I am adding on to the thoughtful comments of Subu Ramachandran in the Leve thread…In the last couple years I stopped attaching a score to wines…The reasoning is, how can you apply a fixed score to something that is constantly evolving and changing?..and sometimes not for the best…I guess we see the sliding scale range like 90-93 for example, but for me this still doesn’t work…where are the 93-90 descending sliding scale scores? Truth is, many of these wines fall apart just a often as they improve. I guess as a critic you have to play nice to a certain degree, play the game etc… Sure I have seen the rare ( - ) added to a score (does this is add a smidge of street cred. for the critic?) Regardless, this happens very few and far between.
Another reason is, I have seen a wine change so dramatic over the next day or two that if I was to apply a score it would have looked like this: 84-92pts. (8points in 24hrs!!) Plus if you look at the Parker scoring you could have a superior tasting wine rated much lower in score than an inferior tasting wine. I believe most tasters are going to go more by taste than anything, again a disconnect.
for example:
wine 1: 50+20(taste)+9 (nose)+3 (color) +8 (overall quality) score: 90 points
wine 2: 50+17(taste)+13 (nose)+5 (color) +9 (overall quality) score: 94 points
If you didn’t see this broken down you would choose the inferior tasting (wine #2) majority of the time
I have seen it too many times to count, disappointed tasters, sitting there dumbfounded declaring, “I don’t get it, this got 93 points”
So again, there is disconnect for consumers. Therefore, if you are the score a wine I suggest breaking the scoring down in an itemized fashion. Then if you wanted to add a sliding scale to this, tell me what components you think are going to improve or decline based on your experience? This is probably asking way too much, but in a perfect world…though I believe a scoring breakdown in general would be a nice start.
Maybe I missed some of the previous debates on this, but please tell me I’m not a fuqn outlier here?