Robert Parker: How his palate changed wine

All about scores
It’s also a story that won Parker thousands of devoted readers. But equally important was Parker’s 100-point rating system, which appeared in the very first Wine Advocate. 

He was the first to use such an approach (it would be widely copied) and though he saw the numbers as a rough guide to accompany written descriptions, those scores rewrote the rules of wine sales, becoming many stores’ most significant selling tool, the one thing that could move wine off a shelf.

While Parker downplays their significance, he has never been willing to use scores anywhere but in the Wine Advocate — even in articles he wrote for McCoy when she was his editor at Food & Wine magazine in the 1980s.

Other events solidified the Parker myth. He offered unequivocal raves about the 1982 Bordeaux vintage, exhorting subscribers to buy early. When 1982 Bordeaux was crowned a legendary vintage, Parker’s prescience placed him at the top of the critics’ ladder. (He soon quit his day job.) 

Parker also rewrote the language of wine with his effusive descriptions, which McCoy carefully analyzes. And in McCoy’s opinion, Parker’s talk about “gobs” of fruit and “hedonistic fruit bombs” did more than leave wine lovers salivating.

“Parker has actually shifted the way people talk about wines,” says McCoy, “and because he’s shifted the way people talk about them, he’s shifted what people look for, the frame they look through.”

McCoy, who says she recorded 35 hours of interviews with Parker and read every issue of the Wine Advocate, chronicles the fine print of his career — including such controversies as the lawsuit against him by Burgundy negociant Faiveley. (The suit contributed to Parker’s persona non grata status in Burgundy, where tastings are now conducted by Parker associate Pierre Rovani.)

‘My alleged power’
Through his office, Parker declined comment on McCoy’s book, though in an April post on his Web site he said “several stories in the book are completely false, and I told Elin so, but she printed them anyhow.”

“The good news is that this book should finally exhaust all future attempts to write about me and all of my alleged power,” he continued, “and I look forward to that happening, and hopefully getting as far under the radar as possible ...”

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Doubtful. McCoy not only defines Parker’s big-man role, she demonstrates how the wine world continues to bristle about it. She lists entire categories of wine that Parker has little interest in: New Zealand sauvignon blancs, fresh Loire reds. Wine luminaries such as importer Joe Dressner step forward — a bit hesitantly — to poke back at Parker: “It’s as if a theater critic only liked Shakespeare. He shouldn’t mistake his predilections for objectivity.” 

Parker’s biggest shortfall, in her view (and, again, mine) is that his tastes gravitate toward wines most of us can’t afford (and certainly not once he awards them 90 points or more). His consumer-advocate soul now plays in a rich man’s realm; McCoy estimates his annual income well over $1 million.

In other words, it’s Parker’s well-heeled world, and we merely get to drink in it — and then only if we have very deep pockets.  This is not a Nader-esque role. And as McCoy tells it, Parker can’t even see how his long, successful career has transformed him.

“Now he eats at Daniel and he goes to three-star restaurants and he's on Page Six,” she says. “He's a different person. But he still holds on to that image of himself as a consumer advocate.”

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