My Take on "2014 Wine Wish List"

Well, I raised a few family-eyebrows with my last post (Drinking & Religion: Divine Reconciliation), though most comments from cousins were made in an understanding fashion.
This post should be a bit more benign:

I listened with great interest to the following radio program:

The Sipping Point Radio: 2014 Wine Wish List

The host of The Sipping Point, Laurie Forster, and big-time blogger, Joe Roberts of 1WineDude.com, offered their top ten resolutions that they wish the wine world would adopt. We were sailing along beautifully through the list, including "Don't judge those who prefer Muscadine to Bordeaux." I tell the guests at The Biltmore Winery tasting room that they've entered a no-judgment zone. Biltmore offers a wide range of styles from a lightly sweet and light-alcohol Zinfandel Rose' to a beautifully-complex Tempranillo; but, we make 35 different wines for a reason -- they each have their fans, whether they've just enjoyed their first taste or they're seasoned grape nuts like me. As Roberts said, "can't we all just get along?"
Forster and Roberts went on to discuss the negative aspects of the numeric point scale (AKA Parker Points). While I agree that we need to take chances and actually look at wines with 89s as being great in spite of a mark below 90, I believe strongly that those numbers help beginners more than the well-wined to start their own adventure with a bit of a treasure map in mind. After all, any movie or book with a treasure map typically ends up with a chest of dust, or someone else getting to the prize before you. Enjoy the journey of discovery as you sample an occasional 94-pointer just for the heck of it. I also think of points in the same light as the prosaic descriptions that all of us in the biz are guilty of using. Linzer torte? Really? Those do help me focus on what I might find in my own mouth and nose.
Then, rather abruptly, they stepped on my toes. Forster suggested that the three-tier system (1. Winery/Producer, 2. Importer/Distributor, 3. Consumer) kept too many wines from the consumer as the distributors tend to work exclusively with the big-named conglomerates that foist Americanized wines on an unsuspecting consumer. I work for #2, the importer/distributor Robert Walter Selections, and we happen to focus on the small family-owned wineries of France, Spain, and Germany that have no interest in changing the vinification process to please the American palette. They are, for the most part, biodynamic and organic (though they are too small to worry with inspections and certifications).
We would hate to have the intention of our small business quashed by a few consumers who wanted to save a few bucks on a unique Cotes du Rhone. Importers/Distributors serve a necessary function in terms of legal issues of importing alcohol, providing U.S.-specific labeling, safely transporting larger quantities in order to keep the shipping costs at a very low per-bottle average, not to mention the poor winery that wants to make wine, not spend night and day taking hundreds or thousands of individual orders and packaging and sending a bottle here or a half-case there.
I'm sure it was not the intent of Forster, and Roberts, to say that all wine should be available directly to the consumer, but the suggestion that even a few offer that raises my hackles a bit. So, enough of that, and, as Roberts asked...yes, we can get along.