The Wine Spectator is an impressive part of Marvin Shanken’s publishing empire. The Wine Spectator has a bi-weekly, large format, magazine and an impressive web-site. Shanken has gathered some great columnists who focus on specific wine areas. Writers associated with IGW are: James Suckling covering Bordeaux, James Laube covering California and Peter Meltzer covering Collecting. The WS has a tasting panel which convenes to give 50-100 scores of specific vintages of specific wineries in a replica of the Parker format. WS ratings can either be by the columnist covering the region or by the tasting panel.