Customer Reviews

Wine Spectator

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Wine Spectator is the most prominent and widely available wine criticism magazine and as such it has been endlessly pilloried. Well, they deserve it - one recent issue's cover story was "Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman, Hollywood Power Couple!" How ridiculous can you get? The pages are littered with articles devoted to wealthy Californians and their extensive cellars; one recently spent an entire article on a rich man who helps his rich friends by cataloguing their cellars on, gasp, a spreadsheet! Yeah, it's like that.

Wine Spectator has also been criticized for the way it uses hyperbole to the extent that no one believes them when they're right anymore. Oenophiles now wait for Robert Parker (Wine Advocate) to back them up before believing it. "Best Vintage since 1961" and "Vintage of the Century" and "Vintage of the Decade" are far too common copy, coming once a year or so.

The vintner profiles hold some interest, but don't fool yourself, you read this magazine for the scoring. Wine Spectator has the resources to taste more wines than any other English language publication (that I know of) and despite some strange results, are generally good at evaluating the bottles in question. As I've noted elsewhere, in spite of the hyperbolic headlines, the Spectator is stingier than Robert Parker for rating wines "Outstanding." The caveat is that a lot of wines get bunched up in the 84-86 point range, although I suppose that matches my experience.

By comparison to the Wine Advocate, I find Wine Spectator scores much more inconsistent. This makes sense because the Spectator has a larger staff and it's difficult to establish a common benchmark across all of the offices and tasting panels. In their favor, they do review a fair number of lower priced wines, more than their aforementioned colleague, and their reactions are more or less in the ballpark as to where I'd put them if I were doing the reviews. But know when using the Spectator to allow some give on either side, a confidence interval, if you will.

It might be terrible that a magazine wastes its first three quarters of every issue on mindless fodder for social climbers. It might be tasteless that they spend so much time promoting the notion that wine is an investment, instead of an immensely enjoyable consumable commodity. But those of us with big brains and modest credit ratings know that there is much to be salvaged from the back of each issue. We also know that Parker is the first point of reference.

There's certainly a lot to hate about Wine Spectator - and, for that matter, Wine Advocate. Many winemakers decry the existence of both magazines, and usually lay the blame entirely at Robert Parker's doorstep for making the 100-point rating system an industry standard.

Wine Spectator's scores have gotten better with time, as have their articles. They've shied away from California "glitz" and have looked more into food. Also, the education classes that they list on their website are becoming increasingly more helpful.

Apparently they listened to much of the criticism and worked toward creating a more respected magazine. I think they've done well.

The Wine Spectator is one of those magazines designed to reassure you that you're rich or that you soon could be, all in the context of a shared love for the fruit of the vine.

There's lots of deadly serious material in this glossy, pleasing publication. But if you're a lover of wine who is *not* rich - the category includes this reviewer - you need to learn to take it with a sense of humor. Just enjoy the game.

That game includes a travelogue of the world's wine regions as well as the possibility of gaining a decent education via month-by-month reading in viticulture and wine appreciation itself. This reader is in it for the long haul - I hope to enjoy good wine at an affordable cost for the duration of this earthly slog - and the Wine Spectator is my companion along the way.

My job takes me out for many dinners in various parts of the world that include wine-splendored places like France, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and - of course - Northern California. But with wineries now in 49 of the USA's fifty states, what's *not* a wine region these days?

On those business treks, I find myself out for dinner as often as not. It's personally satisfying to know just enough to order a Pinotage in Capetown, since only South Africa produces this varietal, or to opt for one of Argentina's persuasive Malbecs because they're just *that* good. We're not talking wine snobbery here, just satisfaction at the margins of life's all too margin-less journeys.

If this sounds like your game, the Wine Spectator may be a worthwhile investment. Even if not, consider splitting a subscription with a colleague. That's what I do. At half the price, I get a fine magazine and avoid burdening my bookshelves with one more heavy, beautiful, pleasant magazine. Life can deal you worse.

