51
Costco purchase at $10.99
'14 Erath Pinot Noir.
Worst wine I ever had. A down the drainer.
Pro tip: what is the lowest score CT will allow you to post?
50
I use a 30 point scale so 70-100.
Lowest was about an 80.
50, for a 2003 Guigal CdP. Total brett bomb.
I rated a wine a 61 but realized that it was heavily marred by VA and I usually don’t rate flawed wines.
Lowest beyond that was an 80 for an old Cali cab that was just tired, sad and over the hill; and an 81 for The Dreaming Tree, the supermarket wine owned by Dave Matthews, which was swill but not poison.
For that wine to score 51, maybe it was a flawed bottle? While not hugely popular on CT, the average score is 86 and the notes are pretty consistent from review to review. 70% like the wine.
If my experience with a wine is that bad, and that far off from the median and the verbiage in other reviews, I’ll either not score it (but note my impressions), or look for flaws and score it ‘flawed.’
I believe it was a 71 to a 2006 Aubert Ritchie Chardonnay. The antithesis of the kind of Chardonnay I like to drink. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some folks that buy a lot of cheap wines so everything is relative. A crappy wine isn’t so bad when compared to a really crappy wine.
I’m going to tuck that phrase away for future use.
My lowest is a 65 for a 1990 Comte de Vogue Musigny. I’ve also given a 72 to a 2009 Pavie, a 76 to a 2003 Delas Hermitage Bessards, and a 78 to a 1994 Tirecul Monbazillac Gravieres. All of the bottles but the Tirecul were tasted blind and the flaws were innate characteristics of the wines so I stand by my ratings.
The Boldizar Charity Challenge wine:
-
NV Richards Wine Company Concord Wild Irish Rose - USA, New York, Finger Lakes, Cayuga Lake (9/1/2014)
Light red, almost rose. acetone and red cherry on the nose. Sweet red Catawaba flavor, similar to dilute Manischewitz Concord Grape. Produced in Canandaigua, New York. Definite Finger Lakes red wine terroir. There is a bit of popcorn flavor but no butter on it. Finish lasts way too long. Still have that Smith Brothers Cough Drop flavor well after I hoped the finish would be gone. I swallowed in it the name of science, so it gets 60 points, which is my minimum for a wine that your reflexes did not force you to spit out. (60 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
Any vintage of Erath Pinot at that… I had a bottle at a restaurant once. Just terrible.
Surprised to find mine is a single 83, then an 86. I don’t like to rate wines if they’re flawed obviously, or rate super low if they’re over the hill either. In those cases I just make a public note. I’ll rate a wine badly if its just plain poorly made, but more often than not I do notes without scores these days, and hopefully getting across what kind of palate it would appeal to, if not mine.
I use the whole 51 point range. Haven’t been entering notes regularly for awhile - had a couple I rated 50 recently, but haven’t entered, but wasn’t sure what my lowest rating entered would be. Turns out there are three 50 point ratings:
“Dead” - I remember there was just nothing left.
“Initial nose of some solvent I can’t quite recall, then gives way to a crappy agave liquer I do recall. The palate? Extremely sour! Quickly spit out. Bleh! Wtf?”
“Volatile, hot, sickly, sweet, medicinal, concentrated unpleasantness. Undrinkable and a complete utter failure as a wine.”
Lascombes 2009 got a 59 from me. Since stopped using CT but there are a few more recent wines that would warrant a similar score.
-
2013 Cheese Board Chardonnay - USA, California (11/13/2016)
Under $10 wines for Charity (Val and Ron’s): I am being generous on this. Otoh, it retails for $4. Still, not worth drinking IMO. Its like they took oak saw dust, mixed it with lemonade and then somehow got it to be wine. Every sip seemed worse and worse to me. A new flaw came out with each taste. Luckily, i only had about a one ounce pour. The things we do for charity. (65 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
I find this an interesting dilemma. I can think of four wines in the past year I completely despised and didn’t post a negative score.
Mollydooker Boxer
Lariat DD Cabernet
Moss Roxx Zin
Conundrum red
These were all in the hyper-ripe low acid camp. Some people legitimately like wines in those styles. I wouldn’t consider myself AFWE by any stretch. I like quite a few wines most people here would call fruit bombs, these were just a bridge too far. Kind of like broccoli, I hate it, but if others like it I’m not going to degrade their choice. Next one I come across I’ll probably put I don’t like it and explain why. Funny that Erath gets no love. Erath was in the do not like, but not disgusting bucket for me. Somebody must buy it more than once. My Costco always has it.
Mike,
I have also had a bad experience with the '90 Vogue - surprised me because Coates was so high on it. I don’t use CT nor do I score but your experience matches mine.
Also the '96 Ponsot, Chambertin was so bad I resolved never to buy another Ponsot wine.
Burgundy is a minefield.
Best, Jim
I scored wines between 80 to 100 pts. These two got 80 pts, effectively zero point.
2003 Kilikanoon Shiraz R
2003 Chapoutier CDP Barbe Rac
All wines from Kilikanoon are banned for life from buying list and so does Chapoutier Barbe Rac.
1961 Monimpex Tokaji Aszú 3 Puttonyos Furmint Blend, Furmint
Options
4/30/2009 - I WROTE: 50 points (Edit)
Commie wine. “Interesting but not pleasurable, kind of like communism,” remarked Michel. But actually not even interesting, more like a communist college professor. Boy, would I have been steamed if I waited 14 months on a bread line only to get this. Tastes kind of like a cross between wine and poison. Solzhenitsyn could have wrung an entire novel out of this. As the greatest president in the history of the United States said to Gorbachev at Reykjavic, “Nyet.”