The Point-Less Life
Alder Yarrow, Seth Long, Bill Moore, and Dan McCallum, take a bow—sort of. Alder, you got the exact scores but had the wines reversed. Dan, you had the right score for Wine 2 and were off by a point for Wine 1 until you let that tobacco note throw you. Seth, you nailed Wine 1 and were off by a point for Wine 2, and Bill, you did the opposite. Well played, gents.
So, the answer to the quiz:
Wine 1: 93 points
Wine 2: 97 points
I am not going to identify the critic, the publication, or the wines themselves, because the issue isn’t any one critic or publication. The point I was trying to make was that professional tasting notes are often just a tangle of inane descriptors and fail at their most basic duty: to convey with some degree of precision how good, bad, or indifferent a wine is. I’m not sure that I succeeded in making this point with the tasting notes I cited, because a number of you correctly guessed that the wines had received significantly different scores, and a few of you came thisclose to acing the quiz. Perhaps my preamble yesterday gave the game away, or maybe the two tasting notes were not as indistinguishable from one another as I thought they were. I have to say that I was struck by the way some of you expertly zeroed in on the use of certain words and phrases in the two tasting notes—a tour de force of linguistic sleuthing!
Despite the somewhat ambiguous result of the quiz, I am going to exercise my prerogative as the landlord of this joint to ignore the result and to reiterate a point I made yesterday: numerical ratings got to be so popular in no small part because professional tasting notes are usually such unenlightening gruel. The question now—the question that prompted this two-part post and the bonus quiz—is whether the numerical ratings dished out by wine critics are coming to be seen as equally useless. To put it in pop culture terms, have scores jumped the shark?
No doubt, lots of winemakers still care about the numbers, and many collector/investor types surely do, too. But I sense that points are losing their hold over the marketplace. Judging by the chatter in the chat rooms, wine geeks no longer seem to get as worked up about professional scores as they did back in the day (over on wineberserkers, the discussion concerning Antonio Galloni’s Napa scores was largely driven by ratings refusniks). Perhaps grade inflation is to blame; when every wine these days seems to get 90 points just for showing up and scores in the mid- and high-90s are given out like candy on Halloween, it becomes hard to suppress a yawn. Maybe the weak economy has thinned the point-chaser population, or it could be that the numbers racket has simply run its course and American wine culture is changing. The rise of CellarTracker may also be a factor.
Whatever the reason, professional scores don’t appear to carry as much weight as they did in the past, and I’m not the only one who has detected a shift. I recently spoke with Kermit Lynch, who told me that retailers and restaurants don’t seem to be nearly as preoccupied with numerical ratings as they were just five years ago (and, in fact, a number of wine shops nationwide are now point-free zones). I’m curious if your observations square with mine (and Kermit’s), or if you think I’m guilty of wishful thinking. And how important are professional wine ratings to you? Do you follow them, and do they inform your buying decisions? When you pop into a wine store, do shelf talkers still have the power to get you hot and bothered? Are you living a point-less life, or are you hooked on scores?
No, we do not agree on Spanish wines more than I might imagine. You have been playing on artificial turf and I have been in the trenches where the vineyard dirt is. And don’t mistake me for a curmudgeon, I am an out and out, toe-to-toe, foe of everything that you and your bosses represent in wine and I have been for a long, long time. And my suspension of social graces especially comes into play when dealing with the likes of you. You actually have the gall to talk to anyone about “social graces?”
Hello Gerry
We probably agree on Spanish wine considerably more than you might imagine but you enjoy playing the role of curmudgeon without social graces and that’s OK with me.
MrBigJ
“Any aspiring collectors should add a case of this to their stash. The 2004 Numanthia comes from a different terroir with a different clone of Tinta de Toro. The vines for this cuvee range from 70-100 years of age with tiny yields of 1 ton of fruit per acre. The wine undergoes malolactic fermentation in barrel followed by 19 months in new French oak before being bottled unfined and unfiltered. The wine is a glass-coating opaque purple with a killer nose of mineral, pencil lead, wild blueberry, and blackberry liqueur that roars from the glass. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, dense, and already beginning to show complexity within its layers of spicy black fruits. There is immense power, well-concealed ripe tannin, and the well-delineated finish lasts for over one minute. This is a sensational effort which in a perfect world should be cellared for a decade and enjoyed over the following 25+ years. However, the elderly among us should not feel guilty about opening a bottle now.”
Importer: Jorge Ordonez, Fine Estates from Spain, Dedham, MA
(GD: Now a Louis Vuitton-owned wine.)