The fact is that Wine Spectator is about the most inconsistant, beholden to special interest, pseudo-wine magazine ever! Their reviews are indeed gushing...I challange anyone to find a single negative comment. They say tastings are blind and comments are registered before the bottles are revealed so I would like to know how they consistantly come up with bottle-specific comments like, "this is a good Grange, but not quite up to the standards of previous vintages." ...Tasting is also done by panal highlighting another weakness: Usually, you can learn the palate and preferences of a particular reviewer, compare them to your own, and weight that person's ratings accordingly...here you have no idea which so-called 'experts' have reviewed a particular wine, so this tool is lost. Additionally, none of the WS reciewers, to my knowledge, posesses either a 'Master of Wines' or a 'Master Sommielier' certification. While extremely difficult to earn (Robert Parker has failed the MoW test twice), either should be a prerequisite for a professed expert (or at least one of them). For real wine enthusiasts, subscribe to decanter; for the more casual drinker, food&wine presents a much better value.

Wine Spectator is an enjoyable magazine that's well-laid out and often interesting to read. However, it mainly focuses on pricey wines (as it should, being a pricey magazine), and the articles about wine-related subjects like matching cheese with wine are sometimes lacking in depth. Still, it's a pleasant magazine which immerses its readers in the culture of wine, and each issue does highlight a few modestly-priced wines.

I subscribed to WS for a couple years in the late 90s, and loved the magazine. It keeps a balance between reviews of wines both new (which is the main emphasis) and older vintages, and background stories on vintners and so on. The writers are almost all very good (and I'm a professional writer myself) -- only one of them do I dislike and he doesn't review the wines. Both the wine connoisseur and the novice can profit from reading this publication. I only dropped the subscription because I moved and the collection, no issue of which I wished to discard, was occupying more and more space on my bookshelves.

Now I subscribe to the online edition so I can check ratings before I buy a wine. The WS, in addition to Parker and other reviewers, perform an essential service for critical consumers who can't otherwise judge whether a bottle is worth the price asked. And we need WS and Parker and all to tell us when the best reds are ready to drink -- some really great ones are not mature for more than a decade. I drank the highly rated Chateau Canon 1982, for which I'd paid over $100, 17 years after harvest, and my group could tell it wasn't ready -- still closed down. Sure enough, if I had read Spectator carefully, I'd have picked another bottle for that occasion because they said it wasn't yet mature.

Robert Parker has the reputation for being more influential for high-end wines, but Wine Spectator's scores are generally pretty close to his. And they review a broader spectrum, as noted by other commentators below. WS will often steer you to excellent buys for under $15, or even under $10. If you get only one of these per month, or steers you away from a very overpriced bottle, the subscription (about $50) pays for itself.

Wine Spectator is a good wine magazine that seeks to keep the reader informed about new wine products, wine facts and education, and wine events. This magazine is published 17 times per year, so it is available often enough that most wine lovers will have more than their fill of reading material.

Most of the material in Wine Spectator deals with buying wine, and you can expect to find several rating lists in every issue. The editors of the magazine supply the majority of the wine ratings, so when you read that one wine earned 95 points and another only 80, you need to keep in mind that these ratings are from the perspective of people who have sampled hundreds or even thousands of different wines. And with each rating or analysis, there is often contact information, such as the name of the winery or web page, so that you can learn more and/or inquire on making a purchase.

To help shoppers find the wines in each issue, Wine Spectator includes a detachable card that includes the names of the different featured wines. This is a handy addition, because it eliminates the need to copy down names of wine on paper or attempt to memorize the titles. All you do is check off the wines you like on the card and take it with you to your favorite beverage store for easy reference.

Wine Spectator seems to have an obsession with lists and with outlandish proclamations. It is common to find lists like "World's 100 Greatest Pinot" or "The 50 Finest California Reds". Consumers are attracted to listings, and that is probably why the magazine gave in and made lists a regular part of most issues. And it is common to find extreme statements like "This is the best Cabernet Sauvignon on the Planet" or "Greatest German White Wine Ever". The publication does this to attract attention and sell more issues, but it could get annoying to some readers.

