Archive
Reuters blog archive
from Felix Salmon:
The decline of the Robert Parker empire
Since I'm on the subject of fallen emperors, it's worth catching up with the latest Robert Parker news.
Decanter's Adam Lechmere has seen an email to French wine blogger Vincent Pousson, which seems to confirm the rumors: Parker isn't just giving up editorial control of The Wine Advocate, but also 'command and control' of the business as a whole. The new jefe is Soo Hoo Khoon Peng, a Singaporean wine importer who seems to have bought the franchise, Parker included, for $15 million. Of that, Parker got $10 million, with the rest going to the deal's two brokers, who are reportedly "connected with Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs."
The price here seems astonishingly low. If Parker has 50,000 subscribers paying $75 per year, that's $3.75 million in annual print revenue alone; the company's new revenues, from online advertising, “virtual tastings”, and a series of international wine education courses, will probably be bigger still. And the value of Parker's brand is huge. I hope that at the very least he negotiated a seven-figure salary for himself to stay on judging the wines of Bordeaux and the Rhone -- after all, without Parker, The Wine Advocate's brand value evaporates very quickly.
That said, Parker's influence has already been evaporating for some time, as Eric Asimov points out; Talia Baiocchi, for one, reckons that he's had very little influence on her at all. One reason: Parker helped make first-growth Bordeaux so expensive that it's nowadays basically impossible to afford what Brits of my father's or grandfather's generation would consider a basic wine education. When Parker can at a stroke raise the value of a vineyard's annual production by millions of euros, it's easy to see how the new owners see a huge amount of profit potential in his name.
from Felix Salmon:
The Robert Parker bombshell
This is a bit odd. Last month, Lettie Teague had lunch with Robert Parker, and asked the questions on everybody's mind: "Was Parker planning to retire? Did he have a replacement? Was he selling the Wine Advocate?"
Parker told Teague that he had no intention of retiring, nor of selling:
Parker said he has entertained offers to buy his newsletter over the years, including three from “hedge-fund guys,” but so far he has refused them all, in part because he would not relinquish editorial control of the newsletter.
from Unstructured Finance:
Gundlach doesn’t whine over his stolen wine
By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein
Who said bonds are boring? In recent days, Jeffrey Gundlach, the new king of the fixed-income world, has been dominating headlines with his lengthy CNBC interview on everything from counterparty risk to the market’s love affair with Apple stock to talk in the blogosphere about Gundlach’s pricey Santa Monica, Calif. residence being burglarized of more than $10 million in assets.
Against this backdrop, Gundlach’s firm, DoubleLine, hit a huge milestone this week as well, hitting $45 billion in assets under management.
from Felix Salmon:
America’s minuscule high-end wine market
Dan Levy at Bloomberg has a big story today under the headline "America Drinking Top-End Wine Fuels Napa Deals". It's mostly about land and winery transactions, but this jumped out at me:
High-end California wine accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. bottle sales above $20, according to data compiled by Nielsen Holdings NV… Purchases of California premium wine totaled $410 million in the 12 months through July 21, up 14 percent year-over-year, store-scan data from New York-based Nielsen show.
from Global Investing:
Investors hungover after wine binge
During this depression, it would appear that investors are no longer finding solace in turning to the bottle.
Fine wines are being hit hard by the global downturn, with the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 index down 7.4 percent on the year, according to July’s Cellar Watch Market Report.
from MediaFile:
Sheraton becomes a sommelier
Say you’re planning a business trip. If you knew you could get a very good glass of wine at your hotel at the end of the day, would that influence which hotel you book?
The people at Sheraton are betting that it will.
Earlier this year, Sheraton began holding “Sheraton Social Hour” events at a number of hotels, and 130 more Sheraton branches around the globe will add the social hours this week. From 5 to 8 PM, usually Tuesday through Thursday, Sheraton residents will be able to sample a selection of high-quality wines. At the larger Sheratons, such as New York’s, eight wines will be on offer, four scoring a Wine Spectator rating of 85 or higher and four scoring 90 or higher.
from Global Investing:
Emerging market wine sophisticates?
Serving wine instead of beer at its annual rooftop soiree? Is this some kind of subliminal message specialist broker Auerbach Grayson is trying to send, ie: that emerging markets are mature and here’s the vino to prove it?
Or, is the message not in a bottle but in a case? Don’t limit your exposure to emerging markets but increase it for growth. Only a slight problem here in that emerging market stocks are underperforming developed markets so far this year. They underperformed in 2011 as well.
from Felix Salmon:
The avoid-brands wine strategy
The best bit about wine is drinking it; the worst bit about wine is buying it. You walk into a wine store, or a supermarket, and you see hundreds of different bottles, most of which you've never heard of. And you're then expected to somehow pick exactly the right one, in the knowledge that if you get it wrong, both your meal and your wallet are likely to suffer the consequences. So it's hardly surprising that most people go with what they know, and end up buying something adorned with a well-known brand.
My taste in wine has evolved enormously since I started buying it regularly when I was at university. What I like now I wouldn't have liked then, and what I liked then I wouldn't like now. But one thing has stayed constant: I've always had a gut-level prejudice against big wine brands. Once I see a wine advertised anywhere, I'm pretty much guaranteed never to buy it. The only brands I ever respect or seek out are importers -- especially when it comes to French wine from outside Bordeaux, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by getting a feel for which importers are generally trustworthy and reliable when it comes to picking great wines.
from Felix Salmon:
Charts of the day, wine-heat edition
Last year, I blogged a paper about the way in which wineries lie about the alcohol content of their wines. Now, the same authors have a new paper out, trying to get to the bottom of exactly why wine is getting hotter.
One thing I like about this paper is that it doesn't look directly at wine-alcohol levels, but moves back a step to the sugar content of the grapes going into the wine. If you turn high-sugar grapes into wine, one of two things has to happen: either you get sweet wine, or you get high-alcohol wine. Since taste in wine is getting dryer rather than sweeter over time, higher-sugar grapes mean hotter wine. And those grapes are definitely getting sweeter, especially when it comes to white wine. Here are the charts for California:
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Honey, I’m on my way!
Blog Guy, you know that place in Siberia you say is the goofiest place on earth? I think you call it Wackytown, and you organize tours there.
Sure. Krasnoyarsk. There's no other place like it. You should come with us. What are you looking for?
