Volker Hofer

“All wines have been tested personally and through a wine-tasting form evaluated by Volker Hofer. The evaluation concerned the color, the smell and the taste.

Each criteria got certain points following the priority of the criteria. The sum as a result has been fixed as final “personal score”. The max. result is 100 points.”

Veronelli

Luigi Veronelli is an important factor of Italian wine industry, the wine guide founded by him is with strict professional accreditation and has so become the industry´s most authoritative. Italian wine producers recognized him as their guru.

In the words of Bruno Giacosa: ‘Gino (as he was known to friends) was all heart, he was the first person to teach us that a great wine was born in the vineyards.

In 2004 Veronelli died at the age of 78, followed by the Veronelli fund which has continued to publish the guide whether writing style, wine evaluation methods and so on at the high standards of Mr. Veronelli.

The 2012 guide evaluates 2935 wineries and wine with about 17200 paragraphs. The guide`s evaluation refers in addition to the pointsystem ( out of 100) for the single wines, also to stars. The highest score are the three stars for red, given for two consecutive years for more than 93 wines . There is a symbol of the sun given for those wines which gives people very special touching.

Gambero Rosso

25 years ago, the newly established Gambero Rosso was published as a newspaper with only 8 pages of wine and food supplement, followed by the next year, published the first wine guide. From here on Gambero Rosso establishes a professional review system. The wine guide gradually gained industry recognition and became an important basis for consumers to buy wine.

Until today, Gambero Rosso issues a wine guide “Vini d’Italia” giving the highest quality wine up to a ” three glass award “.

The wines are tasted by independent experts in blindtests and evaluated. Wines mentioned in the Gambero Rosso guide already stand for exceptional quality, for easy recognition they are marked by glasses.

It has also issued a restaurant guide the “Ristoranti d’Italia”, three forkes award as the highest level. The Gambero Rosso even has cable TV and broadcasting programs related to their own food and wine.

The Wine guide 2012 of the Gambero Rosso, ” red shrimp ” evaluates of all Italy about 2350 wineries and nearly 20000 different wines, and 375 of them have won the highest award ” three cups ” glory.

L’espresso

L´Espresso is an Italian weekly magazine, belonging to the publishing group L`Espresso. It is described as a political,cultural and economic magazine. Besides “Panorama” it is the most significant magazine in the country. Each year L`Espresso publishes a wine guide, to which is paid attention by the wine industry. L’Espresso “I Vini d’Italia”published for the year 2012 is collecting and evaluating the wines from Italy´s small and medium-sized wineries and contains about 2500 wineries producing app. 10000 wine. The Guide´s selection of the wines, considers a series of factors.With the numbers of the annual production of wine quantity and the wine´s bottle price the guide is a practical and popular publication for the purchase of wine.
There are 3 different evaluations:

• Stars from 1 to 3 given to the producers according to the quality, the recognition of its own style or the expression of the local wine style
• Comments of pleasure, indifference or frustration of wines or wineries
• The evaluation max. score is 20 points, the score between 18-20 points, is defined as eccellenza ( excellent ),and the fraction between 13.5 / 14 is known as vino apprezzabile (wine to appreciate) and means the wine is not bad but there is still progress space.

For easier recognition the wines are marked with bottles up to 5 max. for the quality of wines. L’ Espresso iPhone app can be downloaded.

Robert Parker Jr.

Robert Parker is one of the most influential wine critics of the world. He started his magazine ” Wine Advocate”, which is devoted by him to the wines of all over the world. The score reports of a lot of different wines and liquors, some collected into books, are bought by wine lovers as the reference standard.
Parker is American. 1975 he started to publish an independent wine guide, orientated at the needs of the consumer. Parker wanted to represent the consumer, not needing to sell the wine.
1978 he began with his newsletter Line advocate? The newsletter in August 1978 had only 600 subscribers. Until today it is not financed by advertisement, but exclusively by subscription.
20 years later the wine advocate has 40.000 subscribers in 38 different countries all over the world. Nowadays the experts agree that the Wine Advocate executes the biggest influence to the behavior of the wine-consumers and is a trendsetter not only in USA but also in France, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Mexiko, Brasil and China.
Parker enjoys a high status in the wine sector but is also a controversial figure, because of his original way of wine evaluation.
Before him, the way how to describe wine, used metaphor and adjectives to describe color, aroma and taste, some people use a few stars to reserve grade. This Parker also did, but he used furthermore for each kind of wine a score up to one hundred points. This is one of the most direct ways of evaluation methods and represents a milestone for liquor and wine buying guides for the people and has so become the reference standard.
He published various wine score reports in his magazine of a lot of wines and liquors and is the most popular reference standard.