The Wine Advocate

She is a master of wine who worked with Robert Parker for many, many, many years.

Some would say that he was her mentor at The Wine Advocate.

We're going to start with her and we're going to learn what he did for the industry and why some people have the opinions they may have about his palette and the wines that he liked.

And then we're going to speak with another master of wine, Jancis Robinson, who, in my opinion, could be the most famous wine critic alive today.

What kind of a man, and just who is Robert Parker?

Robert Parker was really the first modern-day wine critic.

He started the Wine Advocate in 1978.

Before that, no one was really scoring wines, certainly not with the 100-point system, which of course is a 50-point system, I should start by.

But it turns out one of the wine writers that was there was a gentleman by the name of Joe Czerwinski, and Joe, at the time, was the managing editor of the Wine Enthusiast Magazine.

He then went on and became the managing editor of Robert Parker's Wine Advocate.

And a few months later, he wrote an article entitled Blind Tasting the Top Cabernet Blends.

And he described Cape Mentelle, the history behind it, everything about the wines that were there, and then the last thing he said is, "And here are my tasting notes.

Aglianico rosato is still relatively niche, but it's increasingly being taken seriously, with winemakers creating what they call deliberate rosé wines, again, rather than some sort of byproduct of making red wine.

And a reviewer for The Wine Advocate, they said Aglianico was one of the top five Italian grapes for rosé, alongside grapes like Sangiovese and Nerello Mascalese.

Now, not on that list, by the way, was Nebbiolo.

I don't know why they left it off the list, but we've h- you bought me a really nice-

Yeah.

Um, so they're, they're, you know, they're, they're very big high scoring wines at the Wine Advocate, for example.

You know, they've got four 100 point scores, five 99s and 15 98 point scores.

Whoa.

Um, which is quite terrible.

But yeah, there's lots of, lots of outpouring in the Spanish press, but not very much.

I was, I would've expected certainly American publications, because after all, Robert Parker was the one that made his name, or the, the Wine Advocate was the, the publication that made his name-

Yeah

It's gonna be very natural, kinda hands-off style of winemaking.

Double 93s from Enthusiast, and Vinous also 92 from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate.

Let's give it a taste here.

It should be like an earthy, savory sorta style.

He trained in law.

He wasn't... train is like a master song or anything um but loved wine and ended up traveling the globe and and setting up the wine advocate uh publication um and he was the one that started the 100 point scale and now of course lots of other competitions and publications follow

Yeah, and like Darren mentioned, I did get to taste it.

I got a tour of Saxum.

Robert Parker is still around doing it,

right? He's not as active.

Yeah, he stepped back from the Wine Advocate publication.

He's got a panel of nine tasters worldwide that do the scores for that magazine.