A Stacked Deck, by Scott

December 16, 2010 in Scott Speaks, Wine Marketing | 6 comments

For the most part, really all parts, I know industry rules want me to bow before the machine that it is, but I don’t really care about what a critic or journalist has to say about our wines. But as one very prominent journalist told me “you gotta get in the game.” Ok fine, so we hemmed and hawed for months on which wine publication(s) best suited us and which ones we had the best odds of getting real consideration; the top publications like Wine Spectator, Robert Parker, Wine Enthusiast, don’t guarantee they’ll even taste your wine, and small producers not nationally distributed are even more unlikely to be considered. However, Wine & Spirits looked fair and reasonable to us—they guarantee that all submitted wines are tasted, and not just by one palate, but first by a pre-screening panel of industry professionals (journalists, sommeliers, winemakers, etc.), and then generally a majority fraction of those wines are sent on to the critic for rating (100 pt scale). All rated wines make it into the print and online edition for the reader.

We submitted our wines to be considered for the December issue of Wine & Spirits because they called for “All New Release” wines. But as it turns out for Oregon, they only rated and published pinot noir and pinot gris wines. Why is that? From reliable, second-hand information, I’ve found out that because so many Oregon pinot noir/gris wines were submitted they decided only to consider those varieties. Now, we all know that Oregon is famous for pinot noir and I guess pinot gris is the next big thing, but there are plenty of other grape/wine varieties made south and east of pinot noir country that deserve fair consideration.

So in the end I agree, it IS a game, and it’s fixed.

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  1. Andy Plymale on December 17, 2010 at 12:09 PM

    Scott,

    I think that political segregation of wine production may be misguided. Given that you are part of the Columbia Valley AVA (presumably) (and Columbia Gorge?), I would think that your cohort would be Washington wineries, rather than Willamette Valley producers.

    Obviously, Portland and Seattle have more in common with each other than Seattle does with Spokane or Portland with Pendleton, as well, so the analogy is fair game socially.

    Looking forward to trying your products,

    andy

  2. scott on December 17, 2010 at 4:04 PM

    Andy – Thanks for your comments and I agree with you. Our vineyard is in the Columbia Valley AVA and east of the mountains which makes us nothing like the Willamette Valley and more like eastern WA. But since the address is Oregon god forbid you make anything other than pinot noir. There are a number of vineyards/wineries on the OR side of the Walla Walla Valley AVA, but they don’t suffer from the pinot noir effect because most people don’t realize the WW AVA crosses into OR, including the Oregon Wine Board.

  3. Andy Plymale on December 19, 2010 at 12:49 PM

    Thanks, Scott! Keep the faith, and hope to see you sometime in 2011!
    -andy p.s. i’ll send you a photo of my 100 milliacre Riesling vineyard!

  4. Justin on January 2, 2011 at 10:11 PM

    Hey Scott,

    Just found your blog!

    I have to say: Wow, that’s crazy. Even if the whole thing wasn’t absurdly Willamette-centric, there’s one obvious question: What about Chardonnay? I can think of plenty of producers around there that pride themselves on it- Argyle, Evening Land, Brickhouse, Domaine Serene, just to name a few. They’re really never going to rate any of them?

    Of course, beyond that, there’s the obviously egregious exclusion of the Columbia Valley, the Rogue Valley, et cetera.

    Whatever. All they’re doing is limiting the scope of their publication, which will eventually bite them in the ass, I’m sure.

    Sorry to hear you got burned. If I were you, I would just submit to all of the publications. All you’ve got to lose is a few bottles.

  5. scott on January 5, 2011 at 10:56 AM

    Justin – Glad you found us. The blog is actually Stephanie’s, my wife, and I’m just a contributor.

    From what I know W&S makes one general call per year for all new release American wines. Maybe they do it twice a year, I’m not sure. Then they taste and rate those wines they deem good or great or whatever. We sent our wine in to this new release call, the results which were published in the December 2010 issue. The only OR wine varieties covered in that issue were pinot noir/gris. The next time may be completely different, and like all wine journals I believe, one can send wine in anytime to get tasted and rated.

    It’s just a pity because we thought we’d get fair consideration but in fact that was not the case. This was not because our wines weren’t “good enough” (maybe they are and maybe they’re not), it was because after the fact W&S decided to focus on varieties we don’t produce.

    We wasted our time, money, and wine.

  6. Colorado Wine Press on January 6, 2011 at 10:54 AM

    First, nicely designed website! Second, the preconceptions of wine and wine regions is discouraging. It is amazing when I slip a Colorado wine into a lineup with well-known wine regions and people actually liked the CO wine at or near the top! If these tastings aren’t blind, then I can assure you that prejudices and biases would have led to a different outcome. Same thing with W&S not reviewing anything other than PG and PN. Do they actually think that anything else is inferior or that consumers don’t want them? Absurd. Best of luck to you!

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