Please excuse me for bringing up this article a month after its publication.

The piece deals with the fallibility of wine critics.  These so-called super-tasters sniff, swirl and spit out ratings that heavily influence the wine sales internationally.  As more blind tests take place, however, it seems that most critics can’t tell the difference between the same exact wines, let alone detect multiple flavors and scents.

While I don’t think that we should do away with ratings systems, I feel that casual imbibers should see the humor in the issue.

Not too long ago, I read an article about a Japanese comic book whose hero critiqued various wines every issue.  As it turned out, the weekly wine critiques helped shops around Japan and Korea sell-out of whatever vintages were chosen.

While a lot of western wine-critics and enologists scoffed at the idea of a cartoon influencing wine sales, is there really a difference between a comic and some Robert Parker Jr. Protégé attaching a few adjectives and flavors to a number?

Although I’m not much of a wine drinker, I’ve seen more and more bottle shops posting Beer Advocate ratings on their displays.  Is this a bad thing?  No, but I am interested to see who or what will be dictating craft beer sales down the road.

Perhaps I should get into the comic book industry.