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1 1 8 V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T | M a r - A p r 2 016 w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m END POST TYLER COLMAN or a period of at least two decades, running from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, the critic was the dominant force in helping consumers find wines they liked. Robert Parker towered over the wine world, sipping wines and spitting out points. Consumers lapped them up on shelf talkers and on the brown ink-on-Manila paper of his print newsletter. Times change. The recession was a tough time for publishing and the idea of paying to be told which (pricey) wines to buy was undoubt- edly a tough sell. Throw in the rise of the Internet offering vox populi recommendations for free and the problems for print newsletters were compounded. Points prolifer- ated and became devalued by infla- tion. Parker sold a majority stake in his publication in 2012. Into the void came som- meliers, as I've written about before in this space. While s o m m e l i e r s w e r e c e r- tainly always around, t h e y ' v e r i s e n t o prominence since the recession. The I n t e r n e t a m p l i - fied the influence o f t o p s o m m s beyond the res- taurant floor as they were able to Tweet, Instagram and Facebook their picks to a larger audience, often in funny or gorgeous ways. Updated wine lists were posted online for the world to see. Sud- denly, getting a placement on a hot wine list was a better imprimatur for a winery than Parker points. But has the influence of som- meliers hit a high-water mark? It's a question that Levi Dalton, a for- Technology has been poised to eliminate sommeliers for, oh, the past couple of decades. While din- ers might consult smartphones at the table, they should rely on wine information only if the wine service is truly desultory. I've surveyed wine apps and they're still in their infancy — it turns out it's hard for a machine to effectively make a recommendation from a list as quickly and as well as a sommelier. I'm sure one day AI will conquer all before it. But for now, those sommelier jobs are safe. Indeed, they're so adroit at using technol- ogy that it remains a net positive for them. The mass of aspiring sommeliers could keep wages down, per supply and demand. But it is also a gen- eral indicator of how popular wine is in America right now. So hope- fully restaurants across the country seeking to bolster their wine pro- gram for increasingly curious and thirsty diners can soak up the grow- ing cadre of competent somms. S u r e , t h e r e a r e h e a d w i n d s for sommeliers. But there have always been headwinds for them, including, first and foremost, the extremely high markups that pre- vail in this country. Yet somms have risen to their place of promi- nence. Recent developments aren't enough to reverse the trend. Tyler Colman, author of the wine blog Dr. Vino, teaches wine class- es at New York University and the University of Chicago, and wrote t h e b o o k " W i n e P o l i t i c s : H o w Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink." Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com. (Opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Vineyard & Winery Management.) Top Sommeliers Dominate Wine Today mer sommelier and current writer at Eater, recently grappled with in a long essay. He pointed to a number of changes in dining that signal a pos- sible end to the influence of som- meliers. These include: a shift to no tipping, which would deprive sommeliers of a claim to the juici- est tips; a mass of aspiring som- meliers, which would act to keep wages down; reputational dam- age to sommeliers as a whole from touting wines of friends that aren't good; regulatory changes (particularly in New York) that may prevent sourcing wines from the gray market; and the rise of "rec- ommendation-free wines," such as Prosecco, which don't necessitate guidance from a sommelier; and apps that replace sommeliers. That's a long list of doom and gloom. But let's break it down. There are sev- eral related to New Yo r k C i t y a n d , w h i l e i t 's a r g u - ably the best city o n t h e p l a n e t for being a wine c o n s u m e r, i t 's still just one city — wine service across the United States has i m p r o v e d d r a m a t i c a l l y over the past decade. Ameri- can sommeliers are the top of the world; a leading French producer told me while he was in New York City that seeing such youth, enthu- siasm and depth of knowledge of the world's wines was rare even in France. While changing regula- tions to limit choice is an unfortu- nate setback that might make their job harder, it does not (yet) mean it's the end of the road for somme- liers and their influence.