The most contentious and controversial interview

[Roy Hersh]

Andy and I spent years on the Forum of E-RobertParker/Mark Squires website answering questions on Port, Madeira and Douro wines. I had nearly 14,000 posts there since 2002. All of a sudden, without any notice ... they decided to close down the Forum to non-subscribers, which was akin to me shutting down THIS Forum to those who don't subscribe to FTLOP. To me, that would be the stupidest thing I could ever do in my life ... well, close anyway.

Now here is an article by a respected journalist, who interviews Parker and we gain insight into why he is the hardest working guy in the wine world along with brilliant quips about the jerks who no longer are on his Forum and more fun tidbits.

I'd love to hear your thoughts after you read this:

http://www.1winedude.com/index.php/2010 ... interview/


Have no fear, the Forum shall remain open to all ... for as long as I am not in a nursing home.

[Derek T.]

Perhaps instead of closing his forum to non-subscribers he should have just re-named is as http://www.e-GoParker.com (http://www.e-Jerk.com would be a different kind of website altogether!)

I was never a member over there so have no idea how they handled moderation of the site but if he decided the only way to eliminate "Jerks" was to ban everyone that didn't pay him money and delete their content he's kind of missed the point of having an internet forum. All that was necessary should have been some good balanced moderation of the site. That doesn't mean changing/deleting posts and banning people who don't agree with your point of view, it means keeping people sensible and respectful of other people's views.

I think the bit about him being harder working than everyone else in the wine trade says everything you need to know about his ego.

[Tom D.]

The narcissism was expected. Apparently it even extended to having access to the interview questions ahead of time. His comments about his forum, which I confess I visited only infrequently, seemed disingenuous at best: the "jerks" he mentioned seemed to include his own moderators, not just non-subscribers, as I recall.

I believe an organization usually reflects its leader. I gather from the tone of FTLOP that Roy is a good man. Same for CellarTracker and Eric Levine. Similarly, one might assume the rampant pomposity and pathetic insecurities that permeate eBob reflect something of Parker the man.

[Eric Menchen]

[W]e also eliminated all the jerks and troublemakers who didn’t care about wine ...

Because no jerk could shell out a few bucks to be a subscriber?

[Brian C.]

I used to go read threads on that site from time to time. I concluded that I didn't want to subscribe, that's for sure. I think I mentioned this on here before, but I read through a thread that was a debate on high ABV wines. For someone who isn't seriously interested in such wines, it can be frustrating at times to try to find wines that aren't heading in that direction. And a lot of people think that RP is largely responsible for this trend. But to see him dismiss those who aren't in his camp by telling them to go drink Riesling if they want lower ABV wine, who would want to give a guy like that any money at all to subscribe to his site?

[Eric Ifune]

Don't really think much new was seen in the interview. In regards to the e-RMP board going subscription, I'm not surprised. It was his own place, and he was taking lots of trash talk. I'd probably done the same. I look at it as being in someone's home. You don't go around insulting the host in his own house. Sure, it was an open forum, but it still was his place. There were/are other on-line places where one can insult; and to me, there was as much insulting as criticizing.