I generally avoid anything under 90 on CT unless its around $10 a bottle. At $10-15, a 88 or 89 is doable. 90-91 generally means the wine is good, not great. 92-93 becomes a wine really worth while and 94+ means it is typically pretty special. For me, 90-91 becomes daily drinking type wines. 92-93 is with a good meal and 94+ becomes special occasions as they usually come with a higher price tag as well.
I do notice Cabs are usually lower rated than other varieties.
I agree with a lot of what has been said here, especially what Jeff said.
I will add that CT is a community and if we don’t stick to a range of between 85 and 95 we become the extreme. The scale in reality is about 15 points. If your scores are only meant for your own use then go ahead and score a wine a 75 even if you like it.
There are 500K registered users on CT- How many post notes/scores?
Of those that post notes/scores- what % are the more geeky, more likely to be on sites like wine berserkers?
How many wine berserkers don’t do some homework before buying wine? Or know something about the wine/winery/vintage etc to avoid buying something that has a high chance of sucking?
How many mediocre wines do wine berserkers taste - whether at a tasting or as a daily drinker, etc, that just aren’t interesting enough to bother posting a note?
I can get an A- like on one’s business.
About 200K are tracking cellars. As of this posting, exactly 125,244 have posted tasting notes.
I rarely write notes/scores on CT. That said, I only write notes and scores for my own personal tracking/consumption on CT. I don’t rely on the notes/scores in CT when making buying decisions. I rely on my own palette. There’s only one way to find out if you’ll like something… ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Usually when I am disappointed in a wine, I have not checked the CT notes that say wait a few more years and I open too early.
Many times a wine will be in the 88pts on opening and after a few days tasting will end up in the 91-92 pt range. ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
I don’t generally look too hard at the scores on CT, but I find the descriptions helpful so as to anticipate the flavor profile and to know if the wine is ready yet, or should sleep more.
Drives me nuts. I’d call the range 87-93. And while I agree with the we-drink-better-wines logic, I don’t think that accounts for all of it. IIRC the Wine Spectator (which I haven’t subscribed to in ten years) divvies up points this way, categorically: 80-84 Good, 85-89 Very Good, 90-94 Excellent, and 95+ Classic (or Outstanding), and I think that’s a sound reference, both in common sense and because of the Speck’s power in the marketplace. If everyone considered those definitions when they rate wine, we’d see a broader spectrum of scores So while I too don’t usually give points (because compaction of scores makes it kind of meaningless), I admit to sometimes jumping in to tip the scales on points given by previous reviewers who are being overly kind at 89 or 90 or too conservative at 91 or 92.
CT is what it is.
Sure the scores are compressed but understanding that the 88-93 point scale is useful. Since I am not able to taste wines prior to purchase I depend on reviews to make buying decisions. I give CT scores considerable weight in this process, especially when there are a lot of reviews. If a professional critic I follow scores a wine 95 and the CT score is 88 I will look elsewhere. I also have a system to tag users who have large cellars or have taken the time to write a large number of notes. And then Of course there are other users where I have learned to respect their scores and others that I know have different tastes.
IMHO if you invest the time to really appreciate and understand all of the information available on CT there is no more valuable tool out there for us mere mortals.
How often does this happen? I would have guessed rarely, other than maybe for Suckling.
I haven’t followed the critics’ scores for a few years, but when I did the CT average score was almost always within a point or two of the critics’. Unless the pro score was >95. Then the CT average was often a few points lower, but still almost always over 93. Has that changed?
Then again, my cellar is pretty mainstream. Maybe there is a greater divergence for off the beaten path wines.
Personally, when we first started really getting into wine and exploring, buying lots of different producers and drinking new things frequently is also about the time we discovered CT, because our collection got unwieldily to maintain without a database. I also started rating regularly, mostly for my own edification. Basically for the purpose of: Is this a wine I want to buy more of?
Now that we’ve settled into a wine rut (happily) and established relationships with wineries that we buy from regularly, etc. I find myself rating far less frequently. It’s not that we never try new things, because we do, it’s just that a large portion of our monthly/yearly consumption is now made up of tried and true favorites; makers/labels we love that are in our price range and we buy regularly. If there’s something particularly spectacular, or surprisingly disappointing, I note it, but otherwise, it’s more, ‘Yep, that’s what we expected,’ enjoyment that I don’t feel the need to rate.
