My new 100 point scale

WINE TALK
41

I hope the moderator or the gremlin that blocks my posts does not do so this time. I do not intend to try to send this post more than twice. I consider your range 0f 94-98 for “a really great wine” too large. I find it virtually impossible to find a wine I would be likely to score 97 or more (1/3 Neal Martin and 2/3 Antonio Galloni is usually very close to my score) in left bank red Bordeaux at a reasonable price, and have given up looking. We have lots of wine that I consider of very low to low first growth quality in a fine year, and these are really enjoyable (and were bought at a reasonable price). RTPL

42

That might well be so …! [cheers.gif]

Marc,
no, objectivity is certainly impossible, but I´m longing for intelligibility - otherwise any meaningful communication is disturbed.

What puzzled me in your scale is

  1. the differing ranges in your scale:
    99-100 two points
    94-98 five points
    88-93 six points
    83-87 five points
    80-82 three points
    ???

  2. the (for me) inexplicable gap between “pretty good” and “really great” …
    It might be my imperfect English, but “pretty good” for me is below “very good” - and between “good” and “very good” …
    but I might be wrong.

Also the somewhat (no offense intended) arrogant attitude that you would not buy (pay for) any wine at market price worth only below 94 points. It might be our different income, but if I would be so strict my cellar would be only 20% of what I have, and I´m quite happy with it.

[cheers.gif]

43

This is probably among the many reasons I enjoy your tasting notes as much as I do.

Cheers. [cheers.gif]

44

To me and various other people 93 point wines (and even 92.5 point wines) are really enjoyable. I consider 90.5 wines enjoyable and we have a small amont of wines scoring from this to 92. I never buy any wine I consider over-priced, including all the official first growths. RTPL

45

My bolding

and this is something that I think we can easily lose sight of on scoring systems. Especially those people who get enticed into chasing mythical ‘100 point wines’.

Personally I gave up with any form of scoring many years ago, but if I were forced to use one, it would probably be the £ (or $) scale. Simply put, how much would you pay for that wine, and feel you got a fair deal? It rather focuses the mind.

For me, the big lesson learnt over the last decade, is the solid place in my cellar for good straightforward drinking wines. I used to focus almost entirely on cellaring wines, and don’t get me wrong, it served me well and still gives lots of enjoyment. However with that came rather too much focus on fancier wines (albeit not in the league of many here), which meant I was missing out on some excellent Cahors, St. Nicholas de Bourgueil, Vouvray, Vespolina, Sangiovese di Romagna, Fumin etc. (all of which can age fine as well).

I think the turning point was a 2012 trip to Valle d’Aosta and Piemonte (via Champagne and Burgundy). Instead of flying and making do with a limited capacity to bring bottles home (and the consequent thinking that each bottle should be a good one), we drove from the UK via the channel tunnel. Considering the car was laden down so low we had to increase the tyre pressures, we still had only half of our ‘personal allowance’ for customs. ~10 cases in total. With numbers that high, it was easier (and more sensible) to also bring back more everyday wines, alongside the usual cellaring favourites. We’re still enjoying the longer term wines from that trip, but we’ve had some real gems as well, including some 2009 Mirù Vespolina that if memory serves me well was €6 a bottle, that was wonderful with some age (about 7 years and 9 years for the two notes I have in CT). For the price, sensational, but what might we score it? 89? 91? Perhaps 87 on release? Hardly scores to set the pulse rating, but they gave great joy (as did the freshly pressed Nebbiolo grapes they were harvesting when we visited, which remains the best fruit juice I’ve ever tasted!).

Wine deserves more than mere points [cheers.gif]

1 Like
46

By far the best QPR I ever had was in Spain in 1955 from wine in a goatskin, The wine was certainly not great but it was refreshing. I liked it enough to drink about a half bottle of it. Later I worked out the cost for this as about 1.25 cents U.S. (I did not pay for it). Even with inflation taken into consideration the QPR must have been extremely high. Lots of pleasure can be had from wines without a high score,I agree. RTPL

47

d’accordo as they say in Italy [cheers.gif]

48

I really like when the rest of you lot score wines. It is a mechanism for quickly determining your excitement about the wine. I am more likely to read a note on a wine you score 95 than 88 because if you didn’t get jazzed about the wine, there has to be a special reason to think I would. I’ll definitely read a note about a wine scored 68 though; those are usually fun.

I have never personally scored wines because I am lazy, can’t be bothered, and really it serves me no purpose. My taxonomy is a simpler:

  1. Glad I bought this.
  2. Why didn’t I buy more of this?
  3. Why did I buy this?
  4. I wouldn’t drink this with Alfert’s mouth, even knowing where it’s been.
1 Like
49

[thankyou.gif]

If one has the whole range of 50 points at their disposal, I think it is just plain silly to just concentrate on the last 8-10 points.

