A fun read, but practically speaking, Way too complicated. I don’t use 100 pt scoring but my bottom categories would be
Above that are the positive levels.
Go get an old sweat sock that you just took off after a 10 mile run in humid weather, let your wet dog lie on it, then pour turpentine over the sock, collect this and pour yourself a glass.
It’s worse than Malort…which is the worst thing on earth. These people are literally retching
I was a B+ student in high school. Is that not good enought for you? ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Or “DNPIM” as we used to say back in the day…
In this case ignorance is in fact bliss.
How does it compare to Thunderbird?
Thunderbird is drinkable on some level though pretty disgusting.
It would take a hardened and desperate drinker to willingly take a second sip of Moutai.
I like your scale and your story is really fun to read, hahaha. I am a Chinese living in the US, and I like both baijiu and Napa cabs. To me, Moutai is good if you like high-alcohol sorghum wine. I personally prefer Napa cabs over baijiu, but my father likes Moutai more than any other baijiu.
For high-alcohol wine, I prefer Moutai more than vodka or whiskey, cause you won’t feel a headache the next morning after you are drunk with Moutai.
btw, I really like your idea about wine rating between 80 - 87, hahaha. I usually don’t consider cabs below 90, cause I don’t want to waste my time & money on them. Thanks for sharing your scale here, cheers.
Mark, what is the obsession with scoring these days - you really don’t seem like a points guy. To me, there is nothing about scoring that is objective. Taste 10 wines, rank them in order from favorite to least favorite. That is scoring. The 100 point scale is nothing more or less than this but based on thousands of wines you have had, not 10. I stopped scoring a long time ago because I had a hard time judging favorites between different classes of wines, e.g., German Kabinett vs. Auslese, Bordeaux vs. Burgundy, etc., etc., etc. I can do 99-100 pretty well (had a 1999 Truchot Clos de la Roche last night that fits here pretty well) and can do under 70 pretty well (below 70, does score really matter?), but have more trouble in between.
Not really my obsession. It was all originally fairly tongue in cheek; I am a scoring agnostic. My scoring philosophy is that I score for that particular bottle of wine from that cellar and based on my life and tasting experience as well as the short term factors such as whether I had a good night’s sleep, what I had for breakfast etc etc. From that I taste a wine try and describe it and then score it. The scoring part will certainly have many factors at work, for example my dislike of alcoholic wines, which I am sensitive to where others are not.
In the scheme of things I will buy using my own thoughts (better than someone else’s palate; after all they may have had kippers for breakfast which might have raised or lowered the score several points).
There are so many factors at work that a score is worth almost nothing. It works for that day for that bottle; an indication of what somebody thought at the time. The idea of any score or a collection of scores being in any way objective is simply ludicrous.
The whole point scale thing is pretty much 100% subjective. Both in terms of the scaling as well as the wines that have been scored. I still score wines but wonder why I do it.
I’ve stopped using scores in my tasting notes on CellarTracker because I’m finding that the more I learn about wine, the harder it is to score them, especially as I don’t have the breadth of experience to be able to say that one wine definitively scores higher than all the other wines in its class. And I believe that wine scores should for the most part reflect typicity and not align to a single ideal of what wine should taste like, which seems to have been the issue with Parker reviews and the resulting homogenization of wines.
That being said, ironically, at this point in my wine education, I rely heavily upon the scores and tasting notes of others on CellarTracker, especially Otto “Forceberry” Forsberg because his notes actually tell me what to expect from the wine and why it deserves the points that it does. I wish more people wrote tasting notes like that. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Do any of you think that with enough scores for an individual wine on CellarTracker, the wisdom of crowds starts to play a role to accurately rate the wine?
2013 Mouton. 91 points. $570. You buying?
I don’t get why people say that scoring makes no sense as there is “nothing objective about it”. Since when is scoring wines something objective? It’s your personal score. It’s for you. Gives you a nice library of what you liked when. Allows you to analyze your consumption and how you liked which wine and region or producer. Somebody else might find your scores valuable too (if you publish them on Cellartracker) but that is not the goal. It’s your personal score.
I’ll do it for almost all wines I drink. It’s a great excercise that keeps me on my toes when drinking a wine, deepens my analysis, sharpens my senses and increases my knowledge about wine which all ultimately lead to more joy.
