Cellar Tracker archetypes

  1. guy who only drinks trophy bottles and rates them all below 94 points.

  2. new sommelier guy who only drinks wines you’ve never heard of and gives them highly variable and unpredictable scores. 300 tasting notes in 3 months and then never heard from again.

Your turn

  1. The Loose Cannon: Histrionic guy who drinks a case of comtes in a week and wants to be your friend unless you criticize his patently insane TNs. Notes are as likely to be in Norse or Mandarin as English.

  2. The Score Inflator: gives a middle of the road wine six consecutive 100 point scores with no note or justification and statistically changes a vintage of otherwise consistent rioja

  3. The Score Deflator: lover of restrained wines that gives any otherwise critically acclaimed BDX 2009 or newer ratings in the 60-80 ballpark. But not just 70, 75, etc. Scores like 74 as though he’d had a 73 before but this Rolland popsicle was just a little bit better…

  4. The Panther/Aesop: modern Napa cab lover who only speaks in sexual metaphors or maybe parables

  1. the serial offender - enters every bottle twice; same score for both but one has no note and the other has a note with three words or less
  1. The Grandparent - enters two different scores for the same wine on the same day. One note says “drank with Tom and Mildred”.

The Swedes - Glancing in a half buzzed state you think you’ve seen someone going on an epic cuss laden rant. Nope. It’s just in Swedish.

Uncle Chip - “Opened when Frank and Barb came to dinner Tuesday. Had meat loaf with creamed corn on the patio. Drinking well now!!!”

Endless Evidence Against Scoring Wines - “Glorious!!!”: 91 Points

  1. The type of CT user savvy enough to notice the resident archetypes and comment about them on a different wine board.

these two go hand in hand with

  1. The Same Bottle Multi Scorer: note one: PnP with a little sulfur but otherwise great nose, 91pts. Note 2: same bottle as previous, three weeks after opening. disappointing! wine is dead now. 65pts.

(with a certain fondness)

The Kruger

Drank with Progresso soup with extra onion powder. Adequate acidity.

The “Label Chaser”. Person who paid a lot therefore the wine is a 95 even though it’s too young and in reality, just not that good.

The “Doctor McCoy” - proclaims any wine more than 3 years old as past peak or dead.

The ‘unreasonable expectations user’ who taste that fresh and bright Bien Nacido Pinot Noir a week after opening and destroys it in their note based on the oxidized fail.

The Influencer

Blows up the market on your favorite producers with several effusive tasting notes. Unclear if he is running a pump and dump or merely talking his book.

Conclusion: CT ratings are absolutely not reliable, especially mean ratings …
Either you know the taster and his ability - or you are quite lost …

The Stalker - Friends you on CT, then on Delectable, then on Facebook… Comments on all your notes.

The Denier - Claims all CT scores are useless. :wink:

Not sure I agree with this. I often use CT as a decision making tool when shopping (online or otherwise). It’s not foolproof, as there are plenty of good old wines with few ratings, but for me, if there are >20 scores and TNs that are saying roughly the same thing, I value that more highly than a single professional critic’s assessment. It speaks to the question of variability, how likely is the bottle in front of me to be a good one as opposed to the pristine sample poured for a critic? And it also gives an idea of a wine’s performance over time, equally valuable information. And it tells me what wines are of the love it or hate it variety.

I’m guilty of putting too much weight on CT scores when deciding what goes in or out of my cellar, but the handful of odd ducks on CT are far outweighed by the regular Joes that use it appropriately. Though I do wish there were a way to exclude scores from individual users deemed to be unhelpful.

Finally some of those notes with personality (looking at you CSIMM1161) have caused me to buy bottles I wouldn’t have otherwise sought out. Just picturing in toting a opening an erect bottle of has led me click “PLACE ORDER NOW!!” with palms a-sweating. I have yet to be disappointed.

CT Archetypes- The guy who is tired of all the pencil heads on WB who blow up our tasting notes and derides everyone on CT.

Seriously, this thread shows that SOME of you take yourselves way to seriously. Wine drinking is supposed to be fun.

CT is a guide, just as Winespectator or RP are,

I think you might have that backwards. Most of these posts are just jokes, some better than others. There’s a lot of truth in them too though. After more than a decade of looking at CT notes daily, some of these “types” definitely emerge.

I suspect everyone who posted here gets that CT is just a guide, or they wouldn’t use it enough to pick up on those types. That said, a note reading “drank with Tony” doesn’t offer a hell of a lot of guidance,.

Personally I’m in the camp of: scores are completely useless, notes can be useful, notes from posters you know can be very useful.

Oh I get it. People who leave a score, no tasting note. It’s just that I see more elitism on this website.

lol at “the Panther”