"The perversion that is scoring wine" - Elitistreview NAILS it!

No surprise, but Davy Strange says it better than I ever could, though I can’t agree with his post any more than if I had written it myself (an impossible task for me)

My favorite:

When I used to review wines for Decanter magazine they used to ask me to score wines out of five. At the last tasting I attended I got to roughly wine number three in the line up and it was truly stunning. It turned out it was Pommard Premier Cru Rugiens 1999 from de Montille. I stood in front of this wine thinking about its complexity and style, what its agreeing profile would be, but, more importantly, who I’d like to drink this with, what, if any, food I would serve with it and how it made me feel.

Then I looked down at my tasting sheet and remembered that > I had to summarise all the complex and engaging thoughts in a number from one to five> . I walked up to the then editor and said “This is meaningless toss, I’m never doing one of these tastings again”, and walked out. I purchased a bottle of that de Montille, which I still own and I still have many rich and complex thoughts about.

I like the final flourish:

"Drinking wine is one of those glorious times that you live in the moment. You are immersed in that experience then – a wonderful way to live life (children have got it right doing this). > If you think you can capture that moment of existence, with all that is surrounding and influencing you, in a number then you are manifestly nothing but a prize twat.> "

Perhaps if he could have utilized the 100-point scale to summarize his “complex and engaging thoughts” he would have felt better about it? pileon

Thanks for the great read. I am very new to this wine endeavor and am pretty intimidated by many of the reviews I read and wonder how heavily to weigh their opinion against my own. I have made notes of most of the wines I’ve had in the past 6mos-year but I have written them more like he states. I write when I had the wine, who I had it with, what were the circumstances and how it made me feel, this is completely so I can decide whether to buy again for future use. Most of my notes have been deemed “private” as I felt this type of information would be boring and irrelevant to others.
I have made a folder to collect more from Davy Strange, so again, Thanks!

David is an amazing writer.
A smart man to boot.

He certainly has a way with words, doesn’t he!

Re feeling intimidated: been there! The amount of info and the strength of opinions about wine is a bit staggering at first, and reading all the adjectives and descriptions makes one feel very lacking–as in “will I ever be able to detect that in tasting a wine?” But it helps to remember that it’s all a matter of taste, and your tastes are just as valid as anyone else’s. Others may have more experience, but that’s something you can learn from. On the other hand, they may love wines you just don’t care for, no matter how many times you try them. No one has “the” answer when it comes to judging which wines are best. After a while you start to realize whose tastes coincide with yours and whose don’t.

Good god! I would have thought a rant about the inanity of scoring wines would be received with vitriol and venom on a mainly US wine discussion board. Thank you for happily surprising me and for your support on this thorn-encrusted topic.

friendly hugs
Davy.

I completely agree that it is futile and silly to try summing up a wine with a single number. However, I find it useful to put wines in categories with stars, mainly so I have a sense of how much I liked the wine when I look at my TN later (of course if mine were as well-written and complete as Davy’s I wouldn’t need to bother with this flirtysmile ). For me, no star means anything from “bad” to “meh,” ie don’t bother with this again. One star is “reasonably good, worth drinking again, but don’t go out of your way,” two stars “very good, worth getting more” and three stars is “exceptional.” This way there is no maximum score–someday I may rate a wine four stars (or even five but I doubt it). Out of 1100 TNs I have 430 with one star, 160 with two stars, and 19 with three stars (yes I know giving stats proves that I’m obsessed with numbers–well what can you expect from a scientist neener ).

The same reaction is not as likely on other US based forums…

God bless this fellow.

This debate reminds me of a quote that Winston Churchill was fond of repeating:

“It has been said that democracy [numeric scores] is the worst form of government [wine rating], except all the others that have been tried.”

More than once, I have considered publishing two versions of my magazine, one including the numerical part of the review, and the other with it removed.

Peter, I used to be a scientist too. I have four degrees, including a doctorate, in epidemiology. Sadly that branch of biology is utterly debased thanks to the rise of ‘marginal-value epidemiology’, which is to say claiming insignificant numbers have a meaning, which is to say it’s a load of old sweaty tests. I loathe what has been done to my field of research in the name of public health, they are as big bullshit merchants as are climate scientists. Piss, \i’ve really got to calm down, maybe it’s time for an afternoon nap.

D.

Aren’t most other US forums somehow attached to a scoring body?

David is right in principle and what he says is certainly true at the heart of it but I do think that there is a fair and rational purpose to scoring wine.

