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.
