The Gatekeepers Live!

Long Live The Wine Critic

In the past 24 months alone, 225,000 wines have been approved for sale in the United States by the TTB. That’s 308 wines approved per day. That’s just under 1 wine every 4 minutes.

This is why the curious wine drinker NEEDS the competent wine critic.

Of late, meaning the “post-Robert Parker Era” to those who have been thinking about the role of the wine critic, there has been a surge in the notion that wine critics are obsolete. At the very least, they need to be reincarnated as something different than the registrars of lists say those pushing for a revolution in wine reviewing.

Eric Asimov, the people’s wine writer over at the New York Times, probably made the biggest splash of those calling for a new kind of wine writing when he wrote: