Is it me or are most CT scores centered around 90?

I’m sure this has been discussed ad naseam, but are you tired the seemingly inflated scores and limited point ranges people use on CT? I don’t apply points to my tasting notes, but sometimes it’s a nice to quickly click on one of my wines to see how others seem to “like” it. It seems like if the tasting notes read favorably the mean score is about 91 and if they aren’t too impressed the score is about 87. It almost feels like that range results in a rating of 1 to 5 stars

I have a background in statistics and understand the nuances of this, but it just irritates me to see such a compressed distribution. It makes me really hate scores on wine. Just ranting, I guess.

It irritates me that my own scores tend to center on 90, and I’m past due for one of my periodic reevaluations of past scoring to use more of the scale.

Well you first need to consider who is using CT, it is not the Kendall Jackson Chardonnay crowd. So if you are that into wine that you need to log it into CT, you most likely are also buying better wines.

, and you’re more likely to be buying wines you (are going to) like.

This. Confirmation bias but in a good way.

Ron, I’ve seen similar things when I’ve browsed it on my phone when I’m looking at something in a store that I don’t know about and I think you’re onto something because it does seem to be a very narrow scoring band.

Because of the inconsistency in scoring, I’ve moved to just scoring wines on a scale of 89-91.

89 - Just OK, but best to avoid since there are better wines
90 - I could drink this most days, but it’s not really that good (but thank God it’s not an 89)
91 - This may be one of top 500+ wines I’ve ever drunk.

One has nothing to do with the other. Most people purchase, drink, like and post on the wines they already enjoy. How many folks are going to buy or even try wines they are not going to like? So their universe is closed.

Few people taste and post about wines they are not prone to liking. Even in the tasting groups we all belong to, there is a natural closed bias, because most people in groups bring the wines they like, that are of good quality. And we are naturally drawn to groups with people that also share our tastes.

It is also much more work to write a decent note for a wine that a taster does not like, so you are probably not going to read those notes.

You know, most of us are pretty average.

Rachel, you appear to be evolving to my (refusal to have a) scoring system. 93 points for wines I liked. 92 points for all others.

Rachael, I like your sense of humor.
Me, I just drink 90 pt wines, my wife is taking the 89 pt spot, her choice as she pays the bills and we cannot afford the 91 pt wines, at least I do not own up to buying them.

Exactly so. I don’t buy wines expecting to be unimpressed. I walk by stuff that I would expect to score less than 87pts. Over time I’ve tended to buy more wine from the same producers who, surprise, make wines that typically are 90pts plus for my palate.

Hilarious.

it’s why I use the Zanotti binary system: 0 is not worth drinking, 1 is.

I like Rachel’s system.

But as for the CT bias, it’s to be expected.

People buy wines rated 90+ because those wines are rated 90+.

People drink those wines and most are probably OK.

So people rate those wines 90+.

And since they liked those wines, people buy those wines again.

And they post their scores.

I think there is a grain of truth in the premise of the OP. There is often a disconnect between the notes and the score and it usually suggests the score should be lower. If you read Eric’s scale description the note suggests the score should be lower.

Some of the lower scores contain some thoughtful notes.

They need to get with the changing times. Don’t they know that 95 is the new 90?

On the subject of CT, I’ve never much considered the fan/friend side of it, however I’ve just added someone for the first time, a chap in Finland called Otto (though not the Otto that I know from here, WLDG and Wine Pages) as we seem to have a very large amount of crossover in the wines we buy and drink, in a way I’ve never noticed with anyone else. Forceberry is the user name, and barring a few wines that are even more esoteric than my tastes, plus a keen beer focus, there are remarkable similarities.

The lack of scores below 87 or 88 exactly mirrors the major critics, who never ding wines. I laugh when I read CT posts about how impossibly nasty a wine is and then see 88 points next to it.

The surprising thing to me is that the scale is compressed on the upper side, too. I’m surprised more CT uses don’t follow the Suckling model and award lots of 94s and up.

Precisely. I have a sore spot for using 92 or 93 instead.

The only wrinkle is time. An “i” might be the appropriate score for a wine that is all potential or shut down, making me now contemplate a scoring system that is: 0, exp(i*theta) for theta in the range 0 to Pi/2. Or just the simplified version: 0, 1, i.

For example, almost every example of Gouges Vaucrains I’ve ever had has close to a purely imaginary score.

Since writing tasting notes is part of my job, but typing them and making sure that my grammar is as close to correct as possible, is something I do on the side; I tend to only type up notes for wines that are in the 88 and up spectrum.

The only time I don’t follow this guideline is with categories that I know some people look to my opinion on–like Barolo and Barbaresco.

For those of you scoring at home, this is Rachel putting a knife in my heart and twisting it. Well played, Rachel.

Lots of other good responses, too. I admit that I often do not write TNs for forgettable/mediocre bottles of wine (unless I own several of them and advising myself/others to be patient before opening another is likely to result in a better drinking experience).

As I alluded to in the original post (mentioning familiarity with statistics), there are a ton of (good) reasons this scoring pattern exists, none of which are the fault of CT nor satisfying enough to eliminate my frustration.