Influential US wine critic Robert Parker is moving the headquarters of his newsletter to Singapore after selling a major stake to investors based in the city-state, a report said on Tuesday.
Parker told the Wall Street Journal he intends to step down as editor-in-chief of The Wine Advocate and phase out its print edition, giving oversight to his Singapore-based Asia correspondent, Lisa Perrotti-Brown.
“The Asian market has come of age in the last decade or so, and it would be unrealistic not to expect to be part of it,” he said.
He declined to name his new investors but described them as “young visionaries” in financial services and information technology based in Singapore who presented him with a plan he could not refuse, according to the report.
“They love wine, but they also saw a great business opportunity,” said Parker, who said he would become chairman of the new company and continue to review the wines of Bordeaux and the Rhone for the newsletter.
Despite having only 50,000 subscribers paying US$75 (HK$581) a year for six issues, most of them living in the United States, the Wine Advocate can make or break a winemaker with reviews based on a 50-100 point quality grading system.
Parker said the Wine Advocate’s print version might disappear before the end of 2013, and he would offer incentives to print subscribers to make the change to an online-only format.