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| Luciano Pavarotti and young fan at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco |
consulting with my local Italian wine shop, primarily making point-of-sale
materials (shelf-talkers) for them. It’s been an interesting project and one
which doesn’t take up too much of my time, but also allows me to keep a toe in
the water of the wine trade, albeit in a passive and almost invisible manner.
Just as I like it. But one of the surprises I have found in making these
materials is the relative influence of the various wine writers who review and
score wines. There are more now than ever, so the field has been diluted.
Hence, it takes a little searching on the internet to find those voices and
opinions (and scores) which I gather when making the shelf talkers for the
store.
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| Check out the QR code above |
I will say, from the outset, that scores are not the
only thing I put on the talkers. I also include a graphic, to get the guests’
visual attention, and have a little story about the winery or the wine, along
with the reviews and the score. And finally, I have incorporated a QR code into
the talker for a deeper dive. It could take one to the winery website, maybe a
YouTube or TikTok video, or a snazzy piece dreamt up by the winery to seduce
the consumer into buying into their story. It allows them to bring all of us on
their journey. And it can be fun.
But what I have found is that ultimately the main
influence on the buyer is the score. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s a guarantee
that an expert found this wine to be worthy of a 90, a 100 or somewhere in
between. Suffice to say, anything under a 90, these days, doesn’t get much
attention, even though it might be a really good deal, or a wine with an 88
might be every bit as good as one with a 93. Consumers have been trained in
America to go for the best, and 88 feels like a second best. That in itself is
a damn shame, but it is the little patch of heaven we are floating in at this
time.
That said, who among the giants of wine criticism rule
the roost? You might be surprised.
I went about finding information on search engines,
both Google and DuckDuckGo. I went to winery websites as well. What I found was
that longtime legacy review sites like The Wine Spectator and Robert Parker’s
The Wine Advocate (which he sold a majority stake in 2012 and subsequently in
2019 Michelin took full control) were not as prevalent as they had once been.
It might be because much of their content is behind a paywall. But that is also
the case with James Suckling’s site and Antonio Galloni’s Vinous site, along
with others.
There are about a dozen wine sites on the internet
that review Italian wine, among them are The Wine Enthusiast, Ian D’Agata,
Jancis Robinson (who does not use the 100-point rating scale), Decanter, Jeb
Dunnuck, Luca Gardini and Luca Maroni. There are others as well. But it became
pretty clear who the alpha review team was, and for a simple reason. Because
one team regularly and consistently gave high marks. One writer’s 92 is
another’s 96. 100 points given out like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at
Halloween. And what do American wine consumers like? They like winners!
Any number of thoughtful wine reviewers can give a
wine 90 points and load up the review with purple prose. But a short, sweet and
succinct review with a 97 point ribbon on the top will seal the deal so much
more thoroughly in these here United States.
And that is what I found. Over the last year and more
than 300 shelf-talkers that had the 100 scale points listed on the talker, the
one reviewer (or review team) that consistently showed up on top of the
internet search and the winery website brag pages, was none other than James
Suckling.
Now you could think something cynical right now,
especially if you aren’t James Suckling. But I’m thinking right now that he was
some smart sonofabitch who executed a brilliant strategy. Because of it, he’s
made a ton of money, he’s become a super influencer, and he is sitting on top
of the dunghill of Italian (and the world) wine review might. He learned, early
on, how to juke the stats. No contest!
Full disclosure: Winery friends, Marco and
Jacopo Bacci, of Castello di Bossi and Renieri (Brunello) long ago saw the
value in forging a relationship with James Suckling. I mocked them for it.
Well, their business has only grown by leaps and bounds and they calculated the
tipping points magnificently that led to their unprecedented success. My bad!
So, all those other wine writers who post on Instagram
all their wonderful pictures of 30 years of Sassicaia and the like, and the
untouchable wines of Romanee-Conti, etc., etc., etc., good for them. They are
having a wonderful life. But they are also-rans, when it comes to today’s world
of algorithms and SEO, which control the spread of information.
And now that we are going headlong into the world of
AI, I can only imagine how algorithms and SEO are going to be tossed like a
Caesar salad on a Caribbean Carnaval cruise during hurricane season.
Don’t believe me? Go ahead and ask perplexity.ai
“Who is going to be the most influential wine critic in 2028?”
N.B. “Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it
coming” – David Bowie
wine blog + Italian wine blog + Italy W
