Jeb Dunnuck, photo credit: JebDunnuck.com
About Jeb Dunnuck
An aerospace engineer by training, Jeb Dunnuck grew up on a farm in rural Indiana where 2% milk was the beverage of choice and wine was hard to come by. It wasn’t until 1996, when living abroad and traveling through Europe, that he became interested in fine wine.
Moving to upstate New York in 1999 to work for Lockheed Martin, and later to Colorado in 2001 to work for Ball Aerospace, he traveled extensively throughout the wine regions of Europe and the United States, where he quickly developed a passion for the wines of the Rhône Valley and the Rhône Ranger Movement in California and Washington. To gain a better understanding of the business side of the wine industry, he took a temporary wine retail position in 2006.
Jeb launched the The Rhône Report and its website in 2008 and began releasing a quarterly newsletter reviewing Rhône variety wines from around the world. Completely independent and including coverage on wines from France, Spain, Australia, and both California and Washington in the United States, the publication continued to gain in popularity and subscribers, and by 2013, was read in over 24 countries and seen as one of the leading authorities on Rhône variety wines.
In 2013, after being approached by Robert Parker to join The Wine Advocate team, Jeb gave up his engineering career and wrote full-time for the Wine Advocate. Described as a younger version of himself by Robert M. Parker Jr., Dunnuck was the leading reviewer for California, Washington and Southern France from 2013 to 2017, publishing more reviews than any other professional reviewer.
In 2017, Jeb decided to leave The Wine Advocate and go back to his roots as an independent wine critic, launching his own publication JebDunnuck.com. Through the platform, Dunnuck offers comprehensive, consumer-focused coverage of the most interesting wines from California, Washington, Southern France and Bordeaux, while seeking out discoveries from around the world.
Jeb's Wine Rating System
While a well-written note shouldn’t need a score, its inclusion makes it easier on the note taker by providing a clear delineation of preferences and allows a more concise note. In short, a score provides a clear context for the note and allows the writer to focus on the individual aspects of a wine as opposed to always having to explain why they feel a very good wine rated 88 points isn’t as good as an outstanding wine rated 96 points.
The scoring system I use is roughly based on the High School Grading System most US students grew up with, beginning at 50 points and ending at 100 points. My scale can be broken up as follows:
100 to 96
As good as it gets. These wines reach the peak of my personal scale of quality.
95 to 90
Outstanding wines. These wines are outstanding for their type and are worth the extra effort to seeking out.
89 to 85
Very Good to Good. These offer real character and can be age worthy.
More of reviews from the Jeb Dunnuck team:
Erin Brooks, photo credit: Robert Parker Wine Advocate
About The Wine Advocate
The origins of The Wine Advocate can be traced back to as far as 1967, when Robert M. Parker Jr. took a brief break from American college life to make his first trip to France on the heels of a young lady friend who was studying in Alsace. That lady was soon to become Mrs. Patricia Parker and remains so to this day. Apart from getting the girl, Parker had discovered wine during this first trip to France and developed a taste for it, which quickly turned into an obsession. The whole story
TWA's Rating System
Nearly every wine review produced by The Wine Advocate carries a rating, otherwise known as a score. The rating is, in essence, our reviewers’ quantitative commentary on the relative quality of the wine at the time of tasting. Readers can immediately recognize our scores when used by wineries or retailers for marketing purposes, by the inclusion of the letters “RP” before the score. Although these letters happen to be the initials for Robert Parker, they do not necessarily denote a score given by Robert Parker himself. RP is in fact short for Robert Parker Wine Advocate, our umbrella company, and therefore the score may have been given by any member of our official reviewer team.
Robert Parker created our original rating system with the first issue of The Wine Advocate, and it remains unchanged to this day. It employs a 100-point quality scale (in which wines are given a rating of 50 to 100 points), as Robert Parker believes that the various 20-point rating systems do not provide enough flexibility and often result in compressed and inflated wine ratings. Since its inception, Robert Parker’s 100-point scale has become the wine industry’s standard.
The Wine Advocate takes a hard, very critical look at wine, since we would prefer to underestimate the wine’s quality than to overestimate it. The numerical ratings are utilized only to enhance and complement the thorough tasting notes, which are our primary means of communicating our judgments.
Score Ranges Assessments
96-100
An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase and consume.
90 – 95
An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
80 – 89
A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
TWA Team: Erin Brooks
Assigned Regions:
Oregon, California Central Coast, Sonoma County
Erin Brooks is a Certified Sommelier and wine journalist. Born in North Carolina, she moved to New Mexico to attend the College of Santa Fe where she graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Politics. During her time in New Mexico, she became involved in the service industry and fell in love with wine. She worked the floor of restaurants for a decade, accruing experience as restaurant manager, sommelier and wine director.
Erin’s passion for wine has led her on a journey through two different wine certification programs, the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS). A Certified Sommelier and recipient of the WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wine & Spirits, she is currently enrolled as a stage-two student in the Master of Wine program. She is the recipient of the Walter Clore Scholarship, the André Tchelistcheff Advanced Course Scholarship and the Bonaccorsi Advanced Exam Scholarship.
Read more insights from the The Wine Advocate team:
- The 2019 Vintage and an Early Look at 2020 by Erin Brook
- More 2018s by Erin Brooks
- 2017 – Part 2 by Erin Brooks
- Where the Wild Things Are by Lisa Perrotti-Brown
About Connoisseurs' Guide
“For over forty years, Connoisseurs’ Guide has been the authoritative voice of the California wine consumer. With readers in all fifty states and twenty foreign countries, the Guide is valued by wine lovers everywhere for its honesty and for it strong adherence to the principles of transparency, unbiased, hard-hitting opinions. Now, it is becoming the California winelover’s most powerful online voice as well. And, our new features provide an unmatched array of advice and information for aficionados of every stripe.
Our monthly newsletter, noted for its accuracy, independence and thoroughness by both the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle remains the focus of our activities. Connoisseurs’ Guide reviews thousands of California and West Coast wines in peer-to-peer blind tastings. Our guest panelists are all industry professionals including other wine writers, sommeliers, retailers and distributors. Almost all other wine reviews are the result of “single palate” tastings and do not match the depth of knowledge and powerful analytical talents brought together at our table.
We buy a high percentage of the wines we taste, and while we accept samples, we do not limit ourselves to reviews of wines submitted. And we never engage in the highly questionable tactic of tasting wines at the winery with the labels showing. Many limited production wineries insist on that bias-inducing scenario. We politely tell them that we do not do it. As the result, we may miss out on some limited production wines, but we do not compromise on our guarantee to you of complete independence and total objectivity.”