Is your wine really getting better?

I’m relatively new to wine compared to many on this board. I’ve been collecting for a handful of years, and so I rely on tasting notes maybe more than a seasoned connoisseur who knows their palate might. One of the resources I turn to most often is Cellar Tracker. Sure, I read notes from established critics, but they’re typically based on new release wines and I don’t get the diversity and tasting notes over time which CT notes have.

While tasting notes can vary widely…it’s open to the general public, tastes vary, etc., my logic is that the collective wisdom of the notes is at least a leading indicator on whether the wine will be good, keeping in mind the variety characteristics and history of the brand. For example, a Caymus cabernet may receive consistently high scores, but if you’re not a fan of a fruit-forward style, you would realize the wine may not be for you.

What I love about CT (amongst many things), is the historical nature of the notes. I can look up a single vintage wine and see how the scores and notes have progressed over time. While the “data” or notes are subjective and inconclusive on a wine, I like to think it’s at least indicative of the wine’s progress.

It got me thinking…with a benchmark wine known for aging, do the scores support that the wine is truly getting better over time? I took the scores (see chart below) for Ridge Monte Bello, a wine widely respected and with a reputation for cellaring, and dug into the numbers. Going as far back as notes were available, I plotted all of the score data on a chart. What I found interesting is that the scores suggest that most of the vintages of these wines are not scoring higher over time. For example, the 2001 Monte Bello scored an average of 94.5 in 2006, and is scoring 93.8 in 2016.

At the risk of oversimplifying, one would infer from the scores that the 2001 wine was excellent 10 years ago and remains excellent today. But no significant improvement, at least with the scores. Could it just be that scores several years ago were more based on fruit, freshness, and potential, and that today’s scores, while similar, reflect an aged wine with tertiary flavors starting to evolve? Scores are inherently subjective, so any analysis is difficult. But does it reopen the discussion about the aging of wines?

You hit one point there, that some people prefer the fruitier profile of young wines.
Another factor is that most ratings are given on perceived potential, not present day drinking.
Yet another possibility is that wines in general are getting better with improved techniques. That too is subject to individual taste.

I do know that, to my taste, the wines in my cellar get better with age.

P Hickner

Of course, taste is a very personal thing, and no score should dictate what you drink. I just thought the data would show the scores improving significantly over time…

2001 Monte Bello was a baby in 2006 and I expect still is today. Then there’s the issue of correlating CT scores to some kind of perceived quality, and the fact that a lot of people prefer young wines to mature wines. I don’t think this type of analysis is really meaningful.

Wonderful points made by others - and to add to the list:

• Preferences change over time, and therefore scores may as well
• There are no great wines - just great bottles - and bottle variation has to be taken into account

What might be interesting is to track the scores of the same tasters trying the same wine over time as well.

Cheers.

I’m no statistician, but it seems that it would be more relevant if the same people (with same palate) were grading the wine over time.

Just for argument’s sake, the first group of notes posted shortly after release could be skewed to people who don’t like younger wines, and then the sample a few years out could be skewed to a whole different set of tasters – people who DO like younger wines. So it would just tend to flat-line the scores. Right?

I agree with the points made above. Lots of subjectivity and the numbers certainly don’t tell the whole story. I do wish there was a way to better correlate data with an optimal drinking window, but that just may not be possible.

Not to mention that, the farther from the wine’s release date, the more likely it is that any given bottle has encountered adverse conditions. If you were tracking one person’s case of the same wine, which had not moved in the interim, that factor would be significantly reduced. But if you’re taking a community’s ratings of wine that’s been in circulation for 20 years, a higher percentage of bottles will have been resold, moved, shipped, improperly stored than will have been thus exposed within a year of release.

It would be great, but there are too many variables you can’t control for. Putting aside what people consider a “great” wine and deserving of top scores, there are all the variables mentioned by others. The one I would be most concerned about is that it’s a different set of scorers over time - i.e., people tasting young may skew towards higher scores than those who seek age and are perhaps more discriminating in their scoring. OF course, it could work the other way given few CT scores are blind - people want to convince themselves that aging a particular wine was worth it (even if it wasn’t true).

I’m thinking we need someone to develop a microscopic “bot” that producers can place into each bottle which will report on temp, chemical balance, etc., to remove any doubt.

I think the point about same drinker same wine over time is salient, I tend to value TNs from the same person on the same wine over time greatly as an indicator. I’m fairly partial to young-ish wines myself depending on the grape/region so my scores might work in opposition to someone who likes their wines a little farther down the curve creating some smoothing of ratings overall.

