Announcing Our New Reviewer & Review Changes
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Lisa Perrotti-Brown
- 27 Jun 2017 | News & Views
Dear Reader,
It gives me great pleasure to announce the newest member of our Wine Review Team: Joe Czerwinski. Joe will be covering the regions of the Rhône Valley (North and South), Languedoc-Roussillon, Australia and New Zealand. He will also be assuming a new role at Robert Parker Wine Advocate, as the publication’s Managing Editor, helping me to oversee the direction and content offer for our digital publications, including Robert Parker Wine Advocate, Wine Journal and Hedonist’s Gazette.
Over the past 18 years at Wine Enthusiast, Joe has moved through a succession of positions: Senior Editor, Tasting Director and finally, Managing Editor. During that time, he has become one of the foremost American authorities on the wines of Australia and New Zealand, reviews wines from the Rhône, and has written dozens of feature stories on wines from other regions of the wine world.
Joe has visited New Zealand regularly to research stories since 2000, and he has judged at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards and Marlborough Wine Show. His first article on the country, back in 2001, was entitled New Zealand: Beyond Sauvignon Blanc. “Maybe it was just a bit ahead of its time,” Joe told me, “as I saw a recent Forbes article with a nearly identical headline this year.”
In 2006, Joe took on reviewing Rhône wines for Wine Enthusiast, and he has visited the region regularly ever since. Despite recent price increases, Joe believes the wines of the Rhône still offer incredible value relative to those from other parts of France. “Most exciting to me are the increases in quality occurring in appellations like Saint-Joseph and Crozes-Hermitage,” he commented.
In 2006, Joe also assumed critical coverage for Australia for Wine Enthusiast. He was a contributor to the latest edition of Penfolds Rewards of Patience and has tasted every vintage of Grange ever produced. He has also tasted a complete vertical of Henschke’s Hill of Grace.
“Over the past 18 years,” remarked Joe, “I’ve had the opportunity to be part of and subsequently develop a team of wine critics and writers, including Wine Advocate’s own Monica Larner. I’m looking forward to joining the world’s preeminent team of wine critics.”
As a side note on relinquishing the coverage of Australia and New Zealand—two regions I have been passionate about nearly all my wine life—I have always said to myself that I would not hand coverage of these regions over until I found a critic who could produce the insightful, sensitive wine writing that these two wine nations deserve and that I believe is of interest to our core readers. In Joe, I have found that critic. Note that as per our Editorial Calendar, I will continue to review Australia through the next Issue, producing my final reports on Victoria/Tasmania and South Australia.
The other major change to our reviewing coverage sees me taking over the reviews of Central California. I will be visiting the regions of California Central Coast in early September, with a view to producing reports for the October and December Issues.
We are also about to publish our latest annual Washington State report in the Issue going out at the end of this week; our new Washington State Reviewer will be announced in January 2018.
I hope all of our readers will join me in welcoming Joe Czerwinski as a valued member of our Robert Parker Wine Advocate team!
Cheers,
Lisa Perrotti-Brown, MW, Editor-in-Chief