Neal Martin, Jay Miller's replacement for reviewing Spanish wines for Robert M. Parker, Jr.'s The Wine Advocate on his blog in 2006: "I know that winewriters are supposed to be interested in all viticultural regions, but I have never really got under the skin of Spanish wine."

* * * * *

"Spanish tasting at the Old Billingsgate market. I know that winewriters are supposed to be interested in all viticultural regions, but I have never really got under the skin of Spanish wine. This tasting does little to alleviate my apathy, terribly organized with stands seemingly randomly spread around the hall. An interesting Spanish New Wave showcase catches my eye and I head there, meet Alex Hunt who is busy writing philosophical articles for "The World of Fine Wine", which is currently only available to members of Mensa. I sample a dozen rather moribund Rioja's and then coerce him to take lunch with me. The event is redeemed by splendid Catalan cuisine, which Alex and I load up on twice. Who said there is no such thing as a free lunch?

I have a laugh at the deplorable relaunched "Wine & Spirit" magazine, before deciding that I really should leave and finish off some work back at HQ. I think I need to visit a few Bodegas to inspire my interest in Spanish wine." - - Neal Martin, Jay Miller's replacement for reviewing Spanish wines for Robert M. Parker, Jr.'s The Wine Advocate, on his blog in 2006.  

Robert M. Parker, Jr.: "Jay’s responsibilities in Spain and South America will be taken over by Neal Martin who has long had a serious interest in these three extremely significant wine producing countries, and David Schildnecht will pick up Jay's coverage of Oregon and Washington." 

Martin was appointed by Parker to take Miller's place after Miller stepped down in the face of the overwhelming controversy stirred up over his association with Chilean-Spanish empresario Pancho Campo, a former rock and tennis promoter in Dubai (where an outstanding charge of fraud in that country caused an Interpol warrant  to be issued for his arrest.)

Another Brouhaha Involving Pancho Campo, Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate and Parker's Spain Correspondent Dr. Jay Miller

* * * * *

English wine writer Jim Budd of Decanter Magazine and Jim's Loire blog continues to write about the controversial Pancho Campo MW, sidekick of Robert M. Parke, Jr. of The Wine Advocate, personal guide to Parker's Spain correspondent Jay Miller and a man associated with such wine world figures such Jancis Robinson and Kevin Zraly.  

According to numerous sources, Campo's Marbella-based Wine Academy of Spain has charged or is attempting to charge substantial fees (from 20,000 to 100,000 Euros) to arrange Jay Miller's visits to Spanish wine regions and for tasting the wines of the regions in question (Navarra, Jumilla-Murcia and Madrid [D.O. Madrid declined] are the regions figuring in recent press reports).  Critics are comparing this situation to the payola scandals of the record industry in years past.  

Miller's ratings for wines in Navarra, the only region so far known to have paid (100,000 Euros), should carry gold stars, since Navarra wineries paid their weight in gold to get their wines reviewed The Wine Advocate, a publication that has often been likened by Mr. Parker to Ralph Nader's supposed consumer advocacy.  (Lest we forget, Ralph Nader's candidacy in 2000 drained enough votes from Al Gore to swing the election to George W. Bush.)

Robert Parker in La Rioja for Pancho Campo's Controversial 
WineFutures-Rioja Conference 2009. Photo by Rioja.com.

Jim Budd is not the only writer reporting on this Pancho Campo-Jay Miller flap.  Tyler Colman's  Dr. Vino and Mike Steinberger's Wine Diarist blogs have also reported on it.  And  some observers have speculated that this situation (and other reports of other questionable activities concerning writers for Robert M. Parker, Jr.'s The Wine Advocate that have been circulating for some time) have undermined the credibility of both Parker's wine writers, of The Wine Advocate and of Robert Parker himself. 

Here are some related posts.  

