Wine Scores and the Top 100

Wine scores are both loved and reviled by members of the wine trade. On the one hand, when you put a wine on the shelf that has a score of 95 points it practically sells itself while on the other hand a wine that got 87 points can languish on the shelf for a long time even if it represents a great value. It is my observation that 88 points is about the bottom of the threshold to pique peoples' interest even though the Wine Spectator scale lumps values of 85-89 as "Very good: a wine with special qualities" and Robert Parker who championed the 100 point scale back in 1978 lumps 80-89 point wines as "A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws".

As a former scientist by training it is interesting to read the Wine Spectator tasting methodology: Wine Spectator or that from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate: Wine Advocate. You get the sense that there is actually some degree of precision to be accorded their scores vis-à-vis the rigor they employ. I almost wonder that they don't employ fractional points. Blah, blah, blah! Wine tasting is one of the most subjective activities you can hope to find and our palates and the wines we taste are a moving target. If you taste the same wine once a month over the course of a year you would find that your impression would be different on some occasions. This can be the result of changes in your health, what you ate for your last meal, your mental state when you taste and a myriad other factors that affect your sense of smell (after all 'tasting' is in reality mostly 'smelling').

Does this mean that professional taster's scores are meritless? No, I like and use scores in my shop, (when they are good scores ;> of course), because they help sell wine. But buyers need to understand that scores represent (most of the time) a single point in time, from a single individual based on a single bottle of wine. As I said, your sense of taste is affected by many things and is constantly changing along with the wine that is evolving in the bottle. Wines are living things and change profoundly over time. I am surprised sometimes when I taste a wine and decide to bring it into the store only to find that there is a bad review (or perhaps not bad but unflattering). Often the review was written immediately following release of the wine and it has undergone a positive transformation in the interim. Good scores can be used as the basis to begin exploring a wine to see if you like it but a high score is no guarantee that you will like it. My customers are often surprised when I tell them that I could line up ten100 point wines and if they tasted them blind they may not like more than half of them. Scores only provide one clue about the wine. The language used to describe it provides much greater insight into the nature of the wine and whether or not you might enjoy it. Reading "93 points - Hedonistic, jammy, coat-your-mouth style" does not bode well if you prefer wines with finesse and elegance. 

I actually like the system that Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher use for their Wall Street Journal wine column "Tastings". They employ a simple 6 level rating with the following possibilities: Yech, OK, Good, Very Good, Delicious, and Delicious! Once again, there is no precision to tasting wine so don't imply precision where none can be found. I like the simplicity of their system and it offers their readers more latitude to agree with their assessments. I also like their "winespeak" which utilizes simple language that conveys more about how the wine made them feel rather than a technical description of the flavor profile and tannin structure.

Ok, that damned Top 100! I hate that list, primarily because most of the wines are gone from the market by the time it gets published and there are always a bunch of disappointed customers that want to get their hands on some of the top 10 wines. I have been fortunate for the past three years that I have tasted many of the Top 100 wines before they gained their esteemed positions and was prescient enough to bring some 30-35 of them into the store during the course of the year so that I could hold my annual Top 100 Tasting for a few dozen people. Of course in many cases the only bottles I have left are those for the tasting so again I have unhappy customers that want to purchase their favorites that don't exist anymore. Oh well, it serves as a good reason to get together and pull the corks on a bunch of good wines, viva la Top 100!

My best advice is to get out there and taste wine. There is no substitute for actually putting the wine in your mouth to determine if you like it or not. And I always tell my customers: "Drink what you like, just buy it from me!"