Jancis Robinson and her Purple Pages

About Jancis Robinson
Jancis Robinson is a British wine writer and critic. She is one of the most influential commentators in the wine business.
In the late sixties and early seventies, she studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Oxford. She started her wine career in 1975 as assistant editor of the British wine trade magazine Wine & Spirit. Since then she has been accomplishing a significant work to promote wine all over the world :
• As a writer, presenter and producer of wine series on TV. In 1983, she wrote and presented “The Wine Programme”, the world’s first TV series dedicated to wine, broadcasted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Eastern Europe.
• As a wine correspondent/columnist. She has worked for the Sunday Times of London and the Wine Spectator. Now she writes a weekly column for the Financial Times.
• As a wine consultant. She has worked for British Airways from 1995 to 2010.
• As a writer and editor of many books. She herself is never quite sure how many books she has written ! Her bibliography includes “The Oxford Companion to Wine” 3rd edition in 2006 and “The World Atlas of Wine”, 7th edition in 2013 which is one of the world’s leading wine atlases. Here is a link to all her books and DVDs
• As a lecturer about wine all around the world.
• As a judge. She’s been tasting wine from every continent for nearly 40 years. The tasting notes are available on her website www.jancisrobinson.com (only for subscribers).
In 1984, she became the first Master of Wine (MW) from outside the wine trade.
In 2003, she was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. She’s a member of the Royal Household Wine Committee, selecting wines for Her Majesty the Queen to serve her guests.
In 2010, she was made Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole by the French Minister of Agriculture.
Jancis Robinson is married to Nick Lander, a restaurant critic and writer. They have 3 children and a grandson.

Her Purple Pages
Her website www.jancisrobinson.com was created after having mentioned it on the jacket of one of her book «Jancis Robinson’s Wine-tasting Worldbook» in 2000. As she wanted an original website, she asked a book designer, Lisa Sheard, to take care of its design (she’s the one responsible for the color Purple).
To keep her independence in her wine comments, Jancis refused all advertising and sponsorship and decided in 2001 to launch a subscription bit of the site for the tasting notes, forum and the only online version of the «Oxford Companion to wine »,…
Since then she’s been making many improvements with developers to suit her members. Now she has subscribers, also called « Purple pagers », from 90 countries.
She is helped by a team of wine experts and writers for the forum, the tasting and the editorial content.
In 2010, they were voted Wine Website of the year in the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards.
In 2012, they launched a version of the website designed specifically for mobile.
Jancis wine tasting notes
Here is her wine scoring scale :
• 20 – Truly exceptional
• 19 – A humdinger
• 18 – A cut above superior
• 17 – Superior
• 16 – Distinguished
• 15 – Average
• 14 – Deadly dull
• 13 – Borderline faulty or unbalanced
• 12 – Faulty or unbalanced
Jancis Robinson and her team have tasted around 150 champagnes in 2014 and 1 single cuvée has received the highest note : Salon 2002 with an excellent note of 20.