If I read this note and had no idea where it came from, I would think the wine was ghastly. Having been to Numanthia and having seen some of the old vines that are actually estimated to be up to 130 years, I see that it has gotten even more ghastly since I was there. Jay Miller and I agree on very little about Spain, maybe because my judgement are based on 40 years of travel on the wine roads of Spain, conversing for hours with winemakers in Spanish, without Pancho Campo as my guide and benefactor and without the influence of a guru who thinks “oodles and oodles and gobs and gobs” is a virtue instead of a liability in a wine.
Hello Bill
Maybe stepping down from TWA has made me feel less combative.
Changes are coming, there is no doubt about that, driven by the internet, the demise of the print media, and who knows what else. I think there is still a market for expertise so I think The Wine Advocate is not close to finishing its run. The keys are how long Robert Parker keeps working and whether Antonio Galloni can acquire the gravitas as a critic to maintain readership when RMP moves along.
MrBigJ
Hello Howard
The issue, I think, is how to best communicate information about a wine. I personally think well-written notes combined with grades is most effective. However, the writer need to have some talent in note-writing and internal consistency (reliability) in grading. This allows readers to determine whether this critic is in synch with their own perceptions.
MrBigJ
Hello Again Jack
I get your comment about how the Brits used to posit how (and I’m liberally paraphrasing) a wine (and usually they were talking about Bordeaux) had to taste bad young to taste good old. Back in those days, they were talking about vintages like 1928 and 1945 which did take 40+ years to peak and proved to be well worth the cellaring although the original purchasers were probably close to dead. Nowadays things have changed and wines in Bordeaux are made to mature earlier.
The 2004 Numanthia, from the Toro region, is a rustic power-house but impeccably balanced in my opinion. I did not drink 1928 and 1945 Bordeaux in their youth (the latter is my birth year) but I did taste many of them at age 40-50+ when many of them (but far from all) had acquired harmony. I think the Numanthia could be like that, even more the Termanthia (which I gave 100 points). We’ll see but my suggestion to you, Jack, is that if you have any left, just bury thm in your cellar and return in about 20 years.
BTW, I’ too am mystified about Santorum. We’ll see tonight.
MrBigJ
I like the point system but use it only as an aide-mémoire in my wine-tasting notebooks, because I know exactly what I mean by the difference between a 90 and 91.
But no one else does. And never can. Thus I never use points in public print, preferring only words, which is hard enough to do well, because all words are thin ice all the time: Witness the Pinteresque difficulty everybody has truly understanding everybody else. A perfect meeting of minds when things are said or read is rare.
By now the endless public chewing over, and chewing over, and chewing over, of the utility of the point system seems fatigued, threadbare, out of gas and steam — about as enlightening as spending days and nights and weeks and months and years rehashing the 1936 World Series. (Or, mindful of those who prefer alternatives, 1937′s.)
The crux of the matter is that no wine is ever the same wine twice, and neither is the taster the same person twice. That’s why no critique can ever exactly claim that a wine’s ephemeral reality yesterday is its ephemeral reality today, the way original photos could be reproduced in darkrooms. More tellingly, the Lafite that was a 94 at 11 a.m. is a 93 at 6 p.m. and an 88 after a 9:30 p.m. squabble with your wife.
The accuracy of a critique is nothing more than the “accuracy” of a critique. The numbers game is up. Or maybe I should say down.
Klapp, the wisdom of Solomon??? Do you mean Eric Solomon who like Jorge Ordonez (mentioned above by me ) seem to gather many of the highly questionable scores on WA?
Jay, Jack and Mike, I am tiring of all of this civility. I am going back to the Squires board, and enjoy the thrill of running the gauntlet of telling the truth while trying to avoid Squires censoring it!
Jay, with the wisdom of Solomon, I cut the baby here: I agree with you that the 100-point system is indeed one of the many weapons of biomass destruction aimed at Bob Parker by his detractors, but lately, that gripe has taken back seat to a host of others, and it is also true that many who ridicule the pseudo-science of the scale do not champion it in the hands of favored critics while condemning it in the hands of the disfavored.
As to the Wine Advocate, it has indeed had a great three-decade run, but it seems destined to lose both its influence and most of its readership as Bob steps down. As I see it, Bob provided a valuable service in calling attention to many wines, winemakers and wine issues. However, most of historical base have outgrown his guidance, leaving only loyal bloviators like Leve, Lahart and Kegl behind…
Jay thanks for your comment. I believe that I have been drinking wine for nearly as long as you. I have established a palate and know what I can drink with food and enjoy in social settings Merely because you and other critics use the words “balance”, “elegance” and “complexity” does not mean that the wine in the glass will replicate those comments.
