As with any other reviewing site or reviewer, if your palate aligns with what you are reading, that’s a great thing. And it certainly can make you feel ‘more comfortable’ trying a wine you’ve never tried based on this.
What I would be curious about are examples of times when your expectations were so much higher than how you found the wine based on reviews you had read elsewhere - or even here. AND if you found consistent ‘misalignment’ with your thoughts on wines and specific reviewers or sites.
I think that Cellar Tracker is the best when it comes to a general evaluation of quality. After many years of reading wine reviews when buying wines, I have gone to more of a read the label, determine if it is in my wheel house and check CT’s score to see if it is of reasonable quality (I am generally going to be in plus or minus 3 with my own ratings of a often rated CT wine with some exceptions based on my own profile loves.
I think finding a Wine critic whose tastes align with yours is also important, though paying attention to the descriptors in their reviews are most important. It took me a while, but I finally have gotten to the point where I don’t really care about WS, WA, JS etc. ratings as much as what they say about the wine in the tasting note.
As for Vivino’s ratings, I am not a huge fan given that my tastes have shifted over time and I do not like some of the fruit-forward, RS wines that are highly rated on Vivino. It’s not a flaw with Vivino as much as an understanding in terms of where my own tastes have gravitated towards. For the most part, I do not have the same issues with CT in that regard.
Based on my preferences, Cellar Tracker is much better than Vivino. If you love sweet wines, than Vivino is your friend. Have found it to be helpful. YMMV.
Vivino is much better than what I am reading on this thread. Of course if you are arguing you don’t like wine rating websites to begin with then that is your opinion.
I like CellarTracker more and I always go there first but I do like Vivino a lot. First I prefer both of them if I had to choose over professional ratings. I read the reviewers, and they do provide valuable information, but I just think reviewers only drink wine young, they’re drinking 20-500 wines a day ruining a proper plate, the wines are almost absurdly young, and they drink quick and small amouns not drinking an entire bottle over time. These are all things that when I do it usually is really bad in judging a single wine.
Back to Vivino what hasn’t been stated at all on this thread is that Vivino must be popular in Europe as so often low production European wines have reviews. In fact when I’m looking for a review on a European wine and CellarTracker has none or one review Vivino almost always has some. Often it has more than CellarTracker which always surprises me as winebezerkers doesn’t talk about Vivino much. And it has a translate feature versus CellarTracker so I can read all the reviews without copying and pasting and going to google. As a bad feature I feel v I is sorting by vintage is often wrong and to find all the reviews of a certain year it’s usually best to scroll through all reviews.
Now whether the reviews are good or not or whether any reviews are good or not unfortunately I think it comes down to one’s ability to decipher. I mean to begin with I often almost only am looking at a wine I have researched a reasonable amount for and have some data/belief it can be good. But I’m often looking to see if it has some of my taste preferences (I like burgundies and Rhône’s on the red fruited side). Then you need to be able generalize. With regards to the scores I don’t want to see 3.5’s but that also means you shouldn’t only count on seeing and choosing because a wine has 4.5’s or 5’s. With regards to text some reviews sounds like the person knows little about wine and is just giving poser reviews with few words or non serious words and others are more detailed and I believe them more. BUT you shouldn’t trust any single person or score (just like the scientific process).
If your able to generalize / homogenize / distill and you already have a picture of the wine when you came in to it then CellarTracker and Vivino have been an awesome way for me to buy a wine I haven’t had. Especially if the wine is sub $100 and the risk isn’t absurd But then again what choice do most of us have on $300 wines on where to taste for free and get an opinion.