Major Global Critics

Robert Parker (RP) – The American, Robert Parker, is undoubtedly the world's most influential wine critic. His newsletter, The Wine Advocate, first published in 1978, soon exerted such a strong influence on the wine buying habits of serious American consumers that by the 1990s his ratings influenced, and continue to influence, the prices of fine wines around the world.

Today, the Wine Advocate is lot more than Mr Parker alone. A number of the world's top wine experts write for the Wine Advocate – including the UK's Neal Martin (NM) who had previously developed one of the UK's most visited wine blogs over a number of years – but also including talented critics such as Antonio Galloni, Jay Miller, David Schildknecht , and Lisa Perrotti-Brown. You will find the name of the reviewer with each review.

You can subscribe to the Wine Advocate att www.erobertparker.com for $99 per year.

Jancis Robinson MW, OBE (JR) – Like Robert Parker, has won far too many awards to mention for her wine related activities. Of definite “doyenne” status among British wine writers, she is a prolific author, broadcaster and wine authority whose work ranges from the encyclopaedic Oxford Companion to Wine to the introductory Jancis Robinson's Wine Course. Her pithy wine tasting notes are frequently sceptical and damning but wines that attain the “humdinger” status of 18 points are not to be missed. Refreshingly self deprecating her website is informative and good fun with lots of freely viewable material + numerous other members features.

There are over 55,000 tasitng notes on jancisrobinson.com so Jancis has also built up an impressive team of expert wine reviewers including Julia Harding MW, Tamlyn Currin, Richard Hemming, Linda Murphy and specific country experts as well. Generally we include the reviewers initials after the wine review (Eg JH).

You can subscribe to her website at www.jancisrobinson.com for £69 per year.

Wine Spectator (WS) is America's leading wine magazine, a gloriously presented and accessible publication, it is a delight to read. Wine Spectator has a large globe trotting wine tasting team who sample over 13,000 new wines every year and the world's largest online database of wine ratings (230,000 at last count). It is available to purchase from winedirect (we also provide complimentary copies to our wine club customers).

Subscriptions cost $49.95 per year – go to www.winespectator.com

Stephen Tanzer (ST) is the editor and publisher of International Wine Cellar, a bi-monthly American wine journal published in both print and on-line versions. Formerly senior editor at the US Food and Wine Magazine and wine columnist for Forbes, Mr Tanzer samples over 10,000 wines personally a year, travelling constantly around the world to do so. His journal is commended by both Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson and Michael Broadbent and contains over 80,000 reviews. The tasting notes are exceptionally well written and continue to be very fairly graded. Stephen's team includes Josh Raynolds and Ian d'Agata.

Subscriptions cost $95.00 per year – go to www.wineaccess.com/expert/tanzer

Decanter Magazine (D) is the UK's leading wine publication and is viewed by many as the world's best wine magazine. Read in 98 countries, Decanter is required reading for everyone with an interest in wine - from amateur enthusiast to serious collector. The annual Decanter World Wine Awards assemble an amazing 10,000 wines every year to be reviewed by a flock of wine critics. They also have a brilliant website – Decanter.com – which is packed with information about wine and free to use.

Allen Meadows (BH) is the publisher of Burghound.com, a quarterly journal focusing on the wines of Burgundy as well as fine pinot noirs and chardonnays from the US and New Zealand. Allen has become the world's foremost expert on Burgundy, specifically pinot noir, and his lengthy (averaging 175 page) reports include in depth burgundy and U.S. pinot coverage. "His authoritative views on Burgundy are the reference standard in this highly complex and diverse region…to hear him speak on the subject is the equivalent of taking a Masters course on Burgundy!"

You can subscribe to Burghound for $125/year – go to www.burghound.com

Wine Enthusiast Magazine (WE) is another large US wine magazine and website with a distinguished tasting panel of wine critics who review thousands of wines from all over the world every year. There are currently over 100,000 wine reviews on their free ratings site buyingguide.winemag.com

CellarTracker! - CellarTracker! was built in 2003 by Eric LeVine a wine geek and fanatic with more than twelve years of former software development experience at Microsoft. The initial idea was to build a cellar management tool to record his own wine notes. But after showing the tool to some friends, they encouraged him to develop the tool so wine notes could be shared. Nearly 10 years later CellarTracker is, by far, the world's largest online wine review site with over 2 million wine notes published online. It remains a fantastic tool for managing your own cellar as well. And it's free to use at www.cellartracker.com