CellarTracker vs. the "professionals"

I’ve been taking informal surveys from my wine buddies and ALL OF THEM place more weight on CellarTracker scores than the scores published by Parker, the Spectator, Tanzer, Galloni, etc.

In the same way that Wikipedia made Encarta irrelevant, why hasn’t CellarTracker scores & reviews marginalized professional wine critics? Not saying these guys don’t have a valid opinion, but it’s just one opinion.

I’d say the comparison is closer to Yelp than Wikipedia. (Wikipedia is crowd sourced, yes, but inaccurate stuff is quickly removed, etc.)

I always check out Yelp reviews when visiting new cities, but put more stock in the reviews of food critics I trust.

The best thing about CT is that anyone can rate wine.
The worst thing about CT is that anyone can rate wine.

This is exactly right.

At the end of the day, the best source for notes is someone whose palate is similar to yours, be it a friend, critic, or a random guy on CT you started following. Take the best out of all the worlds.

True, any yahoo can submit a score. I would think that once enough people submit a score for any given wine, any outliers (both positive and negative) would cancel each other out and a true average score would be established.

There may be professional critics that have similar palates, and that can’t be ignored, but when you have dozens of people submitting a score then that has to count for something. Just saying.

Not necessarily… quite a few people seem to have liked the '04 Marcassin Three Sisters Chard (see the scores below), but it’s one of the most disgusting things I have ever tasted. I would never go and buy a wine just because it has a high CT rating.

Std. deviation: 8.11
95-100: 57.89% (11)
90-94: 36.84% (7)
85-89: 0
80-84: 0
< 80: 5.26% (1)

Your conclusion assumes that numerical scores have value to begin with.

The other problem you have is many people post commentary without scores, and so these observations are not factored into the averages. I like the fact that I can see recent TNs on wines that I own, but as Scott so succinctly pointed out, the downside is that there are folks on CT posting notes/scores that are clearly non-aligned with your palate (and at times, with seemingly no knowledge or context about what the wine in question is supposed to be like).

The more reviews there are for a given wine on CT, the more likely I am to rely on the number. With fewer reviews, I’ll pay more attention to what the notes say and try to determine if the reviewers have any idea what they’re talking about. I also look out for people whose reviews I trust. The worst are wines where there are only one or two number scores and no notes.

I’m not sure I really have an opinion on CT vs critics. I tend to take it on a case by case basis comparing the experience/reliability/consistency of the critic in question with the number and knowledge of the CT reviews.

Short answer: it depends.

The only thing I use cellartracker notes for is to determine if a wine is accessible.

Cellartracker certainly can be a powerful tool for wine consumers - and wine producers as well. As a producer, I frequently check out what is being consumed of mine and how people are perceiving it. I am not interested in scores as much as I am interested in tasting notes. More than once, I have been ‘prompted’ to open an ‘older’ bottle of mine to check out what someone had said - both good and not so good. Very informational as well. I also reach out to those who’ve posted notes from time to time as well.

From a consumer standpoint, I think it’s a ‘valid’ way of comparing tastes with other ‘peers’, and if you find someone that seems to share your tastes and preferences in wine, you can follow them and take note of what they are purchasing/drinking. Of course, this is no different than aligning yourself with a specific reviewer - the reality is that there are lot more ‘consumers’ out there than there are ‘professional reviewers’ so your chance of finding someone with similar tastes is much higher.

As Scott pointed out so eloquently, though, is that anyone can post notes and scores on the site - and this cuts both ways . . .

Cheers!

CT provides an average with many more data points than a few TNs provided by critics. You also can read the TNs in CT and see trends, like a young wine has a certain range, then the wine shows better with age. CT provides much more useable info than a critic who provides only a snapshot in time for most wines. In the end though your own taste should rule, but having a lot of data points spread over time provides valuable insight IMHO.

Agreed. I find labeling my “favorite tasters” helps me sort through the noise and more easily access useful information.

I use Cellar Tracker reviews to track drinking windows as well. But I have also found it useful to read tasting notes and scores if there have been more than just a few notes posted. IMO scores without notes are not very useful nor are notes without scores. Scores, whether on a 100 scale, 20 scale, 10 scale or alphabetic scale are another data point that helps clarify the content of notes. I’ve read plenty of notes that leave me wondering whether the taster really liked the wine or not and I’ve seen plenty of scores without notes that leave me clueless as to the characteristics of the wine that engendered that score. It is obviously easier to, over time, correlate your palate to a single reviewer but I still find CT to be useful for the breadth of coverage. There are often no other data points available on a specific wine.

My prime use as well. The scores are too random, but I do pay attention to a handful of people whose palates I recognize.

This!

Many of the reviews on CT are too vague and non-descriptive. However, some have great detail and I use those to help me decide. I try to give very consistent reviews with enough detail to help anyone that want to read them. The general public has never heard of CT.

Actually, I think the general public has a much greater chance of knowing about CT than any wine critic other than Parker. If you Google a given wine, CT is invariably high on the first page of results. Learning who various critics are takes a bit more interest and work.

For my purposes, CT is very useful, but it requires quite a bit of sifting and reading between the lines.

Which I’m happy to do.

Not unlike what I do when reading the professionals, TBH.