Rating: 
Summary: Flawed, but invaluable
Review: Look, many of you will be familiar with the criticisms Parker received, but let's face it, who can say they have sampled as many wines as this man? Few at all. His obvious drive for quality and affordability are admirable and essential qualities in the modern wine world. Many of you reading this will be insufferable wine snobs who have ruined the buying of wine for the plebeians among us, especially wines from the fine wine regions of the world. Parker does all of us a great service and he should be applauded. The price of the book alone is justified merely for his superb insights into the Rhone and Languedoc regions. Being a budget wine buyer for the most part and thus a fan of wines from Chile, New Zealand, and South Africa I would have appreciated some reviews, but you can't have it all. The lack of reviews for Germany is a serious omission, especially as Riesling is the world's greatest white varietal, bar none. All that said however, it's a fine book, just horribly imcomplete.
Rating: 
Summary: skewed but useful in conjunction with other books
Review: Parker Parker Parker, yes we cannot do away with him, but it is useful to know that you don't have to read ONLY Parker, and in fact it is neccessary not to use this book as the be all and end all of buying decisions. Over the past few years Parker's palate has repeatedly being called to question and the flaws of his preferences are being brought to light. This book however is useful for novices and beginner winedrinkers (rich and poor alike) and will appeal to young and innexperienced palates. Be particurly careful about his projected maturity notes and completely disregard anything written by his "co-author" Rovani. Burgundy is a complete disaster so disregard the whole chapter, and the team does not understand Alsace or Germany either. Coverage is good in regions like Spain, italy, California and Bordeaux, but piss poor in hot new regions like New Zealand for example. Nothing has been updated about New Zealand as long as the book has been published (6 editions now) and the man obviously hasn't bothered to taste anything from a country that is universally heralded as a great new source of fine wine. No other writer has been able to ignore the region but Parker still has the same four paragraphs about it that he wrote almost a decade ago. Laziness? Or do the region's wine throw him off balance and he has to dismiss them so single-mindedly? Either way, this should not be the only book you buy. For buying decisions, it is fine to start off with but as soon as you can afford to, PLEASE get a subscription to one of the other critics too, especially Clive Coates, Jancis Robinson and Stephen Tanzer, to save from being dissapointed years down the line when you realise that your palate has matured and outgrown Parker.
Rating: 
Summary: the bible
Review: Simply stated, this is the bible from a consumerist perspective. Parker provides a great service and this book is a huge bargain. Everone has their "wish list" for this tome (in my case it is a desire for more coverage in Spain), but nothing else comes close. Some have reservations about Parker's great influence, but the fact is that nobody has worked harder or remained more independent.
Rating: 
Summary: A Passe' book
Review: Subscribers may find some of the information here useful, but strictly from a wine lovers point of view its essentially nothing new. People new to wine will find that many of the wines are either out of their price range or no longer available thanks to Mr. Parker's advice. Those who have experience in wine will realize early on that Mr. Parker likes a particular, if not homogenous variety of wine. He focuses too much on bigger, international oakier wines in my opinion. The information on wine web sites is also suspect in that it fails to disclose a relationship Mr. Parker has with one of the recommended web sites.You should sit in a library or bookstore and browse this book in a short time rather than purchasing it. While Mr. Parker has had his time in the wine world, I for one believe there are other, better places to read and discover wine.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Book, Very Useful
Review: This exhaustive work contains enormous information for the novice and expert as well. Written in a straightforward manner, it teaches all the little things important to know about wine, from the kinds of grapes used in given regions to how and when to decant. The reviews are spot-on, as we've come to expect from the Parker-Rovani team. Unbeholden to producers or the wine industry, they call it like it is. For example, they were the only critics to accurately announce the 1993 and 1998 Burgundies as being hard and dry, saving countless consumers from buying those expensive wines. My quality of life is better because I follow their advice!
Rating:
Summary: So much wine, so little time...
