Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 overwhelming March 29, 2007
The amount and detail of information on the wine areas and the wine itself if fantastic.Gives the reader a real sense of the wine and its quality.
 Highly Subjective and Outdated Scoring System January 19, 2007
1 out of 11 found this review helpful
There is new research by Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University that scientifically proves that there are 3 levels of peoples ability to taste. What type is Robert Parker?
Google "Do Taste Buds Make The Wine Critic?" and Linda Bartoshuk.
This wine is a 92 and this one is a 87 and this one is a 89.5....lol!
 Superior evaluation and commentary. November 16, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've subscribed to "The Wine Advocate", "Wine Spectator" and "Wine Enthusiast" concurrently for several years now. I enjoy the "Wine Spectator" and "Wine Enthusiast" magazines for their articles and features, but I tend to be skeptical of both publications' wine reviews due to their reliance on advertising revenues from the wine industry. In contrast, Robert Parker's "Wine Advocate", newsletter doesn't rely on ad revenue and this presumably allows him to be more candid in his ratings. I also prefer Mr. Parker's (and Pierre Rovani's) evaluation and commentary in "The Wine Advocate", over the various other wine magazine critics.
Does this mean that I enjoy every wine rated highly by "The Wine Advocate"? Of course not. In fact, my wife and I recently drank a 2000 vintage Barbaresco that Mr. Parker rated 90 points (and "ready to drink"), yet we felt the wine was still overly tannic and tight. In truth, there's no substitute for popping corks and tasting wines for yourself, regardless of what the critics pronounce. That said, I believe the Wine Advocate is consistently better at rating wines more accurately than other wine publications... Like subjective wine ratings, this is merely my opinion.
Thorough Descriptions of Growers, Winemakers and Wines May 26, 2005
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
After reading a neighbor's Wine Advocate while catsitting, I decided to subscribe (to the electronic version eRobertParker). What I like about the reviews is actually not the numerical ratings, or even Parker's adjectives, but his incredibly detailed notes on the grape blends involved, vineyards, producers and winemaking. For example, here's a review of one of my favorite wines taken from the April 2004 Wine Advocate, which is fairly typical of a Parker review:
2001 Numanthia
Numanthia
Toro, Spain
Tempranillo (a dry red table wine)
The flagship offering, the 2001 Numanthia, is fashioned from a 70-100 year old Tinta de Toro vineyard planted at a 2300 foot elevation. After a 28 day maceration, the wine undergoes malolactic in barrel, is aged 19 months in new French oak, and is bottled without fining or filtration. The spectacular, opaque purple-colored 2001 offers an explosive nose of melted licorice, barbecue smoke, blackberries, creme de cassis, camphor, and graphite. Full-bodied with gorgeously rich, concentrated fruit, a layered texture, and tremendous purity, it can be drunk young, but should hit its prime in 1-2 years, and last for 10-15.
Wine Advocate includes info on U.S. importers, a rating, and an often unreliable estimated cost (especially "bargains" which tend to be affected by Parker's ratings). All in all, a set of information that's not available elsewhere, typically not even from a winemaker's web site, when there is one.
Parker is not the only taster. There's also Pierre Rovani and Daniel Thomases, who carve up the world by region. Parker seems to have dibs on my favorite regions: Chateauneuf and Hermitage in the Rhone, Toro and Ribera del Duero in Spain, and California Zinfandel. On the downside, the coverage of regions is uneven, which is forgivable given the size of the winemaking world. I, for one, would like to see more Alsatian whites reviewed.
The Wine Advocate reviews not only wines, but whole regions. They note not only who's doing what in a region, but what the weather was like for a given year and what the growers and winemakers did given the conditions. The overall ratings for regions and vintages have proven very reliable in my experience.
I prefer the web site to the magazine, because it has all the back issues, and allows you to search. It also includes wine news, amateurish (though funny) cartoons, and lifestyle pieces filed under "Hedonist's Gazette", where you can read about dinners and tastings that would cost us punters thousands of dollars if they could be bought at all.
The best publication in its class, but not perfect February 17, 2005
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
Of the two major wine magazines, Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate, I have to say that Wine Advocate is my preferred source for finding a truly exceptional wine to enjoy. Wine Advocate is primarily the work of the noted wine critic Robert Parker, who is sometimes accused of being one of the leading "wine snobs" in the industry. Although Parker does use some pretentious lingo and some obscure references in his tasting notes, I find his tasting descriptions generally more accurate than those of the critics of Wine Spectator. Sure, he dislikes Burgundy, but at least now he has hired a more than competent fellow critic (Pierre Rovani) to cover that region for him.
Both Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate have been criticized for writing too many superlative reviews of less than exceptional wines, but I feel that Parker and Wine Advocate are less guilty in that respect, even though, as a previous reviewer noted, he does put more wines in the coveted 95+ point range. Still, Wine Advocate does a far better job than Wine Spectator of placing wines and their ratings in perspective, and avoiding cliches such as "vintage of a lifetime" that the Spectator frequently falls prey to. I have found Parker and Wine Advocate to be superior to Wine Spectator in their coverage of Bordeaux, especially in my favorite sub-regions, Sauternes and Barsac.
My only major complaints about Wine Advocate is that Parker generally assumes that all of his readers can afford to pay the relatively high price for his publication (currently more than $12/issue on Amazon). There are many 90+ point wines available for the difference between the yearly costs of Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator. Additionally, Parker and Wine Advocate really do not focus as much on wine values as they could, and I have found Parker's coverage of Australia somewhat disappointing. Generally speaking, however, I find Wine Advocate to be the best major Wine Publication available in English and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys wine with a passion.
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