Originally Posted by
Gaucho100K
The fallout over on the Parker boards appears to be ongoing.... some say that traffic on his BBoard has dropped 40%... and that subscriptions to the Wine Advocate are not being renewed. Hard to know for sure if this is true or not... but the questions on the travel practices of some of RP's 'employees' continues....
Another controversy has boiled up over there as well that threatens to further damage RP's brand and credibility.
http://dat.erobertparker.com/bboard/...d.php?t=206266
It seems that Jay Miller gave a 96 rating in 2007 to a Spanish wine, Sierra Carche 2005, a Jumilla from a new brand name winery. That rating was used to market the wine (of course) and it has sold briskly. However, over 10 months ago, a Parker board member tasted the wine and found it undrinkable, not corked, just lousy wine. He Fed Exed a bottle of it to Miller (whom he knows personally) with his "TN" and suggested Miller re-taste the wine. Apparently, Miller sat on it for 10 months until a couple of weeks ago, then tasted it and pronounced it equally undrinkable and that "any resemblance to the wine"...he'd tasted earlier was non-existent.
Sets up some interesting questions. Among them: did the winery substitute inferior juice under the auspices of the highly rated wine (when it ran out due to the hot sales..or for other reasons) and, why did Miller wait 10 months before re-tasting the wine?
The Wineberserkers.com board has really taken the gloves off on this one:
http://www.wineberserkers.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7441
Sort of like a wine geek version of an episode of Law & Order. Some very tangled storylines leading to a suprise ending?
Like Watergate's Deep Throat said...."follow the money".