I'll Have What She's Having

Who influences a wine critic? Our columnist reveals who she trusts in Asia and elsewhere—and shares these experts’ top picks for your cellar

- Sarah Heller, MW

After a decade of breathless infatuation with influencer marketing and its promise of tighter brand-to-consumer contact, anyone could be excused for asking just how different the results have been from the campaigns of yesteryear that featured more straightforward celebrity endorsements. The wine industry, though relatively slow to get in on the act, has actually created some interesting partnerships that may serve as case studies for how a fairly conservative industry can reach new audiences through fresh online voices (take the brash wine entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, known as Gary Vee and considered an online influencer OG, who got his start pairing wine with Froot Loops on YouTube). Now the web is awash with would-be wine influencers, but just who are they really influencing?

Meanwhile, the perpetually imminent demise of that genteel relic, the professional wine critic, seems to have come and gone somewhat anticlimactically, with every scribe who hasn’t simply retired having joined the legions of digital “content creators”. A lucky few have even successfully rebranded themselves as “wine personalities”. And the old hierarchy of all-knowing elites and their blindly following masses has become that much more smudgy, and in some cases inverted.