Regardless of the Genre, any good critic will face the conditions you describe; mood, setting, bias. It’s left up to the critic to explain what they do to counteract these variables, and Mr. Parker has done a pretty good job explaining how and why he deals with wine tasting the way he does on the front of every one of his Wine Advocate journals.

You do make a point I can wholeheartedly agree with, that of the consensus of the masses. If a movie really sucks, the majority will overrule that one guy who says it’s great, who’s biased towards the film because his friend was a stand in / lead gaffer on the set. The film was lame, and 8000 yahoo users gave it an F. Hard to disagree with that.

I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up a Wine Wiki with a rating system. Anyone could edit, rate, notate any bottle of wine ever made and the majority would rule. However this isn’t a simple undertaking as there are inherent problems that arise when complete contextual control is handed to your everyday wine drinker. Users with personal vendettas could cheat system, altering the rating of a wine in whichever direction they choose. The Wikipedia has experienced these type’s of growing pains, and continues to refine it’s structure.

But, maybe some day in the near future, wine ratings will be more efficient, complete, unbiased, and useful, with the collective wisdom from wine enthusiasts harnessed.

One day.

One of my great passions outside of wine is modern film so it is inevitable that I would draw a comparison between the criticism of vino and celluloid. Like judging wine, judging film is subject to a substantial variety of external factors that can affect the score a critic assigns to a film. What kind of mood the critic is in, the quality of the theater or presentation, and pre-conceived notions about the filmmaker’s previous work can all lower the objectivity factor in what is already an inherently subjective exercise.

That being said, there can be real value for the consumer if she or he finds a single critic (or maybe two) whose tastes seem to be somewhat consistent with the consumer. Armed with the written work of such a conceptual confederate, the consumer can make far more informed decisions about what films she pays money to see and those that she does not. Furthermore, a consumer can consult websites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes to get a statistical sense of what a large body of film critics thought of a film.

It isn’t so easy for the wine consumer. For one, there are far more wines to choose from the number films available at the local multiplexes. Therefore, finding one critic who has reviewed the bulk of what is on the shelves at the moment, let alone one whose tastes match closely the tastes of the consumer, is very difficult if not impossible. Secondly, many of the major sources of tasting notes are publications employing a team of critics instead of a single critic. As much as magazines like Wine Spectator try and pretend that their team represents a united tasting front, it just isn’t a reality.

What would be most useful is a team of 20 or more tasters with various tastes who taste a large number and substantial variety of wines blindly. The combined score along with the individual scores of each taster (so that consumers could begin to identify which few of the 20 have tastes that most match their own) would serve as an excellent resource.

As far as the various scoring systems go, they are really only useful for comparing a single critic’s scores against one another, and then really only over the short term. Even factoring out the huge array of environmental, physiological and emotional factors that can skew scores from one day to the next, comparing the 100-pt scores of Parker, Suckling and anyone else is inherently a fallacious exercise.

Chris K.

I think I like 10’s better as you do Chris, easy to understand.

I think color can be absorbed into one of the categories, and you brought up balance as a category, which I think is good.

So the question now is, do each of these categories deserve 1/5th of the overall score?

1. Bouquet and color - ?(yes, but does it deserve a little more?)
2. Taste - ?(Yes but runs into #3)
3. Balance - ? (I’d say yes)
4. Finish - Yes
5. Overall - Yes

That looks pretty fair to me. It’s heavier on taste by 10 points over parker, and lighter on bouquet / smell by 10, but I think it still works.

Overall is one of those wow / finesse categories that really separates the fantastic wines from the mediocre.

What do you think?

Thanks for chiming in.

As far as ‘1-10 for nose 1-10 for taste 1-10 for balance 1-10 for finish 1-10 overall’ goes, I have a problem with the fact that these aren’t separated somehow, other than in the notes. (is this the method parker uses by the way?)

That would actually be a pretty cool graph with each tasting note. For those that prefer the nose to another feature, they would probably be happy grabbing a bottle with a 10 nose, 5 overall.

You might be on to something here, an overall score up to 100, then a breakdown of the components in an easy to read graph, from 1-10. I like it.

Good points. Another factor is heightened / diminished sensory perception. There are some days when my sniffer is working better than others. Environment, overall health, etc., all play a role.

At one point, after a 21 day fast I did for health reasons, my nose was so sensitive I could immediately smell EVERYTHING when I walked in a room. (That includes the bad breath 99% of people have.)
Tasting wine after a three day fast, all I could smell was the alcohol!

All the things you mentioned play a role. That’s why, when I really rate a wine, I try and control as many factors as I can to keep it as fair as possible.

Now that science is working on it, perhaps chemical makeup will be the way we buy our wine in the future and maybe value will make it into that equation.

I am from the camp that believes the 100 point scale is kind of rediculous. Such a system implies a level of accuracy which simply cannot exist.

A wine which scores a 91 one day, may score 93 two hours later, or 89 the next day. Applying a score to a wine is far far too subjective and influenced by your surroundings, your mood, or if not tasting blind, your previous opinion of the winery. A smaller scale still gives the consumer an excellent indication of the wines quality.

A 92 or a 93 point wine are both fantastic, different people will prefer different ones, why the need to try separate them?

For my reviews I use a 10 point scale, generally wines that score over 5 end up published on our blog. I settled on this scale after initially looking at using a “5 star” rating, with half star increments. In the end, that is a 10 point scale, the rest is history.

One point which I would like to make is that reviews which provide a rating for the value of the wine, as well as the percieved quality, are far more valuable to the consumer. I wish more of the “big guns” in the wine tasting world would offer value for money assessments. Then again, that is where many of the wine bloggers find a competitive advantage.

As far as not rating a Long Island Merlot 95, (I would choose 94 or 96 :o), because the wine world would rate it lower, you have an interesting dilemma. Yes you are comparing this wine regionally and that can / should come out in your notes. You should also compare the wine to all of the merlots you have had regardless of region. Perhaps you want to adopt a method of 2 scores, a regional score in comparison to other NY wines, and an overall score. It’s a 96 NY / 92 Overall. Or maybe you just give it an overall score of 92 and highlight in your notes it’s one of the best merlot’s you’ve tasted from that region.

In every wine I taste, I try and compare it to the best of that varietal I have ever had. Yes the 100 point system has it’s downsides, but I feel it’s still the most accurate and recognized way to rate wine. We’ll just tweak it a little.

Great post and this is something I’ve been grappling with lately. I’m not AT ALL happy with my A-through-F grading system. I want to change it up…but I’m not sure what to use yet.

My question is this…

Wine Specator uses the 100 point and I get the impression that a 92 by one guy who covers say Bordeaux isn’t necessarily a 92 by Laube in Cali…so that means that the scores are “within region”

So…if I were to use the 100-point scale on NY wines, should I do the same thing? I think not. If I give a wine a 95 as a Long Island Merlot…but it would only be an 85 in the “wine world”…is it any good for anyone? No.

So why does WS do it that way?
Anyway, your point about the tasting notes being vital is one that everyone should remember. I know people who prefer wines that usually end up in the 85-ish range when compared to those in the 95 range. They like simple, fruity wines…

I have had very little experience with Spanish wines. The ones that I have tried (names escaping me at the moment) have been superb. Now that you are in Spain, perhaps you can recommend some bottles to me!

My continued goal is to try new wines from different regions around the world, and write about my findings. I’m planning on attending a trade tasting of 50 wine producers from Italy on Monday the 23rd. Hopefully my palate and notepad will be able to keep up!

Cheers,

Jathan