Jim Budd, Jim's Loire

 

Saturday, 5 November 2011 The Wine Academy Spain solicited 20,000 euros from DO Madrid for Jay Miller visit

Jumillagate or more properly Murciagate: new statement by Asevin

Saturday, 5 November 2011 Pancho Campo MW's considered reaction to Jumillagate Jumillagate or more properly Murciagate: questions sent to Jay Miller

 

Comment:

Russ Raney said... (The late Russell Alan “Russ” Rainey of Evesham Wood Vineyard and Winery)

 

Hello Jim, 

 

I (happily) stumbled across your blog while doing some research for my own little blog project. The Jay Miller issue immediately caught my eye - and was no surprise to me. Here's why: I'm the former owner of an established Oregon (Willamette Valley) vineyard & winery, whose wines routinely garnered "good" scores from The Wine Advocate over the years. However when Jay Miller assumed the Oregon wine reviewing responsibilities (after the departure of Pierre Rovani)he scheduled a visit to our winery - along with our new owner, after which he gave us the lowest scores in my memory - while complaining about the tasting conditions (we were in the process of moving out that day). Afterwards one of our top retail customers who knew Jay's modus operandi, commented that "you just didn't pamper him enough - you know, pull out the foie gras and époisse etc". My suspicions were confirmed when I saw which producers received the highest marks in this issue of the WA. I personally find it unprofessional for wine writers to make a definitive assessment of a wine tasted on premise (esp. from barrel) with the proprietor - it's simply too easy to get cozy (or not!) with the host. I started reading the WA back in 1979 when Parker was still using a typewriter - and have sadly watched as the publication has become less and less of an "advocate" for consumers while more and more a hype machine using the "pay to play" approach. Their abuse of the overly subjective 100 point score system was one the incentives I needed to push me into my own wine review project. Thanks for making my day! Keep up the vigilance!  

 

Friday, 4 November 2011  Jumillagate or more properly Murciagate: no answers from Robert Parker or Jay Miller

Thursday, 3 November 2011 Jay Miller, Pancho Campo, The Wine Academy and Asevin: bodega visit rises to 2000 euros

Thursday, 3 November 2011 Jumillagate/Murciagate: Jay Miller – "will be totally transparent"

Wednesday, 2 November 2011 Jumillagate/Murciagate: A cover-up in Southern Spain

Wednesday, 2 November 2011  My questions to: Juan Antonio Ruiz Jiménez, Asevin

Tuesday, 1 November 2011 Jay Miller, Pancho Campo, The Wine Academy and Asevin

Tuesday, 1 November 2011  29,000 € for a two and a half day visit to Murcia: 24th-26th November 2011

Monday, 31 October 2011 Jumillagate or more properly Murciagate – some questions

Dr. Vino (Tyler Colman) 

There’s no point! Wine retailers that say no to scores

Regional group charges wineries fees for Wine Advocate tasting

Changes at The Wine Advocate? Correspondence with Parker and Miller (2009)

The Wine Diarist (Mike Steinberger)

Dinero Por Nada, November 3 by Mike

"As you may have seen, there’s a new flap involving Wine Advocate contributor Jay Miller. Producers in the Murcia region of south-eastern Spain received a letter last month informing them that if they wanted their wines tasted by Miller during his upcoming trip to the area, they would have to pay $275-$415 for each wine submitted." Read the rest of the story here.

Given the controversy stirred up by Pancho Campo's and Jay Miller's actions in Spain, can the following report be a great surprise?

Robert Parker admits his influence on wine world is "on the wane"

Dubai: Third-World Justice or The New York of the Middle East? And What Does Dubai Have to Do with WineFuture-Rioja 2009?

* * * * * 

What does Dubai have to do with Spain and especially Spanish wine or food, including the upcoming WineFuture-Rioja 2009 conference whose (recently "resigned") Director  is Pancho Campo, President (also recently "resigned') of the Wine Academy,  the official organizer of the event?

And what does all this have to do with Pancho Campo, Robert M. Parker, Jr., Jancis Robinson, Kevin Zraly, Steven Spurrier, Gary Vaynerchuk and Jorge Ordoñez, all of whose pictures adorn this poster announcement for WineFuture-Rioja 2009?

