I’m not so certain about that given how many people disparage Loire and Italian wines for their life giving, food loving acidity.
I use the Zanotti binary rating scale.
0 = not worth drinking
1 = worth drinking
alan
If it weren’t for searing acidity, there would be no A. Salon and I’m sure the GJE could not exist without it! I think it safe to say the example related to out-of-balance acidity, but the safest way out is to blame my translation…
I am intrigued by the “Reference Point” level and scale, especially if the abbreviation was changed from “R” to “RP”, which would then give the designation of the highest calibre wines the same initials as Robert Parker!
On the serious side, I’ll go back to the discussion of rating wine, or defining wine in three simple categories:
description of magnificent specimens
description of textbook examples
description of value for money for everyday consumption
Thus
2000 Ausone could be R100
and
2008 Cline Zinfandel could be VE(varietal example)90 and V:M (value for money) 92
or
give
number scores to Reference wines,
letter grades to Varietal/Regional reference and
ribbon colors to value.
This could be adapted to all ratings-sources: "Although I wouldn’t give this clean, yet simple syrah a 92, it certainly is a A-grade example of Syrah from the Northen Rhone and a blue medal winner for value."
Net, net: I sure would like to get value on a different scale from magnificence.
–dang (itb and stoked about the Davos of Wine)
I don’t think any rating system needs to take into account value for $. It is too subjective - everyone has different price sensitivities. If you know the price and you have a sense of its quality and style, you can make your own judgment about its value.
I’ve long hated wine scores and thinking about this thread has led to why. The thinking behind ratings always seems to be “even if you know little or nothing about this kind of wine you can get a feel for the quality of this bottle from the rating.”
This is a lie. It simply cannot be done.
Over the last 10 days or so I’ve drunk a wide variety of wine. A week ago from this last Friday I did a small tasting of some Ramonet Batard and Bienvenue Batard from 92 through 2001. Last night I had a 1991 Ravenswood Old Hill Zinfandel. The night before I had 1990 Clos du Marquis and 1990 Cavalotto Bricco Bochis Barolo. And last Tuesday I had 2007 Pepiere Cabernet Franc from the Loire.
You know what? They were ALL lovely. The Ramonets were amazing examples of what white Burgundy can be and ranged from very good to profound. The Zin showed a quintessential Zin character - bramble, berry, mineral. The Barolo was rose petally with hints of tar and a great acid backbone. The Bordeaux was a little on the decline, but still showed good quality. And the Pepiere was pure, aromatic and just what I love about Cab Franc from the Loire.
But to compare the Batard and the Pepiere and the Zin? That’s silly. Absolutely silly. What does it mean that I’d give the Pepiere a 91 or 92 for what it is, but the Batard from 99 perhaps 95 or 96? Nothing. You have to know the wines from each region and no rating system can substitute for wine knowledge on the part of the reader.
For GJE, leave the idea of appealing to the mass of wine consumers to someone else - focus on people who will know the wines in the region you’re talking about.
Rick :
I am very close to your point of view. Just the very short words you did associated to the wines described is far more information, for me, than a technical analysis or a score over 100 or 20.
I suspect always the Parker system to have now, as its main task (most probably against what was wanted by Bob) to reassure many buyers for what they consider as a potential investment.
Not here, of course where we drink the wines, but in many places, Parker ’ scores are used for investment valuation. And this is a bad deviation for what it was created for.
I like the concept, François. I don’t know so much about the letter designation, which may be a bit incomprehensible to readers - possibly an AAA, AA, A, B, C… rendition would be more instantly recognizable.
See you on Friday!
The 100 point system is intuitive. Even a person who knows nothing about wine can understand it. People who spend their life thinking about wine are free to devise any complicated, multi-factorial, multi-tiered, relativistic scale they want. But they will likely have an audience of 1 for it…
I agree with Curtis, and repeat what I originally wrote, if critics followed their own policies and beliefs, the 100 point system could and would work.
Giving 93 points to a $8 wine that will fall apart in 3 years goes against Parker’s owns beliefs of his system, unless his scoring method changed recently, like everything else has changed.
