Who can take over from Robert Parker?

Back in April 2016, Robert Parker announced he will be no longer rating new wines during en primeur for Bordeaux. He handed the reigns to his successor Neal Martin. I followed Neal Martin for many years before he joined Robert Parkers team. I always admired his easy reading style of critique on fine wines. However when he joined Robert Parker he seemed to disappear into the background. What looked at the time to be a bad career move, probably in ecstasy of being in the ‘A Team with Parker’. It was clear that he could not live for free, there had to be a point when his efforts were paid for. I still cant help thinking that he could of done it better alone. Now that he has been given the huge task of replacing one of the most influential wine critics in history, it seems an impossible feat, like taking over the White house and trying to fix america… As I’m constantly reviewing critic scores on fine wines, I notice that there is no real direction for the market to follow. Without the beacon of Parkers scores, we are left trying to work out which critic we believe or prefer to listen to. However all is not lost, there may be a silver lining in this cloud after all. Since Parker has stepped out of the light, we can see some of the other top critics who we never paid attention to in the past. I notice some wine companies have tied into one particular critic and seem happy with that method. I have chosen to take a different method of using an average score from all these critics. I find that this removes any doubt that one particular critic could be swayed from the benefits or privileges that Chateaux may offer. Over the years, I read stories that Robert Parker was given many cases of wines from wineries in the past. It just means that if one critic is raving about a vintage yet all the others do not think its so wonderful, we should hopefully see a more realistic approach by taking the average score from a group of experts. Its unlikely that every single critic would write in favour of the Chateaux that was most generous. Or at least I hope not! We have added this feature onto our website recently and now you can search by score on our advanced search feature. This score is an average score taking into account Give it a try and see for yourself. www.investintowine.com