I don’t need scores when it comes to young bdx or cal cabs, I don’t believe any of it is good anyway.
You know, people have been buying wines for many, many years without (1) scores or (2) critic’s tasting notes. In fact, there are people right now, throughout the world who buy wine without ever reading a critic’s review.
As weird as it may seem, you can actually taste wines first before buying multiple bottles. For example, you can visit the winery and taste the wine yourself. Or, you can wait until a wine is released retail, and then you can buy a sample bottle to try (either by yourself or split with friends). You can actually make up your OWN mind, based on your own tasting experience, without any external “references” whatsoever.
So wines don’t “need” scores. If people choose to use them, that’s a different question. But it is more than possible to have a basis to buy a particular wine without looking at a score or a tasting note…
Bruce
Does this last part refer to the young Bordeaux, the Cal Cabs, or both? ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
Sure it is possible. But my resources are finite and there are literally hundreds of thousands of wines to choose from. I cannot possibly taste them all, or even a decent fraction of them. Even if you are financially comfortable with the thought of buying a flight of first-growths just as samples to see what you like, there are still physical and temporal limits to how many different wines one person will be able to sample on their own. Moreover, for me, $100 is a lot to spend on a single bottle, and I’d rather not spend that $100 without some clue that I’ll be getting something that I’ll find is “worth it”. Reviews and scores enable me to expand my horizon so that I can buy a particular bottle with some degree of confidence.
Will scores inevitably lead me to make a correct choice for my palate at any particular point in time? No, of course not. But they do help to minimize my risk and maximize my chances that the wines I buy will be wines I ultimately will enjoy.
Meanwhile, I’m happy to sample all I can, and I will post notes on CT for others to use as they see fit. However, many times my scores will not closely match the notes of any professional critic, because even if I used a critical score to help me buy a wine, the critical score doesn’t help at all when I TASTE the wine. My perceptions and judgments are my own.
Bruce
It is very true that scores and notes are not a prerequisite for buying wine. People buy stuff all the time not knowing thing one about the product. Bums on the streets pick up wine all the time and we know they aren’t looking at scores or notes. Of course if taste meant anything to these bums they might first have flown out to France for a quick tasting with the owner prior to purchasing their ripple.
I’m just being a little silly now but… I think you get the point. Not everybody is running out to catch a plane so they can tour the vineyards. The notes and scores are tools that allow people to focus into an area that they have a higher probability of liking instead of grabing a random $100 bottle off the shelf
I am finding reviewer’s tasting notes and scores less reliable anyway. Again, reading through multiple descriptors is getting tedious, and as far as I am concerned, pretty useless. BUT, if I am going to read a review, it does help to know what quality level the reviewer thought the wine reached. Whether they use words like “good, really good, really really good , excellent, outstanding, classic” or “fine, very fine, quite fine indeed,etc.” or “mildly impressive, impressive, very impressive, really damn impressive”, OR number scores, it helps to have some statement in the note as to what quality level they think the wine is at among the spectrum of quality in the wines they taste.
I personally would rather read a note like: “Lovely nose, deep and concentrated fruit, lovely balance, vibrant acidity, long finish, no finishing heat. Really excellent quality.” in a note on a domestic Pinot Noir than one packed full of every aroma and taste descriptor in the world but no mention that the wine is 15.5% alcohol and therefore stylistically one that I would rather avoid.
Ah, but Robert, then writers would need to write, and consumers would need to read. It’s a lot to ask, really.
The biggest problem with numeric scores is the way they can draw such an absolute line. A $25, 90 point chardonnay could probably do just fine in the market. Same wine at 89 points is destined for the clearance bin. Compound that with the fact that most of the writers scoring these wines are tasting dozens in a single sitting, something completely unrelated to the way almost all of us enjoy wine, can they really draw that fine a distinction? Of course not, yet they make or break markets.
Reading your example note really made me wonder why some believe that a score is a necessary prerequisite to making a wine purchase. It’s the equivalent to saying, “I can’t imagine a world unlike the one we live in.” Well, ok, but that isn’t really a commentary on the world we live in.
we should abolish wine writing so that we can all take six months out of the year and travel to every winemaking region we are interested in, and taste at every single property so that we can form a proper opinion without having to rely on score rubbish.
