The grapes may have been sweet — but the wine critic was rotten, a new lawsuit claims.
The Wine Advocate magazine claims a writer toured vineyards across the globe, sipping wine on the company dime — then failed to submit articles from the adventure, posting them instead on his personal blog.
Scarsdale-based wine reviewer Antonio Galloni, 42, allegedly used the magazine’s money to travel to France, Italy and California for glamorous assignments, then disappeared on deadline, leaving the magazine’s February 2013 edition with unexpected empty pages.
The wine-and-ditch caused the magazine — owned by Robert M. Parker Jr., arguably the world’s most powerful wine critic — to lose subscribers and suffer a financial blow, the lawsuit claims.
“[He had] a secret scheme to travel to wineries throughout the world . . . when in fact [he] intended to use these visits solely for his own benefit,” the suit notes.
Galloni, who earned $300,000 per year, quit unexpectedly in February without writing a much-anticipated article, which editors had been teasing for months, court papers state.
The Maryland-based magazine filed the suit Monday in Greenbelt, Md.
Galloni declined to comment.