Also, I’ve definitely experienced the “no great wines only great bottles” phenomenon, I’ve had two bottles of my WOTY so far this year and one was absolutely transcendent and the other was almost ordinary ('08 Allemand Reynard).

This is one of the reasons I don’t use points - I’m not precise enough to assign them in a way that would help me later on when I review my tasting history.

Here’s some ideas on why this falls into the statistics portion of ‘lies, damn lies, and statistics’
People drinking the wine young and people drinking the wine “at maturity” are different sets with different experiences making their scores harder to compare effectively
Someone looking for maturity will discount a wine that hasn’t reached it; someone favoring bold flavors will discount for development of tertiary flavors
Wines tend to show more homogeneously at release than many years on after the vagaries of storage have taken their toll - the bad examples of aged wines factor into your “average score” but don’t reflect the quality of well-stored examples

Variations on some of the themes above. Taking your example, I would opine that there is probably no statistical difference between the 93.8 and 94.5 you had on the analysis you did - which I think you also state.

To your final question, I was unaware of any debate about the merits of aging wine. There are flavors and an overall experience you can’t emulate (in my experience). It’s a rainbow I choose to chase. There’s also the economic aspect - depending upon price increases, you may come out ahead buying and cellaring; at the very least you can buffer against market swings for fads.

Cheers,
fred

It’s an interesting post, F Scott, but there are really too many variables. Even if you tracked individual posters and the scores they gave over the life of the wine, it’s still likely the early scores are scored in part on “potential once mature.”

I don’t think the typical CT user, upon tasting a wine he thinks will be a great wine once mature but is still too young, give out a low score to reflect where it is at that moment. For example, Jeff Leve isn’t going to taste a 2010 classified growth that is in a tannic and tough place today, and just give it an 80 based on how enjoyable it was to drink at that age. He’ll probably score it at least in substantial part to reflect the quality of the wine as it will be revealed in a decade or two.

But on the other hand, some portion of CT users aren’t WBer or Jeff Leve types - they might have ordered a 2011 Bordeaux or 2011 Barolo off a restaurant list or opened one with a friend, not enjoyed it, and had no idea that it was going to be a good wine if you waited many years.

I do totally share F Scott’s view that the biggest beauty of CT is the ability to see the arc of notes of a wine over time. Hidden behind the CT average for an older wine, you can often see the trends in how the wine was received at first, later on, and now recently. A great example is 1970s Bordeaux, which were rated lower at release, then quite unloved for decades, but some in recent years have finally emerged from their unfriendly phase and become lovely clarets. You would have a hard time finding that out from Parker or Wine Spectator.

I’ve always wondered how a pro reviewer can give a score to a wine when it really isn’t ready to drink for years (maybe decades). Is the score based on how it is drinking today? In the near future? When it’s supposed to be ready? Some combination?

And I do like CT to get a consensus on how people like a wine.

Scores don’t usually describe age-ability, descriptors do. While that is not to say some professionals don’t consider it a factor. Depends on the taster. Saying something will be better in 5 or 6 years is not the same as ‘I can’t score this higher as it’s too tannic’. Just a thought.
Great topic.

Purely my opinion and I am sure it’s wrong.

If you see a critic go back and do a retrospective on decent age-worthy wines, their scores can improve.

Just two short notes:

1. when tasting a wine and giving a rating I try to give points that reflect the wine at it´s apogee … meaning I include the “potential” for developement … so the points might not get better, but more precise …
   but not everybody is doing it like that …

2. Is a wine getting “better” with age?
   Is a man/woman getting better with age?
   What is better?
   More valuable?
   A child with 3 years?
   A man/Woman with 20-25 years?
   At maturity with 35/40/45 ?
   Really aged at 75+ ?

For me a wine at maturity - and even at old age - is often more interesting, deeper, more complex … but perhaps less powerful !

I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but that is the problem with rating, what is a very subjective experience, with some numerical score.

So many things go into how you enjoy wine - who you’re with, what you’re pairing it with, where you are (vacation, at home, etc), the occasion and so on and so forth.

Sadly, wine is like health with age…

I agree with those who say there are just too many variables to affect the score.

That said, I think when someone initially tastes the wine, scoring is high because of expectations and perceived potential, as well as justifying the big bucks spent on the purchase. Then later down the line the honeymoon is over and a more realistic assessment is done.