Product Description

WINE SPECTATOR is edited for people who enjoy fine dining and wine, cooking and entertaining, world travel and the arts. The magazine features current news, personality profiles, wine and food articles as well as pieces on entertainment and travel.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #249 in Magazine Subscriptions
• Formats: Magazine Subscription, Print

Customer Reviews

Review of the Decade, 100 points! Oh please...
Wine Spectator is the most prominent and widely available wine criticism magazine and as such it has been endlessly pilloried. Well, they deserve it - one recent issue's cover story was "Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman, Hollywood Power Couple!" How ridiculous can you get? The pages are littered with articles devoted to wealthy Californians and their extensive cellars; one recently spent an entire article on a rich man who helps his rich friends by cataloguing their cellars on, gasp, a spreadsheet! Yeah, it's like that.

Wine Spectator has also been criticized for the way it uses hyperbole to the extent that no one believes them when they're right anymore. Oenophiles now wait for Robert Parker (Wine Advocate) to back them up before believing it. "Best Vintage since 1961" and "Vintage of the Century" and "Vintage of the Decade" are far too common copy, coming once a year or so.

The vintner profiles hold some interest, but don't fool yourself, you read this magazine for the scoring. Wine Spectator has the resources to taste more wines than any other English language publication (that I know of) and despite some strange results, are generally good at evaluating the bottles in question. As I've noted elsewhere, in spite of the hyperbolic headlines, the Spectator is stingier than Robert Parker for rating wines "Outstanding." The caveat is that a lot of wines get bunched up in the 84-86 point range, although I suppose that matches my experience.

By comparison to the Wine Advocate, I find Wine Spectator scores much more inconsistent. This makes sense because the Spectator has a larger staff and it's difficult to establish a common benchmark across all of the offices and tasting panels. In their favor, they do review a fair number of lower priced wines, more than their aforementioned colleague, and their reactions are more or less in the ballpark as to where I'd put them if I were doing the reviews. But know when using the Spectator to allow some give on either side, a confidence interval, if you will.

It might be terrible that a magazine wastes its first three quarters of every issue on mindless fodder for social climbers. It might be tasteless that they spend so much time promoting the notion that wine is an investment, instead of an immensely enjoyable consumable commodity. But those of us with big brains and modest credit ratings know that there is much to be salvaged from the back of each issue. We also know that Parker is the first point of reference.

Improved
There's certainly a lot to hate about Wine Spectator - and, for that matter, Wine Advocate. Many winemakers decry the existence of both magazines, and usually lay the blame entirely at Robert Parker's doorstep for making the 100-point rating system an industry standard.

Wine Spectator's scores have gotten better with time, as have their articles. They've shied away from California "glitz" and have looked more into food. Also, the education classes that they list on their website are becoming increasingly more helpful.

Apparently they listened to much of the criticism and worked toward creating a more respected magazine. I think they've done well.

a glossy take on wine for the amateur and the expert
The Wine Spectator is one of those magazines designed to reassure you that you're rich or that you soon could be, all in the context of a shared love for the fruit of the vine.

There's lots of deadly serious material in this glossy, pleasing publication. But if you're a lover of wine who is *not* rich - the category includes this reviewer - you need to learn to take it with a sense of humor. Just enjoy the game.

That game includes a travelogue of the world's wine regions as well as the possibility of gaining a decent education via month-by-month reading in viticulture and wine appreciation itself. This reader is in it for the long haul - I hope to enjoy good wine at an affordable cost for the duration of this earthly slog - and the Wine Spectator is my companion along the way.

My job takes me out for many dinners in various parts of the world that include wine-splendored places like France, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and - of course - Northern California. But with wineries now in 49 of the USA's fifty states, what's *not* a wine region these days?

On those business treks, I find myself out for dinner as often as not. It's personally satisfying to know just enough to order a Pinotage in Capetown, since only South Africa produces this varietal, or to opt for one of Argentina's persuasive Malbecs because they're just *that* good. We're not talking wine snobbery here, just satisfaction at the margins of life's all too margin-less journeys.

If this sounds like your game, the Wine Spectator may be a worthwhile investment. Even if not, consider splitting a subscription with a colleague. That's what I do. At half the price, I get a fine magazine and avoid burdening my bookshelves with one more heavy, beautiful, pleasant magazine. Life can deal you worse.