I agree, point scores do imply a level of precision that I think makes no sense, and they invite a competitive comparison based on that false assumption that affects the marketplace in an absurd way. That is why, although I would like some statement as to comparative quality (such as “good” “very good” “excellent”, etc.), I think number scores are ridiculous. If I am looking for buying recommendations, perhaps to try a producer I am unfamiliar with, I might try a wine for $25 that is good but not at $100, while I might try a wine that is excellent at $100 and certainly at $25. I do not think I can tell this from descriptors alone without some “statement” as to comparative quality, but you are correct, using the precision of a 100 point scale is absurd and has led to horrible consequences in the marketplace. Not to mention your excellent point that these wines are NOT assessed in the way that we assess and enjoy them…assuming that anyone in a session of 100-300 wines can assess a wine and its aging potential and eventual level of quality with the precision of a 100 point scale is to assume that that person has superhuman skill. And given that, the fact that most reviewers never reassess those wines later and over the years makes perfect sense.
Well, scores - as well as words - are worth as much as the person who gives them!
So kind of reliable scores should come from a taster whose ability and preferences I know … or otherwise it´s a bit like tumbling dices.
I´ve often read TN with scores - here and elswhere - when
- I just wondered what has been tasted - so different from from my views, and
- how the scores relate to the describing words …
![[scratch.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/42a16863a8714da3c1604419e3eb9206bb87aa50.gif "scratch")
BUT - on the other hand a clear 92points seems to be better/more exciting than a 90p wine … and that´s a better statement than e.g. "this is outstanding, but that one was excellent, and the 3rd one was really good, with great potential, and the last one evolved in the glass and I really enjoyed it …
Ok - so what?
Well, you’ve just put your finger on a big part of the issue. You want to be able to spend $100 on a bottle of wine, but then you say that that “is a lot of spend on a single bottle.” You could choose another path in wine, where you’re rarely buying a bottle outside of your economic comfort zone.
I got into wine many years ago–long before the widespread publication and adoption of “professional” wine reviews. I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you this, but the people I knew who were into wine then were very capable of making intelligent wine-buying decisions on their own, without a single “professional” score or tasting note.
There are many downsides of relying too heavily on “professional” wine reviews, and not the least of them is that you are basically ceding your buying and cellaring decisions to some other person who you don’t know and who doesn’t know you. You will end up running with the wine pack, where people tend to be on the same winery mailing lists and/or buy the same wines when they show up at retail. There is actually something quite liberating when you decide to step away (at least somewhat) from that hamster wheel, and when you decide to seek out unusual/off-the-beaten path wines.
Of course, people are entitled to chose their own paths in wine. If people feel more “comfortable” in tasting/buying/cellaring based on professional reviews, or if they get a thrill from owning an anointed 100 point wine,then that’s their call. But it’s hardly the only path in wine, and certainly there have been many, many importers and retailers who have discovered excellent wines long before the wines were ever professionally reviewed.
Just trying to give folks a tiny glimpse of an alternative wine universe…
Bruce
I’ve never understood when the critic or no critic debate comes up, why it is usually portrayed as one or the other. All types of negative connotations are infered (or is it implied) when one admits to using critical advice to these anti-critics:blinded slavishness to another’s opinion, point chasing, substandard capabilities to discern quality for oneself, etc. Obviously it takes time and trial and error to determine whether any given critic is right for you. But once one has confidence in someone, that professional will have exposure in a year, to more wines than most will consume in a lifetime. Why not take advantage of that kind of resource? And if YOUR critic recommends a wine that sounds interesting, and you have the ability to access a test bottle, so much the better. But if it’s a case of striking while the iron is hot, sometimes taking a gamble pays off and sometimes it dosen’t. It’s all part of the wine game, just like bottle variation, TCA, etc. None of this precludes one’s ability to take a suggestion from a local wine store, or simply explore new discoveries on one’s own. Wine is vast, why approach it from a narrow minded perspective?
I don´t need any scores or critics when I have the wine in question in my glass - my personal taste is enough.
BUT when it is still in barrel, far away - or simply not available or crazy expensive, a worthy opinion (of someone I can trust more or less) is always helpful.
Simple as that!