Take the wine 2004 Numanthia that you wrote glowingly about giving the wine a 98 in WA.
Your Tasting note states:
Any aspiring collectors should add a case of this to their stash. The 2004 Numanthia comes from a different terroir with a different clone of Tinta de Toro. The vines for this cuvee range from 70-100 years of age with tiny yields of 1 ton of fruit per acre. The wine undergoes malolactic fermentation in barrel followed by 19 months in new French oak before being bottled unfined and unfiltered. The wine is a glass-coating opaque purple with a killer nose of mineral, pencil lead, wild blueberry, and blackberry liqueur that roars from the glass. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, dense, and already beginning to show complexity within its layers of spicy black fruits. There is immense power, well-concealed ripe tannin, and the well-delineated finish lasts for over one minute. This is a sensational effort which in a perfect world should be cellared for a decade and enjoyed over the following 25+ years. However, the elderly among us should not feel guilty about opening a bottle now.
Importer: Jorge Ordonez, Fine Estates from Spain, Dedham, MA
In this note, you did use the word “complexity” since you believed that the wine was already developing complexity at your tasting. My tasting note of this wine did not disclose complexity. To me, the wine provided an unbelievably wood laced undrinkable mess. I gave the wine three days to calm down and it just never did. It was an absolute mess.
It is true that you cautioned readers that the wine needed time. I have been drinking wine long enough to have formed the belief that if a wine is not drinkable during it’s evolution, if it provides no glimpse of what it could be, then it will not ever be a great wine. Sure, some large wines have tannins that mask the fruit or shut down and offer little even with air. Take the 1985 Classified Bordeaux or the 1985 Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet. Patirnce may or may not reward you in wines that do not show well.
Numanthia did not have those issues. It was wood, and extraction and nothing else.
You are entitled to your opinion as am I. The fact that many thousands listen to WA does not surprise me. Rick Santorum’s recent surge in the primary polls is similarly mistifying to me.
Thanks and good luck in your next life stage.
Jack
Hello Jack
You’re old enough to remember the saying “different strokes for different folks”. I get the fact that you often disagree with Parker ratings. That tells me that if you’re seeking advice on what to purchase, you should look elsewhere. On the other hand, the fact that The Wine Advocate has been out there for 33+ years suggests that a lot of people like what they’re getting. If they weren’t, TWA would have been out of business long ago.
Based on your comments, I have to conclude that you haven’t read many (or any) of my reviews. Because if you had you would have seen that concepts like balance, elegance, and complexity are mentioned in almost all of my reviews.
MrBigJ
I think there’s another reason for grade inflation.
When a relatively unknown critic (such as Parker in the early/mid 80s, or John Gilman a few years ago) gives a wine a 60- or 70-point score, that rating (by definition) isn’t going to have a huge impact on the market. But the same score from a publication with a big soapbox (Parker today, the Wine Spectator, etc.) will cripple sales of that wine, even if the negative review is totally off base. If said wine is an artisinal product, a real family’s livelihood will be hurt.
Early in their careers, wine critics can come out blazing with 55- and 60-point scores (which often make for highly entertaining reading), and we readers applaud them for their credibility and honesty. No one gets hurt. Once a critic builds a wide enough audience, though, an amusingly scathing 62-point review in their journal will put that honest farmer out of business. Critics aren’t evil — who wants to destroy someone’s livelihood? So the negative reviews start to disappear from publication, the scores creep up, the language used in the reviews becomes less forthright and more cautious, etc.
So I would postulate that grade inflation goes hand in hand with a wine critic’s influence.
-Steve (@MNWineGuy)
Hello Mike
A couple of things. I agree with you about reliability, the concept that a critic will give approximately the same rating on separate tasting occasions. However, I think it has little to do with a particular measuring scale, it has to do with the critic’s ability to focus on the wine and be internally consistent.
Regarding pressure to put out big scores, I never experienced that from anyone. At The Wine Advocate where there is no advertising, there is obviously no leverage that producers can exert. I was never told by anyone that I ought to jack up my scores. When you allow your reviews to be influenced by anything other than your own personal take on a wine, you are going to lose credibility.
As I said earlier, I’d like to see some hard data using state of the art statistical analyses before I’m going to buy your assertion of grade inflation.
MrBigJ
It’s great that Mr. Big J got into this thread. Thanks J!