Who CARES about ‘every person’? Again, you cannot convey any meaningful information by any rating system to someone unfamiliar with the wine region. All you get in a rating system for someone who doesn’t know anything about Napa/Burgundy/Alsace/whatever is 'this is really good/very good/good/bad’in hte opinion of the writer - but nothing about what the wine is like.
Do a thought experiment - pick a wine region you know very little about. Ok, I have a wine from that region and it’s rated… 93. What’s the wine like? Now do the opposite. A wine region whose wines you know VERY well. Again, I have a 93 point wine from that region - what’s it like? In the first example you probably said - heck if I know. In the second example, you likely have a good idea. Hence the futility of ratings without knowledge on the part of the reader.
The 100 point system still is attached to a tasting note. From the tasting note a score is derived. Not the other way around. If one only sees the number, with no other frame of reference, then one would have a harder time making a meaningful interpretation if they don’t know the reviewer or anything about the wine region or varietal. But for people who follow a wine critic, and who are fmailiar with the critics preferences and style, and have a basic understanding of wine regions, a number can be very informative.
No rating system by any critic can be helpful without some knowledge of the critics preferences and some basic knowledge of wine in general. But this is not an inherent flaw of the 100 point system, it is a limitation of wine reviews in general.
That’s why I’ve specifically mentioned wine ratings as a general term. I’m really only using the scores as a placeholder - you could make the same arguments about 20 point ratings, stars, etc.
And yes, notes are helpful. Again, that’s why I specifically called out the ratings portion here. For GJE specifically I don’t think fine distinctions are helpful. I don’t think they’re helpful PERIOD, but they’re here to stay for the mass market. For a wine geek audience though, you need to go in assuming people know about the topic. If you say “this is a profound Batard” or “this is a pure, very typical example of Cab Franc from the Loire” those notes are very useful to someone who knows the regions. The alternative is to try to communicate in a score and a short paragraph what Loire CF or Batard is all about. More bluntly, I think the wine drinker, like anyone who really wants to know about a topic, needs to educate themselves by immersing themselves in it. You can read music reviews all you want, but you learn about Bach, Trane or Jay-Z by listening to them, not be reading about them.
At some point, if you don’t know the wine under discussion, you’re going to be lost. When I started out, all I did was to look for wines rated around 90 from various areas, feeling that they were probably good examples of that region. But the distinction between 90, 91 and 92 never meant much to me - they were all ways of saying “try this, I think it’s a good example of this kind of wine.” So I tried things I thought might be interesting and went on… gasp! my own opinions.
While I was dining at l’arpege almost 10 years ago, drinking a young Remonet BBM, a gentleman from Holland who sat next to us hand over a glass of white. It was the first time that I had the pleasure of tasting a Foucault’s Saumur Champigny white and I rated the wine at 97pts. In the past, I was comfortable rating the wines that are new to me at the time, 1996 Huet sec (93 pts), 1996 Baumard Quarts de Chaume, (98pts), 1988 Dal Forno recioto (100 pts), 1994 Harlan (100 pts) and the list goes on and on.
I can comfortably say that 1992 Ramonet Batard is a 95-97 pt wine where 1992 Leflaive Chavalier Montrachet is a 97-99 pt wine. I also have not had any Zinfandel that I would rate much higher than 94pts as I do not find the wine too complex and I have had my share of old and young zins so perhaps a matter of preference. I do not know 2007 Pepiere Cabernet Franc but I can safely assume that it is not a 94pt plus wine. I love the 96 Sammur Champygny “Bourg” which I would rate at 95pts with some age on.
IMHO, the context is not always needed to appreciate great wines. It isn’t hard at least for me to see greatness, even if the region is new to me and this is one of the reasons why some of us are crazily passionate about grape juice.
Yeah, it sounds like one of those lowly rated wines that everyone guzzles down to the end of the bottle because they just don’t feel like any more of the 95+ rated wine on the table…
This is mean ironically, right? If not you completely, totally, 100% missed my point.
Completely agree. The rating is tied to the critic and not the wine… the ratings reflect the critic’s preference. There’s no such thing as a 92 point wine.