Antonio Galloni leaves Wine Advocate to start his own wine site
We knew this would happen, didn’t we? In December, when Robert M. Parker Jr., the influential wine critic, announced that he was stepping down as editor-in-chief of the Wine Advocate and that he had taken on three investors, and named not Antonio Galloni, but Lisa Perrotti-Brown, as the new editor, it seemed inevitable that Galloni, who was widely seen as Parker’s successor, would leave. Now he’s jumped ship for antoniogalloni.com. Time to do his own thing.
Eric Asimov in his Diner’s Journal at the New York Times is reporting that Galloni’s new site will “be aimed at younger wine consumers, using new technologies and different forms of media than the Wine Advocate, which ... still retains the flavor of print media.”
Galloni is quoted: “I want to use multimedia to bring those wines off the page directly to an audience. I think there’s a huge opportunity to engage people through media and technology.”
On his website, Galloni writes: “At the time of his departure, Galloni was the lead critic at the Wine Advocate, having authored 1/3rd of the reviews published by The Wine Advocate in 2012. Galloni also ran the world’s most-followed bulletin board on Italian wines and spearheaded The Wine Advocate’s production of video content. He developed tailored public events & seminars such as the highly anticipated ‘La Festa del Barolo,’ vertical tastings focused on the benchmark wines of Italy, and numerous charity dinners.”
It will be interesting to see how Galloni’s site evolves, given his interests. Right now, he’s still looking for investors, but he plans to roll out the new site in March.
His picture and profile are still up at erobertparker.com. Interestingly, Galloni has a BA from Berklee College of Music and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, so presumably, he knows how to put together a proposal.
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