Especially notes which just list a bunch of fruit descriptors and smack a point from 93-100 don’t really tell anything if the wine was actually good, if it’s worth its price - or if the writer even liked the wine! If they rate everything between 93-100, it’s impossible to tell whether they’d rate a simple everyday red 92, 87 or 75 points.

To me, the best TNs are the ones in which it is obvious from both the text part and from the points to see whether the wine was actually good or not - and thus I try my best to write my notes according to the same principle! All the better if they are of use to other people as well. [cheers.gif]

2 Likes
50

One other consideration that hasn’t been mentioned is bottle variation and/or the evolution of a wine over time. I recently had a 2010 Chidaine Les Choiselles that was amazing - 93 points - after I had a couple bottles that I gave 87-88 to, and had kinda given up on it being simple and a bit tired.

51

No doubt the scoring system of Mark Golodetz works for him but it certainly would not would not work for me. [In the following W.A.V.R. = Wine Advocate Vintage Rating.] To me 85-87 offErs some enjoyment and 88-90 offers some more. 90.5 to 92 has quite a lot of enjoyment. 92.5 to 95 is definitely enjoyable. Above that the wine may be of very low or better first growth quality in a fine year (minimum W.A.V.R. 96). The highest score I would give to any of the left bank red Bordeaux we have is 96.5 {this would be of very low first growth quality for a W.A.V.R. of 98 and of low first quality for a year with a W.A.V.R. of 97, as occurred]. Wines from the area that I would be likely to score 97 or more seemingly always have too high a price for me to buy. {if a W.A.V.R. is less than 90, I force it to be 90, so that a"fifth growth" does nnot score less than 85.} RTPL

52

Then you’ve never had it. I had a glass of what was supposed to be the best Moutai made, served to me by the PRC equivalent of the CIA Station Chief in Hong Kong pre-annexation. A negative score is justified.

o

53

Pardon my ignorance but what is Moutai?

54

Haha of course I’ve had it and why I enjoyed Mark’s story so much given my own experience tasting it!

55

It’s impossible for a wine to always get the same rating (time, context, bottle, …).
“On ne se baigne jamais dans la même rivière”.
Commercial reasons exist but wine critics are not infaillible (and have their personal taste and influences - see what happened with Parker for years, Luis Gutierrez fortunatly has not the same approach for spanish (or french) wines today).

It can be interesting, as I wrote it above, to give examples of wines in your scale (20/20 for a mature Cheval-Blanc 1982 or 14,5/20 for a “mere” very Young Gaillac).
No problem for me to read that you rated Choisilles 2010 93 then 87-88.
Its also interesting to trace your ratings through time. Each rating associated with a context :

  • date
  • conditions (blind or not, horizontale or verticale, other wines and people around, food pairing or not, exhausted or not, visit at the domain or not, Bordeaux en primeur or not, auction or not, magnum or not, …)
  • who rates and - even better - reports, to explain the rating
  • …

Knowing the guy who reports is important, of course, specially if he sells the wines he rates. :slight_smile:

56

It’s a type of baijiu (liquor distilled from fermented sorghum) from the town of Maotai in the Guizhou province. It’s a rather strong drink with a very… unique aroma and flavour to it.

57

In this case ignorance is in fact bliss.

58

Here’s how I know a wine score prior to drinking. 96/97% of the wine I purchase is bought through a wine club. Each offering comes with producer history/notes and specific information about the wine, its region etc. and is rated by the Owner in his own tasting notes, plus he adds whatever commercial reviews/scores currently out on the wine. I trust the Owner’s knowledge and palate, so it’s rare I have to take a flier. I think this influences my rating scale. The majority of wines I drink fit within my 90-95 point range. Also, when I attend a wine tasting or wine dinner a list of all wines are presented along with commercial scores and tasting notes - once again taking the mystery out of the game.

Having said all that I do take fliers when I run across something worth experimenting on.

59

Is this the real Rodrigo Blankenship from UGA? I’m a UGA grad and college football fanatic.

60

Returning to the OP, this is how I define the low end of the spectrum.

Below 50: The aroma coming out of the glass is so bad that I refuse to even take a taste.
50-54: It’s so bad I involuntarily spit it out as soon as the taste sensations reach my brain.
55-59: I was able to hold it in my mouth long enough to voluntarily spit it back into the glass or a spit bucket
60-64: It’s so bad I can swallow it but look for a potted plant to hide the glass behind because I do not want to embarrass the bride and groom
65-69: I can force myself to finish the glass I have in my hand but then immediately switch to a non-wine beverage.
70-74: Average wine for a rubber chicken dinner meal. Ask the bartender or waiter to look at the bottle to make sure I never buy it.