The idea of wine reviews was an amazing idea. Kudos to those that have been amble to capitalize on the business. But a major problem of assigning points to a dynamic beverage like wine is that it DUBS DOWN the visceral experience of enjoying a wine for what it is…
A mystical and age-old liquid that makes consumers feel good at least, and maybe connects them to the land, to the earth, to places they didn’t know. It loses some of it’s ‘mystical’ value once points are ascribed.
By scoring wine, the reviewer posits a schema of value that objectifies a subjective matter.
The uneducated buyer then buys wine because it is a 95-point wine, not because it has inherent and subjective value that is completely outside and above and antithetical to a static score.
Educated buyers don’t need points, or wine reviewers for that matter.
But everyone involved in wine, in the business or as a consumer, needs an “elite”… Not just “to call the wine like they see it”, but to keep EXPLAINING WHY WINE MOVES YOU, the taster. Let’s call it keeping wine mystified a la Terry Theise; not otherworldly mystified, but mystified enough so that even the uneducated populace of wine drinkers CAN LEARN TO GET EXCITED in November when Foillard releases his Beaujolais Nouveau or when Rhys develops their next vineyard site or when DRC starts making Burgundy that is affordable (HA!)…
In the same way we want and need sports announcers to call the BCS National Title between LSU and Alabama tonight, we want and need wine experts to do some of the tasting in the trenches, so that we can learn what wine moves them. Once we know that, we can find the ones that do a decent job and pay attention, if we want.
The industrial-wine-complex is strong. But then again, there are amazing producers in every region, in every vintage that are keeping it real.
What wine reviewers need to to do a better job of is explaining why and how any given wine moves them. Make it subjective and help the artisinal vignerons and cellarmasters sell their products without DUBBING DOWN their craft, their livelihood. Evolve or get left behind in the virtual dust of platforms like Cellartracker…
Hi Jay, thanks for the reply. I’m not sure I agree with you about Parker and the 100-point scale. Sure, there are some people for whom the 100-point mechanism is just another reason to dislike Parker and his influence. But I can tell you that my feelings about the 100-point scale have nothing to do with my feelings about Parker. I’ve said it here before, I will say it again now: unless a critic can reproduce, under blind conditions, the same exact score time and again, he or she has no business giving out precise numerical ratings. When David Shaw of the LA Times asked Parker to submit to just such a test, Parker wisely took a pass, because he knew that it couldn’t be done. I think it is possible to consistently place a wine within a range of scores–say, 95-98–but precision beyond that point is just not possible.
I agree with you that there has been a dramatic improvement in the overall quality of wines since the mid-1980s; as you say, it is very rare now to encounter poorly made, unpalatable wines. But I just see so many scores in the mid- and upper-90s now, and I believe that there is a lot of pressure on critics to hand out big numbers. Big numbers get noticed–they get cited by retailers, etc. It is great free publicity for wine critics and wine publications, and at a time when there are so many sources of wine information available to consumers, that kind of free publicity is hard to pass up. Two or three extra points can spell the difference between being cited on a shelf talker and being ignored.
Sorry Jay I am not a WS man so I don’t know whom you referring to. If he invented the super-Tuscan category I guess he can’t be all bad. : )
Hello Jack
You’re sounding a lot like that ex-Spectator guy, the one who invented the super-Tuscan category, you know, the Ferragamo guy… what is his name?
MrBigJ
Jay Miller stated: “To be blunt about it, Mike, I think the problem that many folks have with the 100-point system is that it was popularized by Robert Parker. To the anti-Parkers, this is just another issue for attack. I don’t think the 100-point system is going away because it’s easy to understand.”
Really Jay???? Then how do you explain our existential nauseau for James Suckling and his lust for points for nothing?? Points do not define a wine’s elegance, complexity or balance. Do you even consider those elements in your high scores? I taste oak and extraction in many of the WA beloved wines.
Sorry Jay, it’s not always all about Robert Parker. Sure he is a big part of the problem but far from the only problem in wine criticism.
Hello Mike
The main problem with the 100-point system is that as used by many, the interval between digits is unequal, in other words, there is a large perceived difference between 89 and 90 as opposed to 90 and 91. That’s probably because of the attached verbiage (89 is excellent, 90 is outstanding, and so is 91).
To be blunt about it, Mike, I think the problem that many folks have with the 100-point system is that it was popularized by Robert Parker. To the anti-Parkers, this is just another issue for attack. I don’t think the 100-point system is going away because it’s easy to understand.