Well, a lot lately.  Read on.

Spanish promoter’s arrest sought 

by Charlie Hamilton, The National (newspaper), Dubai

"A warrant has been posted on the Interpol website for the arrest of a Spanish concert promoter who was convicted in Dubai in 2003 of breach of trust after a falling-out with his business partner.

Francisco Campo, 48, was convicted in his absence following a wrangle with the former partner, Jackie Wartanian.

According to court documents, Campo was charged with breach of trust on June 5, 2002, found guilty on June 1, 2003, and sentenced to one year in jail followed by deportation. The case revolved around a €600,000 (Dh3.2m) claim that Ms Wartanian had brought against Campo over fraudulent business dealings. Ms Wartanian’s lawyer, Amna Jallaf, said a civil case had also been filed against Campo."

* * * * * 

According to Campo and his lawyers, the charges--including his being convicted and sentenced to a year in jail and deportation--are false and Dubai is a place where third-world Arab justice is meted out to unsuspecting Westerners:
 
From an article on Decanter.com: "Alfonso Martinez, Campo's lawyer, cast doubt on the veracity of the arrest warrant. 'This can be done by petitioning a judge in Dubai using a lawyer."

And Campo, who was recently named a Master of Wine, wrote this in a letter to his fellow MWs: 

"I was not aware also that there are hundreds of cases such as this in Dubai that are constantly being exposed by British and American media about people who carried out business in this part of the world and have been issued Interpol notices."

* * * * *

GD: I am very confused by all this and I don't know whom to believe, especially when I read reports such as these:

Vicente Cacho, the Spanish Consul in the United Arab Emirates, says that ‘Pancho Campo left his Chilean passport at a Dubai court as proof he wasn't going to flee the country and then did so with a Spanish passport’.  -- Jim Budd, Jim's Loire.

From: Jackie Wartanian

Date: September 9, 2009 1:47:49 AM GMT+04:00
To: xxxxxxxx
Cc: xxxxxx
Subject: RE: The National

Yes I am out of town and just saw your email. The statement you are saying is wrong. It is not alleged, it is all facts, but you are welcome to contact my lawyer who is cc’d in this email. I am not the only one who has gone to court with him. If you want the true facts please contact (my lawyer [whose name and phone number followed]).

Kind regards,  Jackie Wartanian

* * * * *

And this, again from Jim Budd, who originally broke the story on Decanter.com, on his Jim's Loire website, which has extensive information on the Pancho Campo case:  

"Certainly he (Pancho Campo) has continued to have support from people like Jancis Robinson MW, Steven Spurrier and Robert Joseph, as well as Siobhan Turner, executive director of the Institute of Masters of Wine."

Two weeks after Campo was forced to resign (on October 1) as Director of WineFutures-Rioja 2009, Kevin Zraly of the Windows on the World Wine Course school was named to succeed Campo.  

After all this evidence had come out, six weeks later, new "Technical Director" Kevin Zraly had this to say in an  interview published on the Wine Academy website that many suspect was done by Campo himself:

"That there will be more WineFutures! Pancho Campo has done a tremendous job in bringing all segments of the market together to discuss how we can all move forward in the distribution of wines throughout the world. The logistics of putting a first time event like this together were enormous and I congratulate Pancho and his team for having the foresight and energy to organize this event."

 * * * * *  

Then there are those who see Dubai in a different light:

"I have to admit that I viewed my first trip to Dubai with some reservations but now feel that I have actually been professionally negligent in taking so long to visit this rapidly developing Emirate.

