Moving wine around to get ready for my new cellar and found my case of 2005 Monbousquet. I had deliberately buried it at the bottom of a pile because I knew it needed time. Five years ago, I would have started a TNR thread here to find out whether people thought I should open a bottle. Instead, I immediately went to CT and read recent reviews. I decided that I needed to get a criminal lawyer on retainer for my infanticide defense if I open a bottle. However, I was relying upon reviews of people most of whom I have never met and could not identify. So I was thinking, should I at least attempt to ask you guys and gals who maybe I have shared a few bottles with to get a reliable opinion (discarding, of course, the opinions of the Burgheads and traditionalists who think Monbousquet is on the road to the last level of Dante’s Inferno)?
The collective opinion of random people is seldomly something to rely on. On cellartracker or anywhere else
Ironic as that is exactly how we decide our political leaders…
The road to Hell is paved with the shattered bottles of Monbousquet that people drank in their lifetimes.
Yes 
not exactly–nondrinkers don’t post in CT, yet the correlate votes.
alanw
In all seriousness, i use CT ratings and notes only from people i have followed and considered reliable. i may occassaionally be intrigued by collective opinion but i dont use it as a guide in buying or drinking decisions. I often search this forum for notes on a particular wine if in doubt about maturity of a specific wine. I dont think a trusted valuable opinon will ever be redundant because of software like CT. For instance, you wouldnt ask random people on facebook for advice on other important aspects in life, instead you would probably search out opinions of people you trust and then make your own informed decision.
The best thing about CT is that anyone can post a tasting note.
The worst thing about CT is that anyone can post a tasting note.
Same goes for WB and I’m not sure that this addresses the question.
The good thing about TNR on WB is that you can get tasting notes and discussion from people whom you’ve followed and understand their palates.
CT is so ubiquitous at this point that you can find their notes there as well (along with those of dozens of people you don’t know).
Pedantry to follow:
Unfortunate? No doubt.
Ironic? Not a chance.
In the grand scheme of things, choosing a wine is a inconsequential activity. Use recommendations of random strangers is a harmless way of choosing fermented grape juice. Using an almost exact same method to choose people that make the most important decisions that affect billions of people is ironic.
Irony (n.): a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs
You’d expect methods of choosing wine and commanders in chief to be different, but they are not that dissimilar. It is a slightly differently ironic than say a Riesling smells like Cabernet or an alcoholic winemaker that doesn’t drink. But I think irony is an appropriate, but maybe not the best, way to compare the two processes… ![[truce.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/d/d33e712b50d5efc2425bf219c404fbdb7ed0ba50.gif "truce"){kind=small}
I may not trust all the people that post on CT…hell, I’m sure I don’t agree with many. However, I can say that after opening a bottle of 2001 Beaucastel and finding it in a weird spot…if I had looked at CT first I would have seen 2-3 other users describing the same thing…and the trend followed for another year or so before notes picked back up and started showing signs that the wines had returned to a place of balance. I now see CT as a valuable resource on wines that countless people have exposure to (like Beaucastel and other mass produced wines) it’s the smaller lots that I struggle with. In particular the “New World” wines like Aubert, No Girls, Cameron, ect. This seems to be where there can be a big swing in experiences shared.
For me, CT is moderately useful as a source of info about whether a wine is ready to drink. If there is a long line of recent notes saying a wine is shut down I will find something else. It is of little or no use to me for assessing a wine’s quality. Perhaps if I knew (took the time and effort to memorize) handles I would have better luck in that regard, but in a sense, Eric’s success is his undoing here. SO MANY people are posting there that one never knows who a note is coming from. Here, I can assess the merits of a TN because I know which of you reprobates have a palate.
I try to prequalify the posters on CT by filtering the scores so i only see those who also post a descriptive note. I guess in my mind, the more serious taster/drinker will post actual WORDS to accompagny the numerical rating. I then disregard the rest
Good point. I trust people who drink wine far more than the public at large. Then, taking it one step further I trust wine drinkers with an informed opinion (all regions and producers attract different types) far more than the wine drinking public at large.
Unfortunately CT is not that useful when you are discussing obscure regions and varieties where there is only a reference or 3.
It’s well known among statisticians that the consensus of large and diverse groups, regardless of expertise, is almost always more accurate (when accuracy can be measured) than the views of a small group of experts, much less the view of a single expert. Counter-intuitive, but there it is. Let’s hope it works for elections as well, though of course one only will agree about elections when one agrees with their outcomes.