Regarding grade inflation, a couple of things. Since 1985 (when I became Parker’s tasting assistant), the world-wide level of wine quality has improved tremendously. We used to encounter many unpalatable wines that were commercially unacceptable. That almost never happens today. Technical improvements have taken care of that. Back in the day, we used to publish all scores but with the proliferation of more and more good wines it became necessary for space reasons (pre web-site) to include only recommendable wines (those scoring 85 points or better). The disappearance of the mediocre and poor scores likely conveyed an impression of inflation.
I realize that the real question (that you and others are asking) is whether some reviewers have psychologically gone soft on awarding high points. I can only answer for myself – I don’t think that’s true for me but I haven’t crunched any numbers. I also have a shorter history than people like Tanzer, Parker, the Spectator, etc. I go back to the fact that there are many more great wines out there and this conveys an impression of inflation. Let’s get some hard data before making pronouncements.
MrBigJ
Mike said: “While we are on this topic, I’m just curious: do you think grade inflation has become a problem in the realm of wine criticism? ”
Mike I amn 98 on that.
Hi Jay, thanks for stopping by again, and Happy New Year.
If The Wine Advocate stopped publishing scores tomorrow, yes, it probably wouldn’t be long for this world. And as I’ve said before, it is human nature to want to categorize and rank things; that certainly didn’t start with Robert Parker and the 100-point scale. But I don’t know that the 100-point scale is necessarily going to be around forever. I assume you disagree, but I think the 100-point approach is uniquely flawed, and I am not alone in that view.
While we are on this topic, I’m just curious: do you think grade inflation has become a problem in the realm of wine criticism?
Thanks, Jay.
Hello Mike
It’s naive to believe that there will come a day without scores.
If The Wine Advocate stopped publishing scores it would be out of business in a New York second (despite the fact that Robert Parker asserts on the cover of every issue that the tasting note is the most important component of a review).
I agree that it’s not too much to ask that a review accurately describe a wine’s personality (or whatever word you’d like to use). As someone who has written thousands of reviews, it’s not so easy but it’s not rocket science either.
MrBigJ
I am happy to be living a point-free life. I love that term. Thanks! I am all about figuring out what I like and celebrating that. I don’t need to hear what the “experts” think.
I completely agree that tasting notes are essentially useless by themselves for all the reasons you’ve highlighted. This is probably for the same reason that scores have inflated. There’s a social contract between professional tasters and producers, which is inevitable for subjective ratings. Honestly I like Ridge’s descriptions on the back of their bottles which describe the vintage, they give plenty of stats, and their assessments of flavor profiles are fairly accurate (which is another problem in that I think a lot of people wish the wine has more flavor than it actually does). The winemaker, reviewer, score, notes, and stats all give the wine a context. I admit I use grades and $ to initially triage wine and then take a closer look.
I’ve noticed that tasting notes are pretty similar to wine making descriptions. No top end winery wants to look like they manipulate the wine. Their mission statements and winemaking philosophy are all the same. They make some meaningless reference to terrior and how they aren’t interventionalist, but only a few are so upfront with their processes (except a few like Clos Pepe, Calera and Ridge and a few others).
Mike,
“I do think there should be some correlation between how a tasting note reads and the score that a wine receives.”
I agree that there should be such a correlation. My point was that we are often not told what the correlation is. Without some understanding of how the qualitative analysis is transformed into a quantitative analysis through an account of which qualities are being given more weight than others, we are left with two independent evaluative schemes. Perhaps what you are looking for is more analysis of why a particular wine’s score is discounted. If the critic writing these notes explained why Wine 1 received only a 93 instead of 97, the notes would be more informative (but of course much longer as well).
This raises the issue of why even modestly negative remarks are seldom made in wine reviews. Music and art critics will usually point to how a work succeeds and where it fails. We seldom see this kind of balanced criticism with regard to wine. Speculating as to why that is perhaps too far afield for a comment thread.
Steve, you make a great point about producers raising their release prices to capture profits that had otherwise been going to flippers. And I think you are absolutely right about the change in what constitutes geek cred.
Edible Arts, thanks the comments. I disagree with you slightly–I do think there should be some correlation between how a tasting note reads and the score that a wine receives. When I read those two notes, I couldn’t detect any real qualitative difference between the two wines. The only cautionary note for either wine was about the oak in Wine 2–yet, Wine 2 received a significantly higher score than Wine 1. Obviously, you found the two notes to be more informative than I did, and several people offered very accurate guesses about the scores, so perhaps I overlooked the right clues. But I simply couldn’t find any difference in the levels of enthusiasm being expressed. But I agree completely that no tasting note can adequately convey how a wine will taste to you.
