A Question of Ethics

[Roy Hersh]

From the Wall St. Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124330183074253149.html


Here is what Robert Parker has written to quell some of the critics about his critics:

http://www.erobertparker.com/info/wstandards.asp

Your opinion?

[Glenn E.]

Link asks me to sign up for AOL Webmail...

[Moses Botbol]

Not the correct link to Wall St. Journal.

[Roy Hersh]

Fixed. Also added the "new rules" added recently by Robert Parker for his staff to live by.

[Glenn E.]

Interesting.

It's a tough call, espeically for a professional critic. To me, this is yet one more reason why professional tastings should be done blind. After all, if you're tasting blind back home among peers, the chance that your last paid trip to Australia is going to affect your ratings is significantly lower.

Perhaps the Wine Advocate needs to have two kinds of ratings - professional ratings that are done blind in a controlled environment among peers, and "snapshot" ratings that can be done anywhere at any time. Use different scales or something so that they don't get confused. Then you could accept paid travel from the wine industry, but during such paid travel you would only produce "snapshot" ratings.

Of course, then one would run the risk of the "snapshot" ratings and the blind ratings not being consistent...

[Moses Botbol]

For what he does, I think they do a decent job of standing by "their" rules. Certainly, the descriptions to me are generally accurate. The scores; well they will argued for ever whether they are objective or not. In general, I would say they are, but wines that are not 90+ suffer when they need not be.

As Glen mentioned, doing double blinds would be a welcome addition to his publication. Perhaps 10 wines of the same vintage, same appelation would cool to do double blind.