Antonio Galloni is leaving The Wine Advocate to launch his own wine review business to the disappointment of the publication’s subscribers.

The Venezuelan-born wine critic announced the move on his new site antoniogalloni.com on Tuesday after more than six years working for Robert Parker.

Subscribers using the erobertparker forum expressed their disappointment that he was leaving, with numerous posts questioning the long-term viability of The Wine Advocate following the departure of both Galloni and Parker as editor-in-chief.

Parker remains more optimistic. In response to subscribers' posts, he said “it was not surprising in that he didn't want to be an employee in the new structure of TWA.” He admitted that the business now needed “to find some superb replacements and I think we will...as much as I hate to see Antonio go in a different direction, I am also very happy for him.”

In his new venture, Galloni will continue to report on the wines of Italy, Champagne, California and Burgundy. He will expand his coverage to other regions and also announced his intention to recruit other critics as contributors.

“In growing this new project my priority is to build a team of the highest-level professionals - appreciating, of course, that world-class talent is rare and hard to find,” he said in a statement.

Galloni intends to upload his work from the last decade on to his site, which will include 25,000 reviews and several hundred articles. He has not stated whether he will be charging a subscription fee for access to the site.

During his time at The Wine Advocate, Galloni introduced video coverage and public tastings and seminars. Galloni added that he had authored one-third of the reviews published by The Wine Advocate during 2012.

The resignation is viewed as a blow by some long-time Wine Advocate users following the announcement that its founder Robert Parker had sold a stake in the Advocate to Singapore investors and would be stepping down from his role as editor-in-chief in December.

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