I don’t trust anyone anymore – certainly not the opinion of the winemaker, definitely not of the salesperson, the wine shop personnel here are geared to pushing value wines, the waiters and sommeliers here have few suggestions beyond pinot noir with fish, I feel that the critics’ score are inflated, Cellartracker is the most helpful. I feel very Hansel and Gretelish – alone in the woods. I feel the need of a guide, yet I don’t trust the guides that are available.
Tom, thanks for stopping by. I think scores can be useful way of cutting through the noise, so to speak. If I see that Allen Meadows thought well enough of a wine to give it a score in the 90s, that’s a good recommendation in my book. Understanding a critic’s strengths and weaknesses–calibrating, to use the popular term–is key to getting the most out of scores and ratings.
Frank, you’ve hit on one of the primary weaknesses with professional wine criticism as practiced by Parker, et al.–they give no consideration to food, and it is often the case that the wines that high-scoring wines are too flamboyant (read: sweet, oaky, syrupy, etc) to pair well with food. But it’s a problem without an easy or obvious solution: Parker can’t eat a steak with every Bordeaux he tastes. But your point is spot on.
My approach is like Tom W’s. I’ve read Wine Spectator forever, and I know how to line up what their reviews say next to what I like, although I try not to focus on the points. I find CellarTracker even more useful, though, because nearly every wine I’ve wanted to know something about is there. I do try to ignore the points there too, because even CellarTracker suffers from grade inflation. A score of 80-84 is supposed to equate to a good wine, which in my mind might be a solid, not complex but inexpensive, everyday wine. If you see that score, though, people probably are not going to have liked the wine very much.
Dear Mike: I searched for a word in these tasting notes, conveying to the reader a enology concept. I did not find. I think it’s all empty rhetoric and misleading. Greetings.
Mike,
Interesting exercise. Very informative. But let me be a bit of a contrarian here. When you think about it, there is no reason why we should expect a correlation between wine scores and tasting notes unless you know precisely how a score was formulated. Wine scores give us little but ordinal rankings for a particular critic. If wine (1) gets a 93 and wine (2) gets a 97, all we really know is that this particular critic likes (2) quite a bit more than (1), and just as much as other 97′s he/she has reviewed. But that has no direct correlation to phrases like “exquisite finesse” or “striking textural depth”. Only if we knew that this critic typically respects “striking textural depth” over”exquisite finesse” would there be some correlation with the score but I doubt that critics employ such general principles when evaluating wine.
But I’m not convinced such descriptors tell us nothing. Assuming that the wines are accurately described, I’m quite sure I would prefer Wine 1 over Wine 2 regardless of the score because I look for finesse and grace in wines. The tasting notes you provided really do present two distinctly different wines.Isn’t that in part what tasting notes are supposed to do–mark relevant distinctions between wines? These notes succeed at least up to that point. Of course the difficulty is that what this critic sees as “exquisite finesse” might not seem so exquisite to me. In the end you have to drink the wine to know. But no description of a wine can adequately capture the experience.
It seems to me wine scores and tasting notes are two quite different evaluative tools with different aims and capturing somewhat different phenomena.
Great post, Sherman; many thanks. I agree–credibility and clarity are hugely important, and that was really the point I was making about tasting notes. Too often, they are just muddled and uninformative. Tasting skills and writing skills don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, but some of these guys don’t even seem to be trying; their tasting notes read as if they were spit out in a matter of seconds, with no second glance. I think that’s part of what has soured WGs on critics and ratings.
David, your view echoes what Sherman and Steve have both said, and I think you are absolutely right–casual drinkers are much more inclined to rely on scores than oeno-obsessives. And I agree completely about certain critics serving as contrarian indicators, which is a service in itself, I suppose!
Mike,
I do think the proliferation of very high scores, particularly from RP and certain of his associates, has greatly diluted their impact. And yes, that is one reason why there are so few (if any) flippable wines these days. (The bigger reason is that producers have been steadily raising release prices in order to capture the market value of their wine for themselves, as opposed to middlemen like flippers). “RP 100″ still has a price impact, but even that isn’t what it used to be.
As to ego gratification, I would postulate that wine geeks (as opposed to normal people) never really used Parker points to show off all that much. A few years ago, geek cred came from collecting wines from the Napa-spin-off project-of-the-month (made by some ultra-cool globetrotting enologist, with microscopic production to boot!) You were elite by knowing the right people, getting in early on the big new thing, and by being allowed to buy. You were then “proven right” when the aftermarket price of your wine doubled or tripled. Very dot-com-IPO-esque, very 1999/2000. In our current bad economy, one strokes one’s wine geek ego in a much more intellectual way. You’re hip if you’re into stuff from as obscure a region as possible, ideally skin-contact whites made in ancient clay urns in obscure mountain villages
-Steve (@MNWineGuy)
I was a point low on wine one and right on wine two. Who would have thunk.
