Who do you trust? What makes you pull the trigger on wine buys?

April 15th, 2008

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We’ve been thinking about this a lot. Forget the whole discussion of who’s a critic and who’s not. What matters is who you trust. We all have various methods for making purchases of all sizes, and wine is so subjective, so variable, that a guide you trust in navigating this world is truly invaluable.

We realize that you might have several go-to sources when deciding whether to buy a particular bottle, but for the sake of simplicity, please select the ONE that is most likely to seal the deal in your wine purchases. As always, your participation and comments are much appreciated.

I’m MOST likely to buy a wine when it’s recommended by…

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17 Responses to “Who do you trust? What makes you pull the trigger on wine buys?”

  1. Gravatar Icon winestein

    Robert Parker for me. I’ve been following him for years and his palate is more aligned with mine than anyone else. I enjoy what Gary V does, but his palate is so far off from mine that I have to closely pay attention to what he says about a wine to be sure if it is something I might like.

  2. Gravatar Icon Taster B

    Who do I trust? hmm… I’ll trust anyone once. I don’t put any more weight on one person’s recommendation over another’s except where I know I have liked an individual’s past recommendations. When it comes to Robert Parker, I do use them as a guide in somewhat of an inverse fashion: If RP rated less than 90 then I consider buying, if RP rated 90 or higher I tend to steer clear.

  3. Gravatar Icon winestein

    Boy how I wish everyone was like Taster B and avoided wines highly rated by Parker! It would surely make the wines I like much easier to find and probably less expensive to boot!

  4. Gravatar Icon NY Pete

    I voted other but it really should be others … first off - Steve Tanzer - followed by MANY Vayniacs, my LWS owner and, of course, myself. I do trust GV but sometimes our pal’s don’t mesh.

  5. Gravatar Icon Pamela

    I can’t cast my vote becuase domaine547 isn’t listed (!?!? :)

  6. Gravatar Icon d547

    NY Pete, I forgot about Tanzer. Whoops!

    Pamela, I lump myself into the Local Wine Store category, even though d547 is virtual. But thanks for your vote of confidence!

    Taster B and Winestein, I think you’re a match made in heaven :)

  7. Gravatar Icon Andre Ribeirinho

    I would (of course) have to go for the “A friend I trust” but adding also some online “friends”. That means I have to include my real friends but also wine bloggers I trust.

    Thankfully now we can easily have access to much bigger number of opinions than ever. We just have to choose who to trust and follow.

  8. Gravatar Icon Jeff Cleveland

    Great poll. I even wrote a post about my answer: http://indiscriminateideas.blogspot.com/2008/02/three-steps-to-picking-bottle-of-wine.html

  9. Gravatar Icon d547

    Jeff, I remember that post and loved it. I should have linked to it here…so sorry!

    Andre, thanks for commenting. I think what you guys are doing is really interesting, and seeing as cellartracker gets a high ranking here, I think that bodes well for younger wine communities like Adegga. Can’t wait to see how this all unfolds, but clearly there are changes happening as to how we all get our information and make purchase decisions. Very very interesting!

  10. Gravatar Icon john witherspoon

    my school of thought about wine “raters” is similar to Taster B’s in that I trust someone at least once. In starting into my wine geekdom I learned which wine raters palates I most closely resembled and then went from there. There is obviously a difference when Spectator gives a wine a 90+ and Enthusiast gives it a 78. These days I trust my palate, bloggers and the guys at my local wine shop who know what I enjoy most in a wine. I have only had a couple of the wines that Gary V has thought were bomber because some of that juice he pours is pretty pricey and half of ‘em aren’t distributed directly to Virginia and I am usually to cheap to pay for shipping. haha But on the whole our palates seem to match up.
    Wow - that was a long answer.
    cheers
    John

  11. Gravatar Icon d547

    Wow, this is pretty shocking, and very intriguing.

    With 42 votes in, critics (GV, RP and WS included) are receiving a mere 19% of the votes.

    69% go to peer/personal recommendations (LWS included here, with a huge showing by Cellartracker and a good showing for bloggers as well).

    12% are uncategorized within the “other” designation.

    While this is clearly a poll that is being answered by people already using the interwebs to do wine research (hence, a propensity for cellartracker, bloggers, etc.), it still hints at a larger trend.

  12. Gravatar Icon MonkuWino

    I think the advantage to Cellartracker (which I voted for, by the way, no offense!) is that you generally have several opinions on the wine and hopefully from some fairly knowledgeable people (since they were serious enough to start using Cellartracker in the first place). You can get an idea as to the consensus on a wine, much in the same way you can by reading customer reviews on Amazon.com, or computer-related reviews on Newegg. And you can kind of weed out the stupid people in the reviews (like the ones who review a GPS and complain because it told them to turn in the middle of a block into a building and they did so and smashed their car).

  13. Gravatar Icon Dr. Debs

    I’m a CellarTracker and friends/local stores gal myself, although if it’s a really unusual bottle I do occasionally have to resort to WS I will admit. But I tend to gravitate more towards the lower scored wines, like TasterB. It it’s got an 87 in Wine Spectator, I usually like it a lot!

  14. Gravatar Icon Steve

    First off, kudos on the Dirty Dancing reference. That just really made my day.

    Obviously, I have a biased outlook here - I like my tool :) But I will say that I am not surprised that the most votes go to friends, peers and on-line. I think this is true generally, not just a fluke of your reader-traits. Most of my friends do not know much about wine. And almost none of them take the time to read WS or any other review or online blogs. They generally get suggestions from other friends.

    And for the big review sources, it is difficult to get a feeling for how your palate matches the reviewer’s palate. Most of the reviews are done by many different people, even within one shop like Spectator or Parker. If you cannot match your palate to theirs, what good is their review in the end?

  15. Gravatar Icon domaine547 » Posting reviews on wine retail sites, part 2

    […] is. There was overwhelming response to our poll on what you use to guide your wine purchases, with Cellartracker coming in a strong 3rd with 12% of the vote. That leads us to believe that many of you probably enter notes into […]

  16. Gravatar Icon Philip James

    Jill - All the research I’ve done pointed to ‘trusted recommendations’ coming top. Thats usually a friend, but in a lot of cases the guy who runs the local wine store becomes a friend. For those that have developed trust with particular critics that fills that demand, and if someone cant get a recommendation from a trusted source, we found that nothing beat a slew of reviews from “people like me”, which would explain CT’s strong showing

  17. Gravatar Icon Eric LeVine

    Wow, I am very surprised by the number of CellarTracker votes, very exciting to see.

    Thanks,
    Eric LeVine
    -CellarTracker.com

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