I wax poetically all the time about wine and my greatest experiences with it is to sit down with a single bottle over multiple hours and watch it develop in the glass. That said, just because we can’t communicate the perfect representation of the ideal wine experience doesn’t mean that we should treat it as a constraint (rejecting anything that doesn’t achieve this ideal).

The point method is a rational framework that has some use even if it’s fundamentally flawed towards achieving this “ideal” wine experience. There is a certain absurdity to it of course which makes it an easy target, but I think this belies it’s usefulness in multiple ways.

I think the biggest problem is that while points are a universal measure, styles, vintages, varieties are not. Trying to compare a 92 point 2010 Burgundy from Chambolle Musigny doesn’t really mean much compared to a 92 point 2007 Syrah from Santa Barbara. Nevermind winemaker style or vineyard specific characteristics (terroir). This so many elements to really compare it seems futile and there is our “absurdity”.

However, what about comparing an identical variety, made in the identical vintage, from the same region? Is it useful to give a 2010 Chambolle Musigny 92 points and another 88 points? Even if it doesn’t communicate the soul of the wine perhaps it does communicate some level of quality of craftsmanship and vineyard quality.

Now consider that we are dealing with tasters of different experience levels. I can discuss the minute distinctions in aromas with one taster along with the composition of the density, texture, acidity and structure. But with another taster who is still developing their palate? How do I communicate quality to someone who is just getting started? A 92 point wine compared to an 88 points wine makes a great deal of sense for someone who is looking for a quality Chambolle Musigny but doesn’t have the ability to communicate yet in a more analytical (and romantic) nature.

While wine is a totally intimate and personal experience, it also one that is generally better shared. Trying to communicate that in different ways doesn’t betray the romantic and personal element of wine. How you relate to wine and any particularly bottle is undoubtedly yours and that will never change. How you relate to others in order to communicate that idea can look any number of ways. Sometimes a few notes and a 92(+?) type score can at least give someone a snap-shot about how you felt about it. As long as it’s somewhat faithful to your experience, it’s useful - if we sacrifice communication because we can’t relate “perfectly” then it remains a singular experience that can never be shared.

My fear with just about any specialization or intense study is that as we begin to create distinctions we also create barriers. Being able to communicate is an absolutely critical part of wine but also the human experience and human wisdom. There’s a practical element to communication even if we find it difficult to express. While it shouldn’t be banal like a few stand alone points or “two-thumbs” up, it can use a few of these things in order to create a meaningful idea that others can relate to.

“Elitist Review,” indeed. I’ll just leave it at that.

On the topic in question, the key word here is “communication.” By writing a tasting note or otherwise sharing in writing your impression of a wine, you are trying to use language to communicate your impressions and opinions. If using a score or rating of some sort as part of what you write helps you to communicate, then I don’t see any harm in it. If you can communicate well without a score, that’s great too. I don’t personally get all the mountains of attitude about the use of that one device per se, though of course a given writer or critic may use it poorly, or a given reader may receive and process the communication poorly.

David seems to set up the false notion that using a score means only using a score and only experiencing wine in terms of what score you would give it:

Which is to say: what in the blazing f** does it mean when you give a village Vosne-Romanée 92 points and a Grand Cru Romanée-Saint-Vivant 92 points? It is so meaningless it is beneath drivelly nose pickings…

Then I looked down at my tasting sheet and remembered that I had to summarise all the complex and engaging thoughts in a number from one to five…

If you think you can capture that moment of existence, with all that is surrounding and influencing you, in a number then you are manifestly nothing but a prize twat.

Sure, that straw man is easy to knock down, but who really does that? Most critical scores are accompanied by a written description as well, and most people who drink wine and think of giving it a score don’t experience the wine solely as being 88 versus 92 versus 95.

Chris. [highfive.gif]

We are on the same exact page.

I completely understand the opinions about not scoring wines - some of my best wine buddies feel this way. But: if you’ve ever had two wines sitting in front of you, and proclaimed “I like this wine better than that one,” you’ve scored the wines.

Exactly.

Perhaps a new acronym is in order: anti scoring specialist mad about numbers or ASSMAN.

Well said! Personally, I think the real problem is the way that scores have been used to sell wines, and thereby even used to affect pricing and winemaking decisions. Numbers are easily divorced from more extensive notes, and the average consumer is pretty easily trained to blindly chase this decontextualized number. But, I think that maybe this problem has more to do with the monopolization of the wine industry by a relatively small number of critics and with broader buying/selling practices than it has to do with the act of scoring itself. But, just my opinion.