Robert Parker is the founder of the Wine Advocate, a newsletter that got started in August of 1978, when newsletter were more prominent then they are today. There’s a lot that you can say about the newsletter itself and the impact that it had on the wine industry. You can find people that talk about the good Parker did for raising awareness about wine in the US, and you can find plenty of people who will criticizes him, and I’ll talk about some of those criticisms. But I wanted to look at this more from a business perspective about what Robert Parker was able to pull off. Because in a pre-internet, pre-Instagram, pre-blogging era, before all of that, Parker pulled off what in today’s terms I think most people would call a side hustle. And he turned this side project into a full time career. I don’t care if it’s 1970, 2018, or 2100, if you can find a way to get paid, to do what you want, what you love to do, that pretty awesome. And that’s the part of Parker’s story that I want to look at.

Image of Alsace, France here

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