Review: This sixth edition of Parker's wine-buying guide is the result of Robert Parker and his accomplice, Pierre Rovani, tasting their way through more than 8,000 wines. Parker introduces the book as a "consumer's guide to wine." Although Parker and Rovani both write very well, this book is not an effort at creative writing. My review focuses on the utilitarian aspects of the book -- look to others for analysis of character development, plot devices, etc. My paperback copy of the book has 1635 numbered pages (not 1696 as the Amazon web blurb indicates). About 40 pages (2.5% of the book) are devoted to introductory material ranging from tasting glasses to notions of terroir. The index takes up another 2.3%. The rest (over 95%) is about the wines; these are covered by geographic region. Each region is briefly introduced (several with maps) with a summary of the kinds of wine produced (and grape varietals employed), recent vintages are characterized, and wine producers of the region are ranked from 5 stars (outstanding) to 2 stars (average). Breaking the geographic coverage down in terms of page volume, Europe takes up 69.5% of the book, North America 19.8%, and the rest of the world the remaining 5.9%. France alone takes up 53% of the book. Six major wine regions consume over 75% of the pages: Bordeaux, 16%; the Rhone, Provence & Languedoc 16%; Burgundy (& Beaujolais) 14.5%; Italy 12.5%; and California 16.7%. Australia and New Zealand weigh in together at 5.6%. South Africa and South America get 2 and 3 pages, respectively. Previous editions of the book have been criticized for this seemingly "undemocratic" coverage. The vast bulk of the book is tasting notes and numeric ratings for individual wines, organized by producer and vintage year. Parker or Rovani assign a numeric rating or score to each wine; these range from 100 points down to 50 points. A wine rated 90-100 points is excellent to outstanding (grade A), 80-89 points good to very good (grade B), and so on. Tasting notes describe each wine in terms of nose, flavor, body, etc., and these really are the crux of the review: the numeric score attempts to rate the wine relative to its peers, but you still want to know what it tastes like. Reviews for most producers cover the most recent two or three vintages that have been released; some have up to five or six vintages covered (e.g., many Bordeaux chateaux). Very few wines included in the book are rated at less than 85 points; apparently many wines that were tasted by the pair (and described in Parker's bimonthly *Wine Advocate*) did not make it into the book. By not devoting space to describe lesser wines, the authors are able to point us toward more of the very good and excellent wines. The other side of this coin is that they do not often explicitly steer us away from not-so-good wines. Moreover, if a wine is not included in the book, we don't know if it didn't measure up or simply was not tasted. But many unreviewed producers are at least rated in a general way in the 2- to 5-star tiers for each region/varietal. Wine prices are indicated by a letter code, from A (inexpensive) to E (expensive) to EEE ("luxury"). Bargain hunters may be dismayed upon randomly scanning the pages to see that A and B priced wines are relatively uncommon. But a closer look reveals a few regions that do have reviews of many reasonably priced wines (the south of France, for example). So how good is the book? It is not difficult to find fault with it. Some will find the geographic coverage uneven ("Not a single wine from Texas!"). Some will gripe that inexpensive wines are inadequately covered. But Parker and Rovani did not set out to give us a random, representative sample of all the world's wines. They chose to tell us about 8,000+ mostly very good to outstanding wines. The amount of useful information in this book is just incredible -- hundreds of pages of informed tasting notes on good to great current wines. It would be churlish to even think about downgrading the book by a star because of anything it omits. It is an amazing value and most wine consumers will benefit greatly from owning it.
Rating:
Summary: Not Worth Your Money
Review: This wine book is not worth your money or attention. It isn't a "Buyer's Guide," as most of the wines are long gone from the market. It is majorly incomplete, missing hundreds of estates, including several important ones. And worst of all, the "information" it contains is subjective rather than objective; promoting the authors' rather idiosyncratic (read weird) ideas about wine rather than addressing each wine's true measure - whether it gives - or will give - pleasure.
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