The Big Interview: David Parker

David Parker, president of the National Association of Wine Retailers in the US and CEO of Benchmark Wine Group, talks rare wines, political pressures and why data is a “great equaliser” with Sarah Neish.  Few people hold the golden key to the US wine trade quite like David Parker. The CEO of Benchmark Wine Group, the biggest rare wine retailer in the United States, is also president of the National Association of Wine Retailers (NAWR), representing more than 75 members across North America. Additionally, Parker heads up First Growth Technologies, which offers cutting-edge tech services for collectors and wine professionals. Last year, as though his dance card wasn’t already full, Parker also joined the Society of Medical Friends of Wine. “I think I’m the only member that hasn’t worn a stethoscope professionally, but they let me in anyway,” he says good-humouredly. When he speaks to the drinks business, it is shortly after an announcement made by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former US Surgeon General, in which Dr. Murthy called for cancer warnings to be printed on wine labels. The recommendation did not exactly have the NAWR popping corks in excitement. Calling the communication “purposefully misleading”, Parker says the Surgeon General’s comments are part of an agenda being pushed by neo-prohibitionists who are “collecting a lot of money and doing a lot of lobbying”. “It’s disingenuous to say that, because something contains alcohol, then it’s bad for your health,” he adds. “The overall effect on cancer risk from alcohol is about 1%, but certain alcoholic drinks such as red wine have been proven to bring down the risk of heart disease and stroke. And in the US, particularly, heart disease is a much bigger threat than cancer…”

Rude health

Thankfully for Parker, the rare wine sector is enjoying rude health, and a strategic move by Benchmark in January 2025 is likely to chart the future course of the category. The company’s acquisition of Sonoma-based retailer Wine Spectrum has created “a powerhouse of rare wine expertise”, says Parker. Most exciting for US collectors is that the merger brings together the crème de la crème of both old and new vintages – though all as satisfyingly difficult to get hold of as an albatross egg. As Parker explains, Wine Spectrum focuses on “hard-to-get current vintages”, whereas Benchmark’s modus operandi is “super-impossible-to-get, very old back vintages”. The customers of each company also typically occupy opposite ends of the collector demographic. “Benchmark’s customers are high net worth individuals, usually Gen X or Baby Boomers, while Spectrum attracts younger, emerging collectors, who have just started their own cellars,” Parker says. Benchmark also sells to retailers, distributors and Michelin-star restaurants, all of which will likely benefit from the unification of both companies’ product catalogue when they are bought together this year on one website.

Rare underground scene

According to Parker, “there’s a rare wine underground scene in the US, where groups of collectors in almost every state meet up to share and talk about their wines. It’s a great place to learn from each other”. The underground chatter— and the sales data —indicate that the wines US collectors are most interested in right now are from Burgundy, Bordeaux and California, in that order. “The western states, from Texas westward, tend to consume more American wine, or more specifically, Californian wine,” he says. “The east coast of the US tends to be a bit more Eurocentric. For that reason most of the big auction houses are on the east coast.” Parker adds that he is also seeing “a lot of Champagne start to move in the US market, both the grandes marques and growers”, and name-checks Egly-Ouriet as one grower Champagne that’s particularly hot property. “Everyone’s interested in them,” he says excitedly.

Political machinations

But preferences and availability could be set to change. With Donald Trump sworn in for his second term as US President on 20 January, America is diving headfirst into the unknown, with more than a few sharks swimming in the pool. Just how immune is the rare wine sector to politics? In Parker ’s view, political machinations “do tend to play a significant role” in the success of rare wine trading, with Republican and Democrat governments each bringing “different challenges”. With Trump back in the White House, Parker is “concerned about the potential tariffs coming in, which will make it harder for us to restock from some of our favourite sources in Europe”. But he adds that, under President Biden, “we had pronouncements such as the one from the Surgeon General, which is not true and not helpful.” One saving grace, he says, is that high net worth individuals tend to be “more insulated from economic up and down turns, as well as from misinformation”. But, as soon as any government gets involved with the wine industry, he emphasises, “things get complicated.”

