vintage.
Even California's most successful winemakers dread Parker's ire. Recently, a winemaker lamented Parker's influence, telling me, "I no longer like those wines. I need more acid," and sketched out how a more personal style is evolving.
I have reported similar declarations before. This time, rather than running away from such a statement after it was in print, the bravura vanished in a follow-up interview. Fearful to intimate that even his own wines, though highly rated by Parker, could have been better, the winemaker recast the changes as "so small they cannot be noticed."
As Parker steps from power, I can only hope California's winemakers will finally find the strength to act on their convictions. The game is changing for California wine. Nobody has to be boring anymore.
Corie Brown, the co-founder and general manager of Zester Daily, is an award-winning food writer at work on a book about climate change and wine.
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