As someone who tries to keep his finger on the pulse of the world of restaurants I had made a mental note each time I read that one five-star Dubai hotel had poached a top European chef to be their executive chef or another had lured chefs from further afield to open outposts in a similar manner to that practised by Las Vegas hotels. But I had so far failed to appreciate just what a brave new world Dubai has become." - - From an  article by Nick Lander, Jancis Robinson's husband on Jancis Robinson.com

Report in Departures Magazine on Dubai in 2006 (Departures is the American Express magazine for Platinum card [and higher] holders):

Dubai's Big Boom
 
Built on sand, oil, and gold-plated everything, a new Xanadu is rising in the Middle East. SOPHY ROBERTS reports from the land of caviar facials and indoor ski slopes.
I am standing on the "H" of the helipad at the top of the Burj al Arab, the Dubai hotel that billows like a sail plump with wind on a manmade island in the Persian Gulf. For many observers of this desert boomtown—and it does seem as if all eyes are on Dubai—the Burj is the emblem of the city's freewheeling spirit, a kind of go-go giddiness that is not altogether shared by the United Arab Emirates' less liberal states. Dubai, unlike Abu Dhabi and the five other emirates, "has always been a wide-open place, ever since it was a smuggling center for gold," says Christopher Dickey, a Newsweek correspondent who lived here in 1987 and returns frequently.

In the November-December 2009 issue of Departures Culture Watch Section, there is a multi-page article on the United Arab Emirates featuring Dubai:  A Connoisseur's Guide to the New Middle East. 
 

Of coincidental interest concerning Kevin Zraly and Dubai is this really quite glowing article about  Zraly in The New York Times. The banner My Dubai Diary advertisement running next to the article on Zraly has nothing to do with him, but it has really quite a prescient, you-can't make-this-stuff-up, irony to it.

 * * * * *

Personally, I don't know what the real story is about Dubai justice, nor do I know for sure that Pancho Campo is guilty of defrauding Jackie Wartanian of nearly $1,000,000, but what I do know is--guilty or not of what he has been accused of and sentenced to a year in jail for--Pancho Campo through his lawyer, Alfonso Martínez, threatened me, a journalist who has been writing in glowing terms about Spain and its food and wines, as well as La Rioja, for more than 30 years and was awarded Spain's Premio Nacional de Gastronómia in 2003.

I was told that "we don't want to have to go to the American Embassy nor the Spanish Embassy*, nor get into litigation with you . . ." and was told by Martínez, "I am coming to New York next week and I want to sit down with you and see if we can come to an 'amicable compromise.'  (All of this came in a phone call on September 2, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. (New York time), 00:30 (after midnight Spanish time).  (*What the Hell were they going to do by going to the "embassies," tell them that I had passed information that Campo was being sought by Interpol for fraud involved nearly $1,000,000!!?)

The phone call was followed by an e-mail to a third-party address, the same e-mail addresss to which I had sent to Kevin Zraly the information I had received from Spain about Pancho Campo's troubles in Dubai, his subsequent detention in Paris and at the Hotel Miguel Angel in Madrid (where, at both the latter places, he was detained and questioned about the Dubai affair-Interpol notice).

In addition to threatening me, there is evidence (yes, we have it!) on attempts to coerce, threaten or make offers that could be construed as attempted inducements to other journalists, including Decanter's Jim Budd, after he had written the first article on Campo's arrest warrant in Decanter on September 4 and before a second article on the affair was published.  

Budd was offered a speaking engagement at Vinoble 2010, which, in theory, will also be run by Campo and his Wine Academy--a speaking engagement for Budd would entail at the very least a flight from London, accommodations in a top hotel in Jerez and, it goes without saying, a nice honorarium.  

Jim Budd declined.  In fact, Budd says that he refuses to have anything to do with Vinoble 2010 (he is an expert on Loire Valley sweet wines, among others) until he gets some answers to some pointed questions to Campo, which he has posted as The questions Pancho Campo MW won’t answer on his Jim's Loire website. 

In his post, "Pancho, You can run but you can't hide," Jim Budd wrote, "I'm sure that the presentation and tasting would have been worthwhile and interesting but I, for one, am going to have nothing to do with Vinoble until Pancho provides detailed answers to the questions I have been asking."

Related link: Background to the Pancho Campo-Kevin Zraly-Robert Parker Wine Futures Rioja Affair 2009

About Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand prize in 2009 and received the Association of Food Journalists 2009 Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.

Mr. Dawes is currently working on a reality television
series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Culinary Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com