Rare bird: Benchmark focuses on sourcing hard-to-find vintages It’s partly due to government policy that Parker chose to base Benchmark Wine Group in California and Washington DC. “Alcohol is the only product for which the Constitution decides how it will be managed, so every US state has its own set of alcohol laws and a large bureaucracy surrounding them. In many cases, alcohol is the state’s biggest money maker,” he says. “California and Washington DC have the most liberal laws around selling alcohol in the US, so it’s no accident that we’re based in those two locations.” Following the Wine Spectrum acquisition, Parker is also eyeing up Florida. “A lot of New Yorkers have moved there in recent years, or have holiday homes there,” he explains. “Florida is also one of the more free states in terms of shipping wine into the US.” Not to mention the number of affluent golfers with ready cash to burn on bottles.

Silicon Valley

Unusually for such a prolific face in the wine world, Parker wasn’t born into a great wine dynasty, nor did he emerge on the scene as the protegé of a renowned winemaker. His professional life began in California’s Silicon Valley, where he forged a successful career in computer science and engineering. “Along the way, I got interested in wine and bought my first vineyard in the Anderson Valley, Geyserville,” Parker says. “I was selling my grapes to people like Robert Mondavi, so I accidentally got into the high end of the wine world right from the start. “Eventually, on the advice of the late Burt Williams [who helped put California Pinot Noir on the map in the 1980s], I bought another vineyard up in Oregon.” As he slowly amassed hectares, Parker started up Brentwood Wine in 1998 from his garage, “which is where all good businesses should start, by the way”.

Democratising rare wine

Being given the opportunity to buy The Wine Market Journal in 2002 was a game-changer for Parker. An enormous collection of data that tracks every trade of every wine sold at auction by the major houses in Europe, Asia and the US, the journal makes it possible to see at a glance exactly what’s trading and for how much. Parker sees the data as being essential to democratising the rare wine industry, as it is available to all for a nominal fee (membership packages start from about US$9.95 per year). “It’s the great equaliser between buyers and sellers,” he insists. “Rare wines are very thinly traded products, so you want to see every single trade of that wine.” The journal currently holds the sale prices of more than 2.5 million wines. Being personally acquainted with the heads of all the major global auction houses (Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Acker Merrall & Condit, etc), means that one perk of the job is getting the heads-up whenever exciting wines appear on the scene. “Because we own The Wine Market Journal we get every single lot of every single auction sale before it takes place, so we have the info on everything that’s coming to market, ahead of time,” he says. It puts Benchmark in a position to “bid broadly”, which in turn helps Parker to take the temperature of the rare wine scene. “If we win a large portion of our bids, then we know that it’s a weak market, because we tend to be value bidders aiming for the low end,” he reveals. “On the other hand, if we win a small portion of our total bids, then we know the market is strong.”

Sonoma sunshine: Parker’s first vineyard acquisition was in the valley The Wine Market Journal has also played its part in the great wine tech revolution, something Parker and his teams have led the charge on in the United States. “Wine is such a unique product that none of the existing web engines really did the job right, which is why we custom-designed and coded our own software,” he says. “From the moment we get a rare wine in-house, it’s made immediately visible on the site and is automatically priced based on other realtime prices in the industry. Collectors can then order that wine directly from the same website.” With everything stashed under one virtual ‘roof ’, it naturally leaves one vulnerable to hackers or bugs potentially destabilising the business, but Parker isn’t unduly concerned. “We’re fortunate enough to have the original developer on staff, so if something were to go wrong he could find it and fix it almost straightaway,” he says. Despite the wine world being “notoriously techno-phobic”, Parker believes we’ve reached the point where tech is “absolutely needed for every aspect of a wine business”, from inventory to shipping, which he says “is the biggest cost for our company – and for most of the auction houses”. It’s also becoming increasingly vital to be able to send marketing communications via SMS as “more than half of e-commerce transactions are now made on a smartphone”.