Dan D, that strikes me as a perfectly reasonable approach. The value-added with critics is that they wade through a lot of bad and mediocre wines to get to the good stuff, which is a form of consumer protection. And, yes, tasting notes done reasonably well can offer very useful guidance. But a lot of tasting notes are not done particularly well, in my opinion.
Steve, thanks for stopping by. I think you are right; what is happening in wine geek circles may not be reflective of what is happening in the broader population of wine enthusiasts. You make an interesting point, too, about flipping and ego-gratification. Do you think points matter less now for those activities because high scores have become so commonplace?
Also, thanks for sharing the item from that NY retailer. Doesn’t that stuff just make you yawn now?
I don’t subscribe to any publications that use scores, nor do I care about them or pay any attention to them, with one exception: if I see any unfamiliar wine and see that it got a high rating from someone I’ve heard of, my reaction is often: “well, at least someone thought it was good.” I also feel the same way about stickers on French wines with medals from reputable judgings. But in the end, I much prefer the opinion of a wine shop I respect, or my own taste.
Seth, thanks very much, and thanks for participating in the quiz. It was an interesting exercise, and perhaps something worth returning to. And I agree with you: less is more. So many of these notes substitute verbosity for insight. What’s interesting, too, is that tasting notes seem to be getting worse, not better.
Michael, thanks for the comment. I think that’s a very fair approach. If a wine is of interest to you, I see no reason not to check out scores and tasting notes for that wine and to see if you can get a read on whether or not you’ll like it. The problem is, that a lot of tasting notes fail in that regard, and the scores, in my opinion, have become unreliable because of grade inflation. Vis a vis wines with lower ratings–say, stuff in the low 90s or high 80s–it’s important to know something about the critic who rated the wine. If, for instance, Parker gives a wine a score in that range, there’s a good chance I’ll like the wine; his preferences are just very different than mine.
Off by 1 point on #1 ;(
It’s interesting that so many did so well simply by reading the tone of the words. I recall you did a Slate column along the same lines – when critics knew the wine was more expensive, they used bigger words, and more of them.
The one thing that I find, as someone who drinks wine almost exclusively before, with and after a meal, is that almost no critics mention the food that the wine would go (particularly well) with.
Surely their nuanced palates could discern that the 1990 Petrus would go better with saddle of venison than filet of beef, in contrast to the 1989? Or is it the other way round?
I think that scores in and of themselves are not very valuable. However, when combined with other information they can be very much so.
For instance, once one gets to know the reviewers and their preferred styles a bit (through reading lots of reviews and trial and error experimentation with sample bottles of reviewed wines) an individual can begin to match their own style and preferences to those of the reviewers (and their scores). This takes a bit of time and is imprecise, but it treats scores as what I think they were meant to be: one data point among many to consider. So something James Laube scores as 95 might look different to me than something Steve Tanzer does. (I have respect for both BTW).
Also, scores can be a good “first cut” variable when deciding which wines to focus on…especially relative to price. If I see a list of a hundred scores and reviews…I will gravitate (at first) to those who appear to provide the best Score-to-Price value. One shouldn’t stop there of course…but using scores in this way can help someone who drinks wine (rather than using it as a showpiece of other “things” they collect and don’t use) focus their attention on discovering new opportunities among wineries and types of wine they might not even notice.
I think the opinions and scores of critics hold much more sway over casual drinkers – I was talking about this with an uncle over the holidays when he had us over for dinner. He had picked up a few wines, “all 90 points or higher” according to him. It didn’t matter that the scores were all from different people – I remember particularly a 93 point Jay Miller scored bottle of Priorat that was undrinkable.
In my opinion, it’s people who actively read wine blogs and publications, and who know the critics that don’t bother with scores. In fact, they probably serve the opposite purpose – I’d go OUT of my way to avoid any wine that Miller (or Parker or Laube) scored highly, just because I can’t drink the wines they seem to enjoy.
We must bear in mind that 85% of the US wine-buying public are *not* wine enthusiasts. They are content to buy what’s on sale, has decent taste and flavor for them (through prior history) and is within the price range they have determined they want to spend. They are the bulk of the market and drive the stacks and move the cases. Let’s call them the Mass Market (MM) segment.
The other 15% of the market is the enthusiast segment, the wine folks who do obsess over points, barrel treatments, aging and obscure regions. They are the people interested in what’s happening and are quite vocal about their passion regarding all things “wine.” Let’s call them the Wine Geek (WG) segment.