In spite of these few annoyances, Wine Spectator is still a good magazine. The writers at Wine Spectator are very good, very convincing, and very persuasive. They really know wine, and it comes through in their articles and recommendations. The editors articulate themselves very well and they know just the right way to describe the different brands and styles. It all adds up to a very informative magazine publication on the world of wine.

Whether you're a wine geek or just someone who is looking for good, reliable information on wine, restaurants, and other gustatory delights, then this is a magazine for you. Throughout the year, their special features on regional releases -- such as Napa, Washington, Oregon, Bordeaux, Italy, Burgundy, Rhone, Germany, Austria, and others -- help provide an overview of typical wine styles that one can expect. The reviews of the wines themselves (several hundred per issue) offer guidance to those making purchases. I find the profiles of the up and coming wineries and winemakers to be interesting as it sometimes provides more of an indication on the direction of wines from certain regions than the reviews themselves.

The downside is that unlike some of the other wine review-oriented publications that do not take advertising (Parker's Wine Advocate, Steve Tanzer), the reviews and articles sometimes appear to be a bit gushing. But, then, this is a magazine for enthusiasts and some industry boosterism is to be expected.

Regardsless, this is still highly recommended.

Wine Spectator is to wine knowledge as
Playboy pictorials are to real sex.

Now that I have your attention.

The wine industry needs a glossy, and the Wine Spectator is it. If you want to be a wine geek, subscribe to International Wine Cellar or Wine Advocat and haunt (read: drink with) the underpaid staff at your local wine merchant.

But if you want to swan around and be able to read the three and four-digit price list of a wine list and menu, then by all means make sure you memorize what is featured in the Wine Spectator.

But big glossies help everybody. First, it helps the industry, and when the industry is healthy, then the wine-geek bottles are numerous. Remember the collapse of world wine prices and France turning otherwise good grapes into vinegar and grain alcohol? Small terroir obscure producers of hand crafted approaches are the ones *most* hit by a weak industry. So yes! Bring on the yuppies reading the slick!!!

Second, sure the reviews are gushing, but the cold fact of nature is a lot of the wines featured here are supurb and if you do get your hands on them you'll enjoy them, even without the tasting notes featured here.

Third, to its credit, Wine Spectator pays attention to new world wines with the same attention and care (perhaps more so to California Cabs) the old world wines get. For decades all anyone (including Parker) wrote about was France France France. Wine Spectator started saying "hey, American Cabs are good!" and suddenly, Italian, Spanish, Chilean, Argentinean, Australian, etc. wines were getting better coverage from all thoughtful corners. This was a net good thing (although Wine Spectator has criminally neglected Austrian whites).

Forth, if wine criticism was just wine geeks and offset printed newsletters the wine world would be as sad a place as an Original Series Star Trek convention. I like a big tent where bluffing yuppies get to drink with scruffy obsessives. Sure the scruffy obsessive has sacrificed his life and economic position for the obscurity of his passion, but heck, he gets to taste bottles he would not dream of because some Wine Spectator subscriber happens to come to the geek fest.

Still, two stars because you just feel dirty that it exists.

It stands to reason that people will critisize this magazine. It is a little high end and might appeal more to the pompous oenophile than the casual wine drinker. It can be a little overwhelming for the person just getting into wine, with so many opinions, so many suggestions and so many choices. This oversized , glossy, colorful magazine helps. The magazine does sort things out and make picking out wine a little easier. I'm never going to spend $200 or anything close to that for a bottle of wine so I live vicariously and read about the tasting notes of wines rated 95+ while I drink my swill, well, I have had Opus before. Serioulsy though, the articles are first class, globe trotting around the globe, profiling people, products and places. It is very much a lifestyle magazine. I do like the buying guide section with the various categories, especially the smart buys and best values since that is all I can afford! Sometimes I even stretch and splurge for a sample of the highly recommended but forget about those collectible bottles, their prices are ridiculous. This is an enjoyable magazine that every wine drinker should like. A nice feature is the tear out shopping list that you can take with you when you the local wine bottle shop. Which speaking of, they also recommend wine shops for various regions but more can be found on their online edition. This magazine is highly recommended for the oenophile and casula wine drinker.