Life beyond Parker – California wine eyes a new critical voice
Jon Bonné
September 14, 2011
In late August, the first scores of California wine will appear from one Antonio Galloni.
New reviews arrive all the time, but Galloni’s will get the scrutiny usually reserved for Talmudic law or the Starr report. Galloni, a 40-year-old veteran of the asset management industry, is taking on the California responsibilities of Robert Parker, the world’s most powerful wine critic.
This isn’t any old changing of the guard. Parker has helped define California as a place for some of world’s best wines. He has provided a string of near-perfect scores for labels that have become some of the world’s top luxury items, predominantly from Napa names like Harlan Estate, Schrader and Screaming Eagle, but also for tiny labels like Manfred Krankl’s Sine Qua Non from Ventura.
And so a nervous industry is reading tea leaves, trying to understand how its fate could be cast by a younger critic who has more experience reviewing wines from Italy and Champagne, both of which Galloni still covers for Parker’s influential newsletter, the Wine Advocate.
Smooth transition
“The first thing we’re trying to do is make this as seamless a change as possible,” Galloni says.
So California scores will be delivered on the same schedule; wines previously covered will be reviewed again. Galloni’s hoping to avoid a rush to judgment.
But in a recent interview he also revealed a keen awareness of how he stands to re-craft his role, one that can be a defining voice in California wine. After years of complaints about Parker’s preference for a ripe, high-impact style, Galloni hopes to take a bigger-tent approach without denting a powerful franchise.
“There’s a certain percentage of people who just think I’m going to do what Bob did. They don’t have a very high view of the Wine Advocate. Then there’s the other people out there who are maybe slightly disenchanted with the direction California wine has taken, and they think I’m going to come in and fix all the ills,” Galloni says. “Neither of them is true. Everybody’s going to be disappointed.”
Doubtful. Galloni’s past work – he published the Piedmont Report newsletter before Parker hired him in 2006 – reveals a savvy, thoughtful critic. He praises both traditional and modern styles of wine (this was especially important in Italy) and prefers to focus on themes and trends rather than just scores.
Yet Parker’s legacy is all about those ratings. So there is serious skin in the game for those who have relied on Parker’s perennial praise.
“I have to think the people who are continually surviving on his reviews have to be nervous,” says Wells Guthrie of Copain Wine Cellars.
Guthrie is the rare winemaker to discuss his shift away from a Parker-favored style, even abandoning fruit from Paso Robles’ James Berry vineyard, a site of top-scoring Parker wines. Thus he’s upbeat about the switch.
“People like myself are hoping Galloni’s going to bring a modicum of restraint,” he says.
New era of critiques
The larger question is whether Galloni – or anyone – can fill Parker’s shoes as a kingmaker.
“Is he going to carry the weight that Bob carried? No,” says Tor Kenward, a longtime wine executive who runs his own small Napa label. “But I think he’s going to become his own voice. Is he going to be the gatekeeper that Bob’s been? That’s going to be the huge question.”
Who says he needs to be? Galloni’s ascendancy fits into an emerging theory of Parker’s grand plan: that the uber-critic from Monkton, Md., is trying to ensure that his publication outlives his tenure. Even Galloni sees his new job as a chance to help liberate winemakers from a vicious cycle of appeasing Parker.
“He may have gotten to a point where he wanted to free people from feeling they had to make certain choices,” Galloni says. “Maybe this is a catalyst to let people say, ‘I want to make the wine I want to make.’ ”
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/29/FDQU1KFUOP.DTL
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