When you observe the MM in a retail wine setting, quite often it’s with the “deer in headlights” look of overwhelmed confusion at the sight of thousands of unfamiliar labels, places and foreign words. Unless there’s a helpful staff member with some knowledge and enthusiasm (one of the WGs, most likely) on hand, you can see the desperation in their eyes as they search for a bottle.
Like the look of the label? Put it in the basket! Fun/Cute/Funny sounding name that appeals to them? Good, we’re done — head to checkout! It’s on sale and I’m saving $3? Deal! But what will save them will be a shelf talker that talks about the wine, gives them some indication of what it’s about and where it’s from — and then seals the deal with a numerical score that they can relate to. It got 91 points, so it must be pretty good — let’s gather the kids running about the aisles and head home!
Yes, the WGs are mostly past the confusion of the words, labels, place names and obscure varieties — truth be known, we WGs *love* this kind of stuff and will talk about it for hours (with other WGs or long-suffering Significant Others). That’s why the WGs are the most vocal in their denouncement of rating systems for wine and overly-florid tasting notes. The WGs are deeply into this stuff and can see some of the fine cracks in the system that the MMs overlook. Tasting notes and ratings are not perfect, and most WGs resent that we use something that is less than perfect in trying to relate wine’s story and importance.
As one who has spent years in the retail and wholesale sides of the wine world, I can tell you that the practical side of a good score and a well-written tasting note can do wonders not only for the sales of the wine in question (benefit to the producer, the distributor and the retailer) — but it also performs a sanity-saving service to the MM consumer.
The pivot points in all of this come down to (1) the credibility of the source of the information (are you listening, Mr. Parker?) (2) clear and understandable terms (98% of the MMs are confused by “cassis”) and (3) the value of the wine (that magic intersection of price and perceived ranking). Hit all of those points and we all win.
We need a paradigm shift, but then again, from a small winery’s perspective, you have to generate interest in your wine…
How do you do this without sending samples to the big names (who WILL score your wines according to the prevailing paradigm)?
I like what I see with sites like http://www.scorerevolt.com, but how does this help the small, new winery sell wine?
What is the next paradigm? Cellartracker is great, but that doesn’t reach people who don’t know about it.
Gotta think about how one can engage the most new potential consumers without major investments…
Steve
“Scores of others” is an understatement.
Before the holidays, a woman walked out of our store because we had no shelftalkers with points.
It is happening, but more slowly than your post might indicate (or that we all may wish). For every savvy shopper at Chambers St., Crush, etc., there are scores of others for whom scores are a useful guide to a bewildering and expensive marketplace. For the sizable majority of consumers, points have real utility, and will continue to serve their role.
But for wine geeks and collectors who have been using points for different, less noble reasons — to facilitate flipping, or to stroke their own wine buying egos — no doubt, points matter less and less every day.
-Steve (@MNWineGuy)
PS: I had to laugh just now when I saw an email from a NY wine retailer with the title “MASSIVE Scores: 95s & 94s All Over the Place for 2010 Burgundies…”
I’m still a novice in the wine world, and economics strongly dictates where my (very limited) dollars are spent, so I do tend to use reviews quite frequently. Instead of focusing on the points, however, I use the descriptors to try and match up my preferences with those being described. For example, tar and leather are two traits I tend not to like, so if the price of the first wine hadn’t already excluded it (which I suspect it had), those words would certainly have done so.
I’m still hooked on scores in the sense that if a wine receives a high rating, I’ll look at it for WHY it received such a rating and would I like the contours of such a wine.
But I must admit that I often dismiss a lowly rated wine I would otherwise be interesed in and I have to work on that.
Again, I’d rather just read the tasting notes and whether the wine is ready to drink or not or needs to be cellared (I can only cellar for about a year due to storage) on whether I will buy or not.
Mike, Bravo. I thought the exercise was enlightening, a kind of blind tasting, a brown bag session, if you will…but without tasting the wine. Keep ‘em coming, maybe next should be notes with a hint of restraint in the verbiage? It seems with tasting notes that less is more. I think the game would be better served if it was about how precise one can be without losing the thread of reality by gushing copious textural slathering of colorful and nuanced demonstrative adjectives on…what was I talking about anyway? Oh yeah, wine…
Cheers!
Daniel A, thanks very much; greatly appreciated.
Daniel P, you were achingly close, and it was probably stingy of me not to add you to the honor roll; my apologies.
I was soooo close.
I love this website. !!! SO much information I wish I had more time.