Robert Parker has long been the wine world’s favorite villain—a critic who used his unprecedented power to flatten wine into an alcoholic, fruity mass of sameness. But “Parkerization” was always much bigger than one man. In PUNCH, John McCaroll delves into Parker’s influence on wine, then and now. “While the distinction between Parker the man and Parkerization can be a bit fuzzy, it’s important to make it. We can certainly see how instrumental he was in forming a lowest-common-denominator wine economy, but by blaming one man for the excess of the global palate, we tell ourselves that it’s over. In a way, it is. The current zeitgeist is not oriented toward wines Parker would like. (Famously, he disliked the Loire, and he’d likely be uncomfortable among the sea of chillable reds.) Yet it’s clear that the tools of Parkerization—the technological wonders that can make wine taste like pretty much anything—and the blunt force of global capital can easily be turned toward new targets.”

In SevenFifty Daily, Diana Hawkins explores the exclusive search for the perfect eco-friendly wine closure. “Plastic has found its way into almost every closure, but as with many questions of sustainability, nothing is that clear cut. Just because a product contains plastic doesn’t mean it should be written off; some plastics are made from fossil fuels, while others come from biological sources. From an environmental perspective, there’s a real difference—biologically-derived plastics can have lower carbon footprints than their peers. Similarly, just because something is plastic free, or mostly so, doesn’t mean it gets a free pass.”

In Wine Industry Advisor, Kathleen Willcox reports on how research on grapevines in space is informing the future of agriculture.

Domaine Drouhin Oregon has acquired Methven Family Vineyards in Willamette Valley’s Eola-Amity Hills AVA, reports L.M. Archer on WineBusiness.com.

Constellation Brands has acquired a minority stake in US wine brand Archer Roose, an ‘accessible luxury wine brand focused on offering consciously-crafted, worldly wines to a new generation of wine drinkers.’

In Penta, Tracy Kaler highlights five wine regions worth living in beyond Napa and Sonoma.

Mark Stock explores the beauty of chillable red wines for Oregon Wine Press.