Wine Expression and Wine Ratings
How do you rate a wine? Do you try and stick to the 100 point system? Is that system flawed? Is there a better scale to use? How important are tasting notes?
These are some of the questions most of us face when we seriously try and gauge a wine’s quality. There are a lot of different rating systems out there, but most seem insufficient or flawed. For example, the Chronicle last week began using a 4 star system. Of course, by also introducing half stars, they have effectively turned it into an 8 point system. Are 8 points enough to categorize the quality of a wine? I wouldn’t say so. The systems that try and over simplify wine aren’t appealing to me.
Those that use the 10 point system with half and even quarter points, have effectively changed it to a 5 or 2.5 point interval on a 100 point scale. Why not just say 90 of 95 points at that point?
Then there is the ubiquitous 100 point system that continues to receive criticism even though it reigns as king in the wine scoring kingdom. The big argument against the 100 point scale is whether a one point variation is a noticeable difference, say between a 91 and 92. The answer is yes, it is, but only a small percentage of the population can discern that difference. I am not one of those, but I could probably tell you the difference between a 92 and 94 point wine. For me, a 2 point interval is noticeable, and that is how I have decided to start rating wines. (I have been using this 2 point interval system for a little while on this blog.) I follow even numbers starting from 50 to 100 and accompany each rating with the most descriptive notes I can.
Which brings us to the question, how important are the tasting notes? Most would agree that they are extremely important. For example:
A friend of mine has turned into a serious collector in the last few years, and religiously follows professional wine ratings. After seeing a 96 point score plastered on a pricey bottle of wine, he ran out and purchased it from his local merchant. Upon opening the bottle he was surprised by an overwhelming smell of lead and charcoal. Thinking the bottle would improve to his liking with some air, he decanted it for an hour, then two, then twenty four. The bouquet didn’t change. He looked up the bottle in the referring publication, read the notes, which immediately spelled out those descriptors to him, and learned his lesson. The tasting notes are just as important as the score, if not even a little more so. Although this was a 96 point wine, he hadn’t acquired the taste for charcoal and lead, so this wine wasn’t pleasing to him.
The best thing about wine is trying new ones and witnessing the evolution of your own taste over time. As I continue to learn and taste new wines, I hope you’ll continue to come along for the journey. My goal for wine reviews on this website is to reflect the wine as accurately as possible in an easy to understand format. I hope the method I have chosen to use does just that.
January 17th, 2006 at 11:04 am
what is your knowledge on spanish wines? I’ve recently moved to spain, and I’d be interested to hear your opinions(if you’ve made any that is).
January 17th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Hi Katja,
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
January 17th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Jathan,
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…
January 17th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
You have smart friends Lenn, they are saving a LOT of money not chasing the stars. A friend of mine, Chris K. brought up a good point about Robert Parker’s thoughts on this segment. It upsets him that people don’t give the 80-89 point wines as much credit as they deserve, these wines are overlooked.
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.
January 17th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Interesting question Jathan,
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.
January 17th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Murray,
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.
January 17th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Not a good debate, a great one. Mr. Parker starts at 50 so realy he has a fifty point system. The first fifty is the fact you have the guts to make a wine. Then 1-10 for nose 1-10 for taste 1-10 for balance 1-10 for finish 1-10 overall. So that is why notes are so important. Yes I’m the one who learned his lesson on reading notes. Up until 1978 everyone used a 25 point scale, Parker was the first to use the hundred. I use it as well but i’m not that good as far as telling you that a wine is balanced for aging or not so for getting me to try the wine I start at 60. The hundred point scale works for Americans because we relate to it well. A-F is just not enough. Those who say hundred is too much well realy for Parker it’s 50 and if you break up your ratings into so many points for each part you find you can tell the difference between 91-92.
Chris K.
January 18th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Chris,
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.
January 18th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Update: Chris emailed me, ‘I wish I came up with the system. Parker did, he gives 5 pts for color and appearance, 15 for smell and
bouquet, 20 for flavor and finish 10 for overall quality and potential.’
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?
January 18th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
To Katja,
First and formost congrats on a wonderfull move enjoy the tapas. I don’t know alot about Spanish wines but the one that I have tased and bought what I could was Numanthia-Termes, I had a couple of vintages(2000-2002). I don’t remember details but I enjoyed themm all. If you find it I would be cuious to know where it ranks in the wines you taste. It seems to be a regular on Spectators top 100 the 02′ was third on thier list @ $24.
Chris K.
January 19th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
All forms of criticism are subjective by their nature. However, wine criticism ranks below art criticism and, if the 2002 Olympics are any indication, figure skating judging in the “least objective†list.
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.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Justin,
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.