I’ve always liked the combination of scores and notes, but have never cared to differentiate between 85 and 89, or 89 or 94. If a wine is 80+ and of type I generally am interested in I’ll read the notes.
Most of the wines I buy and drink I’ve never read the scores for. Sometimes I read them later, often when I Google for extra information on the producer, but most wines I buy are based on the following:
- Style of wine, for example I drink a large amount of German Riesling.
- A producer I know, trust and/or just like to follow.
- Someone I know and trust has recommended the wine/producer.
- Something I’ve never tried before but am curious about (mostly these are not at the high end of my price spectrum).
In these instances I simply don’t care to read scores, in other situations I like scores. Say I want to try pinot biancos from all over the world. There are too many to try them all, and I’m perhaps narrowing it down to Alsace and Trentino Alto-Adige (yes, leaving out all of the New World, Germany, Austria, Slovenia etc.). There’s still too many for me to try whole bottles of, so I wish to do set up at tasting with some friends. We set a level at 6 bottles. Now which ones should we choose? We know none of them. Here we go to scores, and at this point the actual scores are easier to use than descriptors (but they too would work). We just want to avoid the poor examples and those that are non-typical or not interesting. Scores with some notes, for example to steer us away from the heavily oaked ones, are very valuable here.
Can we still make do without them? Of course! I’m sure if I asked on this forum I’d be able to get 10 bottles out of the ones I can source that the forum believed I should try, and to be honest I’d go with those 10 bottles. Still, the scores are just easy.
Words to tell you what the experience is. Scores to manipulate you into buying or avoiding a wine.
I don’t get what a score is supposed to mean. Is a 90 an absolute value, regardless of price? For that rater is every 90 better than every 89? Or is it relative? “hey for a $9.99 wine, this is a 90!”
Is that big Bordeaux a 90 right now? or do you expect that it will evolved into a 90 after 10 years, but is really a closed-in bottle of sludge right now.
Until someone can explain this, I think words inform, and numbers confuse.
Last week, I was walking down an alley in an edgy part of Rotterdam when two hoodies approached me.
When one of them started eyeing me up slightly aggressively, I thought I’d be parting company with my laptop before long.
‘You that wine fella?’ he said, throwing me completely off guard.
‘Yeah!’ I exclaimed inanely.
‘That Dujac you recommended on Wine Berserkers’ said his mate, pausing to raise his hands from his low-slung pockets for added emphasis.
‘That was well dirty.’
That particular incident made my day ……
I have no use for numbers. Descriptions are much more useful - but we are a numbers driven society. Unfortunately though, many wonderful wines are passed over by the average consumer because they have no score-or even worse an 89!
…or even worse, Johnathan H. Newman 92!
1. Does wine tasted from barrel, which may be just an approximation of a final wine in the bottle really need a score ?
From Mike Steinberger @ WineDiarist. ;
Acclaimed consulting winemaker Stéphane Derenoncourt gave an interview earlier this month to the French newspaper Le Monde in which he acknowledged preparing special cuvées expressly for the annual Bordeaux en primeurs tastings. Derenoncourt told Le Monde that the en primeurs blends are put into barrel sooner than the rest of the vintage so that they taste more evolved than would otherwise be the case six months after the harvest. Decanter magazine picked up the story last week and cited a handful of winemakers confirming that this is standard practice in Bordeaux. One winery owner, Yann Bouscasse of Châeau Cantinot, confessed that he gives different samples to different critics; some taste from new oak barrels, others from older barrels. “James Suckling, Neal Martin or Robert Parker will get a new barrel,” Bouscasse said, “while Gault Millau, or Revue du Vin de France, will get second or third use. American tasters can cope better with oak—Suckling likes a wine with more body.” Setting aside the fact that Martin is British, not American, Bouscasse’s candid remark calls to mind Michael Kinsley’s famous definition of a gaffe: it is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. I might have more to say on this topic tomorrow, but I am just curious: is anyone surprised to learn that the Bordelais are doctoring up samples for critics?
since you guys don’t seem to know this yet…
points scores are not about tasting or appreciating wine,
but about owning it.
(full disclosure—I grade on the 20-point scale as a member of the Wirt und Winzer jury in Vienna,
but these scores are mercifully averaged and converted to howmany-wineglasses ratings
before publicatin’…)