That’s a pretty high average score. I’m sure we can all think of lots of reasons why, but I’m a little surprised by that, considering all the talk about how inflated scores are these days. I guess the majority of review on CT are from the complainers.
Looking at just my notes: 1,664 notes with an average score of 87.39 pts. This makes sense to me. I try to stay away from wines that I don’t like, so I think the average wine that I actually drink would be about 87-88 pts.
+1 not a knock on CT but every person entering a score is basically using a different scale. What value could there be in averaging these all together? It seems to me the scores pretty much cluster from 87-93, with 90 being average.
Then again there may be something intrinsically average about 88 points. I stuck a well-known critic’s vintage chart into excel and averaged the score for all regions in each vintage. The average score has risen from the low-80s 30 years ago to between 88-89 today.
I usually don’t bother to post on wines that don’t strike me as particularly appealing. I’m around 90 average but I am far more motivated to write a note on a wine I found exceptional than one I am just going to click on Drank.
I don’t score my notes or pay attention to scores in CT as I find the numbers more representative of a person’s preferences than representative of how the wine tastes. I prefer notes as they, hopefully, represent the aromas and flavors of the wine itself.
True. The vast, vast majority of people that would go to the effort of posting a note in Cellartracker, and using Cellartracker, and hanging around a freakin’ wine-geek message board probably have done a bit of research about wine!!!
JD
The issue, of course, is that most of us know enough about wine that we can voluntarily stay away from anything under 80 points, or not bother to write a note about it.
are not usually . . .writing a review for every wine.
Is that really true? You have people who have thousands of notes. I think it’s great if people are NOT writing a note about every single wine they taste, but somehow I’m a little skeptical. Even when I go out to dinner, I see people obsessively taking notes.
Yeah, I have a confession to make. I have never, ever consumed one ounce of wine without obsessively taking a note. I usually like to have at least 2 iPads, 3 iPhones and 4 laptops with me at all times so I can take notes. It makes me feel better. Just ask anyone who has ever had dinner with me.
I’ve never understood the concept of only writing notes for certain wines. If you are taking notes and posting them to CT then do it for all the wines. I know some people only like to report on their most positive of experiences but I have no clue why. Taking self education and the community into account there are plenty of reasons to write notes for all of your wines.
I’m with Cris on this one. Most of you will be spared the chore of reading them, because they are of a lower class of wine than most admit to drinking. But I feel I must post just to balance the field a little toward the common man who may appreciate the information.
Because people are different? I’m not being paid to write notes. I’ll write notes on the wines I want, thanks very much. None of you get to tell me what to write notes on until you start sending me money.
I have notes to write on a tasting from a couple of weeks ago. Excellent red burgs from 01/02. I’ll write those up because I know people are interested. The Cerasuolo from last night? No. It was fine, but not that remarkable. Same with the $9 Garnacha/Temperanillo I had the other night. It was nice, but guess what, it’s a $9 wine. It wasn’t vastly overachieving, so it’s not remarkable in that respect.