Thank You, Eric Levine and Cellartracker

WINE TALK
21

I was reacting to, and disagreeing with, Frank’s view:

I have very strong views and opinions about the negative power and influence of the professional critic. . . . Conversely, I love, love, love the impact and knowledge that the collective community can impart and share through Cellartracker

If you are picking individual CT users and relying on their notes, then you are skewing much more tot the professional critic model than the “collective community model.”

Eric isn’t offended, I hope. He and I have had this discussion before, and it doesn’t undermine the utility of the tool for me.

22

Sure, the reviews and aggregate scores can be a crap shoot but sometimes I can identify reviews by people I know and it becomes much more helpful or alternatively when looking for a sense as to whether a wine is currently open and drinking well, even reviews from people I don’t know can be helpful.

I also like all the data that appears when you click on a score - very helpful to see how many reviews and distinct users as well as the dispersion on scores. Sometimes I see a strange score but sometimes when I look at the data it is clear there have been few reviews from the same users and so know that it means less than a wine with 50+ reviews from a few dozen users.

23

I obviously made my point poorly. The collective scores are interesting to me, but not useful. I agree with you, except for the Yelp comment. Yelp is affirmatively misleading, while Eric has not monetized his site through a legal form of commercial bribery mixed with a bit of fraud.

24

Jay, I am with you. And FWIW, the scores in the CT database, I don’t bother with them. I’ve long since suppressed and hidden all the CT reviews where just a score is placed for a wine. if I could in CT, I would suppress ALL scores attached to reviews and make them hidden. I don’t believe I can, though.

25

If my math colleagues are right about the superiority of large numbers to selected views for determining just about anything, what Neal calls crowd sourced reviews should be better. Of course, the problem with wine is that there isn’t an objective standard for determining “better” so if Neal’s method works better for him, then he shouldn’t listen to me or to my math colleagues.

26

That’s the theory. It is one that I reject in this context. An idiot alone is an idiot. A committee of idiots is not likely to be materially more reliable.

27

Neal, I agree with your view of the composite, but the individual notes are quite valuable, and individual doesn’t equal professional.

And I don’t mind professional, it’s just that I don’t have similar palates to most of the professionals.

28

Yeah, I’m still with Neal here - and like him, I am a long-time user of Eric’s software.

And it really has nothing to do with aggregate scores, which is what Frank seems to be fixated on.

Maybe the better way to illustrate my point - over the years, I have sought out and purchased multiple bottles of wine based upon TNs of folks that I “know” from EBob, WB, IWC or now Vinous. The reason I felt confident in doing so was because I had become familiar with what they liked or disliked based upon their Board participation.

Trying to glean anything meaningful from two, five or ten notes on CT from folks with which you have no shared base of knowledge and/or experience is a waste of time - or at least a waste of my time.

29

Absolute brilliance. [cheers.gif]

The fact that it is consistent with my view is mere coincidence. [snort.gif]

30

You have to try a lot harder to offend me. :slight_smile:
Of course I am not offended.

31

Well, my 120 seconds was well used last night when I was going to bring a 99 Beaucastel Blanc Vielle Vignes to a party. A quick check of Cellartracker pointed out that many folks had questionable bottles in the last 24 months. While that was true of me, bottle variation always exists, and I wasn’t sure my one poor prior bottle (bought on release) was characteristic.

I didn’t want to take that big a risk on the wine last night, so I switched. I knew none of the reviewers.

32

You should know better than to bring a crappy white Rhone to a party, Barry :wink:

33

The other problem is independence.

If (bottle / palate variation aside for the moment), 50 wine enthusiasts tasted a wine and wrote their own notes without any other input, then I think we might get a reasonable insight into a wine. There would be a spread of opinions, with outliers, but that’s normal (sorry blush ).

However how many of those 50 read CT before writing their TN? Either out of interest or to ensure they don’t write something stupid? How many did the same with a wine critic’s TN, or indeed bought the wine on the basis of a wine critic’s TN (or one written here)? That is where we lose the classic statistical benefits of numbers and start to incorporate non-random variation/bias. Or in simple terms ‘Group think’ can take over.

regards
Ian

34

Back to the original point, CellarTracker is a great tool (and yes, I finally adapted to the new interface). I have been on since 2004, and will happily make my annual contribution in August.

As for aggregate reviews, I ignore them. I read notes from tasters I know. End of story.

35

Subscriber and aggregate score ignorer since 2005

36

I’m with Neal and Bob: Love CT, love being able to pick out reviews of people whose palates I’ve come to know, but don’t put much trust in aggregate scores, even though the mathematicians say big data rules. There are too many individual scales with no calibration and I also suspect that too many key their scores off of a critic or other CT scores for the data to be reliable.

FWIW, I almost never use points, just a bad (D-F)/average (C)/good (B)/very good (B+)/excellent (A)/outstanding (A+)/extraordinary (OMG-transcendental experience) scale. Rarely get a bad one. Works for me.

I also joined in 2004 (member #163) and am happily contributing yearly.

It took me a year after the new site was up to finally give in and start using it, but I now love it.

I wasn’t keen on the social media aspects at all. The old curmudgeon in me felt like it was a great tool to manage my cellar and TNs, but the rest of the CT masses could just keep the he** off my lawn. I still have paranoid-level privacy settings. But even an old dog like me has learned a few tricks, and I’ve met a few great people through CT that I never would have known.

Thank you Eric!

37

I’d love to see someone with more time than me put together a vintage chart from the crowd (and professional?) scores. Another layer would be which vintages are trending up or down.

38

Helps my cellar stay organized to the point of being persnickety, love it!

39

It is not just a matter of idiots or people who are right or wrong. Neal, you and I have very different tastes in wine. I tend not to find your views on wine reliable for me, and I doubt that you find my views on wine reliable for you. Does not make either you or me an idiot, but it does make tasting notes less valuable. I tend to find a lot of that as part of the composite ratings.