So what I’m hearing is that we need some kind of system that factors price as well as rating into aa buy/no buy decision… 
Thanks!
In all honesty, I dislike scoring the wines on the 100-pts scale, because it feels just way too accurate for my use. I use it mainly so just I can have somewhat relevant data when checking out average scores which start to get interesting only after when I have +100 notes on a certain style or region. They also help me to check out quickly which wine I liked more when I filter out notes from a certain date so I can be certain these wines were tasted next to each other.
But even though I consider myself a quite consistent taster, even I doubt whether a 92-pointer tasted 3 years ago would compare similarly to a 92-pointer tasted today. That’s why I’d prefer a larger score bracket and probably it would be best to think my CT score is something like +/2 points, i.e. I’d prefer to mark a 92-pointer as 90-94 points. That would feel more realistic, at least for me; after all, one day a wine might be an underperformer and the other it can be the WotN - even if it was exactly the same wine and it all depended on the setting, what other wines were tasted, what I had with the wine or before it, the mood, everything.
But nevertheless, I try my best to score wines on a scale where the wine’s prestige, region and whatnot do not come into play - if I score a random IGT Rosso from South of Italy at 93 points, it means I feel it is better than a 92-point 1er Cru Classé Bordeaux. This is also the reason why I prefer to taste wines fully blind as often as possible. I prefer to keep my preconceptions as close to zero as possible.
Re: the wisdom of the crowd, I think that it really depends on a wine. The more popular the wine is, the more likely it is scored by people who drink relatively little wine and taste objectively even less. The more obscure the wine is (or, at least the less crowd appeal it has), the more likely it is going to have notes by people who actually know what they are doing and not just write “THE GREATEST CHAMPAGNE I’VE TASTED! Drank with Sally, 98 points” on a random big-house NV.
Absolutely. I’ve done my fair share of vertical and horizontal tastings. 85% of these tastings were blind tastings and you scored the wines before you knew what wine it is. Comparing my and the group results with the cellartracker scores showed very high correlations. In addition, it is the best guide when you have to choose from a restaurant wine list and don’t know the particular wines and vintages that well.
Of course, you have to know what you like or don’t like. A high rating for Aussie Shiraz does nothing for you if you don’t like Aussie Shiraz.
Big names might be positively influenced by the appeal of the name, agree. But in my opinion, Cellartracker is still the most accurate platform in that regard. On Vivino (mostly), Instragram (almost always), in many live wine rounds, even here on this board sometimes people are often influenced by the brand and tend to overscore big brands. The Chateau Margauxs 1993, 1997 or 2002 are always “wonderful”, “defying the bad vintage”. If you look at the scores on Cellartracker for Margaux, however, it is instantly clear that that is not the case. Big vintages like 90, 00, 05, 09, 10, etc. have ratings of 96 zo 98 points while the small ones mentioned above are at 90 to 92 points. Pretty accurate in my book. Whether its one point above or below the reality is less important than its value as a good vintage guide. Even though scoring is not or might not be accurate and ideal, it instantly tells you that there is a big difference between the vintages. The “it’s wonderful, defying the vintage” comments, on the other hand, are often misleading and for sure less acurate. That’s why I am a points fan.
Andy I don’t think anybody has a problem with taking notes and having scores. It is an important part of getting to know your own palate. And there is no substitute for your own scores.
For me the problem stems from the scores of professional critics. If you have a wine to sell you choose from a couple of dozen the best scores, and it should sell the wine. If you are buying futures, or other wines you have not tasted, you look at scores. One score of 100 points is subjective, maybe with six you can buy with confidence. Do six 100 point scores make a wine objectively perfect? Of course not. Does it help you make buying decisions probably. Are they right? That is for you to determine later. I am just saying that all scores should be treated with spoonfuls of salt.
I fully agree. The critics can be of help, if you don’t taste the wines yourself or if your not familiar with a region, winery. Will a critic score ever be a subjective truth - no. Never.
I just constantly (here on the board and in discussions with some wine friends) get the impression that those who criticize the critics do that on the basis of the fact that there is no objectivity in their scores, eventhough every critic all the time emphaizises that the scors are highly subjective, that you should know your palate and read the notes and reports to get to hopefully better a buying decision (and not only look at the scores).
I don’t see critics ever being quite that self effacing.
Even if it exists, it is a little like the small print in an Apple disclosure.