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Wine Week
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CREATING BEAUTIFUL SURROUNDINGS
Wine Advocate magazine founder Robert Parker is abandoning print for digital media.
Consumers look beyond media for trusted networks By David White
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wice in the past few months, the wine world has been rocked by news from Robert Parker, the world’s most famous wine critic. In December, Parker announced that he’d sold a “substantial interest” in the Wine Advocate, the influential magazine he founded in 1978, to a trio of Singapore-based investors—and that he’d relinquished editorial control. In February, one of Parker’s top critics, Antonio Galloni, said that he’d left the publication to start an online enterprise. Parker, who popularized the 100-point scale for reviewing wine, is nearly 66. So he can’t be faulted for wanting to slow down. But thanks to this pair of stories, oenophiles finally seem ready to admit that wine criticism is changing. Consumers don’t need—or want—centralized gatekeepers telling them what they should or shouldn’t drink. Consumers still need advisors, of course, but when today’s consumers want information, they’re willing to look past professional critics and instead turn to friends and trusted networks. With travel, restaurants, movies and so much else, this trend would hardly be worthy of commentary. TripAdvisor »P20 chattanoogapulse.com • MARCH 21-27, 2013 • The Pulse • 19