What do we think about this tasting note from a not-ready wine?

Name and date removed to protect the, well if not quite innocent, at least good faith taster.

The wine in question is a 2017 red wine, that very few would expect to be all that good right now. I was entering it into CT and was surprised to see the CT “consensus” (from this one note) at an 87. I say leaving a note that you opened it is fine, perhaps with a “preliminary” score in the note, but that actually scoring it knowing it’s not ready and very likely to improve is at best poor form. What say you?
note.JPG

I know the wine. I saw the review. This one review will get buried in a hurry and the wine will end up at 91 - 92 ish like it always does. I wouldn’t be too concerned.

Depends on whether you care about “scores,” whether from a critic or a CT user. While I would prefer that users do as you say, and only enter a score in the comments to prevent it from being included in the average, the user did say he expects the wine to be 90+ in a few years.

Bottom line is that savvy wine consumers should not discount a wine due to a few poor scores. And for long-term agers that I am considering buying, it tends to be the more recent notes that get the most weight from me. Or notes from users with a similar palate as mine.

Why is it poor form?

when other notes get added you can always deconstruct the score and recalculate it without this note if you want. it would be kind of nice if CT had a feature where you could see what the score would be like without obvious outliers like “ew this wine is really tannic! 85” on a new release barolo and such.

Yeah, I am missing something too

Here’s a note I wrote for a bottle I opened for others but did not taste. It was basically just to record it was gone and the report was mostly a report of others comments. Hence why I chose to keep it simple. Maybe the note taker was really in a hurry…?

10/23/2018: Opened for family & enjoyed over multiple days. In a very enjoyable place now. Ready to go with 30 min in the decanter.

+1
Will this tasters score affect how your bottles taste?

Not sure what wine it is, but…does the point score really matter? It is someone’s opinion based on where it is now. Who cares? Read their notes and see if you agree with it. Otherwise, dismiss the reviewer.

The only mistake was not rating it 93 points.

He does say he expects it to go up in score in a few years. So why fret?

CT is full of purposeful infantcide, many of which insist upon doing only PaP! I typically ignore all the early TNs on such wines and only look at the recent notes.

One of the major problems with CT average scoring is it gives equal weight, in the averages, to a TN score of 5 years ago as it does to a current score. F a wine got a bunch of early “me too” infantcide rating it will greatly diminish the wine rankings for the duration.

Still trying to figure out why the scores matter.

A nice CT feature would be to plot a single wine’s scores over time. That way people could rate it based on what it is now, and then we could see if it is improving, topping out, or declining over time. This would certainly help place wines in the “ready to drink” category. Of course, there are also so many wines with only a couple CT scores or with lots from prolific repetitive FanBoys here this would not work…

Headline…a LOT of CT TN’s are for personal use…If the writer get’s use out of it down the road on a look back, I’m sure that he could give a flying f about how others might over analyze
his TN…

Not a big deal, since there’s plenty of stupidity to sort through. But, the writer does give the wine two scores. Sort of. Since the first is tied to opinion of it not being ready, that should only be stated in the notes. Since the second is a range with lukewarm confidence, that should also only be stated in the notes.

Jeff - The writer is choosing to share a score with the community. The TN itself isn’t an issue.

I mean, if a winery releases wine that is too young to enjoy, why not point it out on CT?

I actually appreciate the honest take and score as the wine is right now. Not poor form at all as far as I am concerned. Also, why hide the wine and the score? I would like to know so I can follow that taster!

If a user opens a wine that is too young to enjoy, why blame the winery? The winery (and by extension, us buyers) can not afford to let bottles sit at the winery for years.

This is such an interesting thread in many ways. First of all, many wineries do release wines well before their prime drinking window. Some consumers realize this and some don’t at all. I don’t blame wineries for doing this, but it might be good for them to note this, especially with those who are not regular drinkers.

Second, I agree with others that it should not matter what someone else says about a wine that you own. I know that cellartracker can be a good guide at times, but it is not meant to replace your own experiences or palate, is it?

Cheers