Saturday, August 13, 2011

Pancho Campo, Jay Miller and '100,000 euros to visit and taste Navarra wines'

Pancho Campo MW

An intriguing article here in the Mercados de Vino about a trip by Jay Miller, one of Robert Parker's team of critics, organised by Pancho Campo MW. Apparently 'Dr' Campo charged Navarra 100,000€ to organise the visit.

As a non-Spanish speaker I have been provided with a brief summary of the article: 

'This article says that Pancho Campo has charged D.O. Navarra €100,000 for a Jay Miller “promotional” tour of wineries and a 14-wine tasting in Pamplona.
 
The idea is to help the region penetrate into the American market by influencing Robert Parker and his Wine Advocate magazine.
 
The article does raise a previous attempt to promote Navarra in the US by trying to influence marks in a wine publication (Peñín Guide), calling the practice “dubious.”'
 
I understand that this matter was briefly debated on e-robertparker, which is subscription only. From a posting on Chris Kissack's The Wine Doctor site the explanation is that there was a $15,000 fee paid for a lecture by Miller.  

Although not in the Bill Clinton lecture fees league, $15,000 is a decidedly generous fee for a lecture in wine circles. It would be interesting to have more details of this lecture – its subject, duration and to whom?

Perhaps it was this tutored tasting shown on YouTube?

Is the $15,000 lecture fee part of the 100,000€ allegedly paid to 'Dr' Campo or was there just a $15,000 lecture fee and no fee paid to Campo?

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