The Wine Spectator (WS) 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 (www.winespectator.com). 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. WS recently allowed their columnists to start blogging (www.winespectator/wine/free/blog_index). In the recent 2005 Bordeaux feeding frenzy, Suckling blogged effectively on all aspects on the barrel tasting and the issues facing the buyers of the vintage.

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.

It is especially interesting when the WS tasting differs from the Parker rating, which inevitably happens on occasion. An example in the 2005 Bordeaux tasting was Quinault L'Enclos (RP – 92-95, WS – 85-88). What most people do not dwell upon, but which is of much more importance to Winevestors, is that in the vast majority of cases WS and Robert Parker will rate the same wines with similar scores.

For the American market, therefore, we add an additional desired attribute for buying IGW. As stated earlier, they should have a Robert Parker rating of 94 or above but should also have a WS score of 94 or above.