As for score clustering, I think that’s logical. I mean, we buy wine we expect to enjoy, and usually we do enjoy it. Some more than others, but as we gain in knowledge and experience, separation gets smaller because we sample less wine we don’t like. I tend to score --again, almost entirely for my own use – on a grade-like scale. Like, 86 and below are B- wines; not really what we’re hoping for (these are fairly rare now). 87-89 are "B"s; fine, but probably wouldn’t buy again. 90-92 “A”, good to very good and 93-95 is “A+” excellent. That allows me to go back and refresh my memory when I’m thinking about getting more. Do I really need this? 89 is probably a no, while 92 is a definite yes.
I’m not trying to be an influencer of anyone other than myself since, like most here, I already have more wine than anyone could ever even conceivably, “need,” and I’m usually trying to talk myself out of, not into, purchasing more.
Interestingly enough, it’s not hard to run a report seeing one’s own score distribution (My Tasting Notes>Summarize By>Custom>Group By>Score). I ran my own* and sure enough 90 is my most common score – though my average rating is somewhat lower, at 89.2 – for reasons already well commented on (I’ve been buying wine for 22 years and by now know something about what I like…). Though it’s also true I’ve very inconsistent about writing tasting notes … sometimes I’ll do one for a $12 daily drinker but not leave one for a “special” wine that would look better on my wine-tasting CV…
*My distribution is:
96 0.5% Notes (1)
94 0.5% Notes (1)
93 4.9% Notes (10)
92 8.7% Notes (18)
91 13.1% Notes (27)
90 23.3% Notes (48)
89 8.3% Notes (17)
88 14.1% Notes (29)
87 18.0% Notes (37)
86 3.4% Notes (7)
85 0.5% Notes (1)
84 1.0% Notes (2)
83 1.0% Notes (2)
78 0.5% Notes (1)
(unrated) 2.4% Notes (5)
The one I have recently come across that seems to be an exception is John Gilman, who has given as low as a 50 I think.
I do tend to cluster in the 88 to 93 or 94 range. For some reason a one point difference there means a lot to me. I have gone as high as 97 I think – not sure what more I would need for a 100.
I do think another part of the problem (which certainly applies to me) is that given the quality of wine I/we drink, I am not very good at distinguishing among lower scores. In other words, if I drink a wine that is mediocre or that I don’t like, I am not sure whether to say 80, or 70, or 60, or something in between. The problem is that I don’t have as much experience with drinking mediocre wines to distinguish among them – and as others have pointed out, if it is a gift wine or on a plane or restaurant, I tend not to take the time to score it and write a note.
Picking up on John’s point, I do take notice when there are a lot of notes and the average is above 94 or 95. If I come across something like that I am more likely to read through the notes to see why people are rating it so highly – and of course to look for lower scores with their reasoning.
Here is what I don’t get about you’ll points people. Why shouldn’t the scale, which after all is an American-style grading scale, calibrate to grades like B is 85, C is 75, D is 65, below 60 is an F. If I graded, there would be a lot of wines in the 60s through mid-80s. There are a lot of mediocre wines out there. They deserve mediocre grades if you are gong to insist on assigning points. Why should CT be any different?
Yes, lots of mediocre wine when considering all wines, but I’d posit that most on CT are avid wine drinkers / collectors and as a whole, don’t consume wines they believe are mediocre.
Don’t consume or don’t write a note or both? I have wine geeks pour me plenty of wines that I think are mediocre or suck, and I might even buy an occasional one myself.
Probably both.
I think that this clustering effect speaks against the 100 point scale. Since we use a decimal system, multiples of ten represent a natural, unavoidable threshold/attraction point.
A scale from 1 to 5, or 10, or even the one from 1 to 20 (which is effectively 10-20) would probably be less prone to such a clustering effect because there is no multiple of ten which can get the meaning of “hey, this is quite good!” - generic praise without excitement.
Well, perhaps, somebody can check on Jancis Robinson’s website whether a similar effect is there among the critics publishing TNs there. That could prove me wrong, of course…
I have not read through this thread, and am not on CT, but my supposition is that the average scoring could just as easily be influenced by the users generally buying and only writing on wines that they like. I bet if you were to take the average of all scores that I have ever posted on this site, it would be 90 or higher. I generally buy what I like and don’t take time writing notes on crappy or even mediocre wines unless thy really irk me, like how the 2005 St Ems turned out, or anything touched my Uncle Rollo that somehow happens to pass through my lips.