The Point System is Dead. Long Live the Point System

I have no problems with this “language” or “convention.” in fact I see some advantages over the 100 pt system. More important to me at this point would be convergence around a single system (whatever it is) and a recognition among users of the limitations and pitfalls. The 100 pt system, for better or worse is entrenched at this point.

It’s no more or no less than a communication tool. Consider the massive problems we have in our society over mis-interpretation of words in the English language.

Tyler’s scale is fine, and it’s similar to how employees are evaluated in a peformance based culture. However, try putting this on a shelf talker:

“Rated 3 points by X”. Or, someone who may not appreciate their own palate yet and relies on scores to know what tastes good (sarcasm if you missed it), comes over to your house for dinner and says, “you have to try this new cab I picked up, as the WS gave it 4”. Awesome. Tyler, I’m not busting on you, but this is what we are left with in trying to do something different than what we have now.

Mike said it best: the 15 point, I mean 100 point system, is “entrenched” now and it’s going to be damn hard to break it.

While I’d really like to say that the whole points this is not wrong, or not useful, but in reality I simply can’t. I’d like to have a 98 point yell out my backyard into the slope behind my house but I am sure the neighbor next door, who is trying to have his Open House today, would give my behavior an 81, which is really a -4 on the 15 point scale.

Brian, how much more sales activity could you experience because one of these critics gave your Rosella’s a 92 versus an 89? Isn’t that 3 points meaninngful and conversely, after you worked your ass off to make the Rosella’s, because some critic says it should get only an 89 and that critic reaches 6-7 digit buying audiences…that to me is bs and what pisses me off as to what this whole system has created.

I feel like all of this is like having a colonoscopy prep, everything for me in this whole points discussion is really getting me cleaned out.

Every time this come up I post this, what I find to be the perfect system:

Trust me, Frank, I live that pain all the time. But no matter the scale used, there will be some wines that the reviewer prefers, and some he doesn’t. Sure, you can look at the 89/90 barrier and the added importance a point plus or minus means at border that condition, but you’d still end up with issues like that if the range was 1-5, 1-20, or 1-4 stars. Some wines will eek thru to the higher level, and some will fall just short. Add to that issue that we all know scores could change up or down a few points if tasted mulitiple times on different days, and you start to understand what keeps winemakers awake at night [head-bang.gif]. But for the life of me, I can’t think of a better system. Or at least one without similar flaws.

Wow, thanks for all the great thoughts…I think this came to a crisis point for me with this last issue of Robert Parker and I too am struggling with the point system.

In another post, I said that vis a vis Sauternes, I have created a spreadsheet recording the scores and comments from any reviewer that I can find…Parker, Neal Martin, Francois Audouze, Broadbent, Wine Spectator, Stephen Brook, Penning-Rowsell, cellartracker, and some independent Sauternes books. This has served me well for a variety of reasons…first, I get a range of scores, the average of one is most likely close to “true”, secondly, I get notes on rare older wines that maybe only one person has tasted, three, bad bottles that get poor scores (i.e. Yquem '21 67 points) can be deleted as outliers, etc. I’ve translated everyone’s ratings into a point scale and have an average score for each wine.

More thoughts:

  1. I think we have to assume that any given wine has a “true” score or classification, and that raters are estimating it.
  2. Scores are very much “now”. Should a wine’s “score” or “classification” not be time dependent? Or should it be? I.e. “tree-mend-us” is kind of a score, but is there a point in time when “over-the-hill” will apply to this wine.
  3. Is there any way to address bottle variation in old wines. Today, an old wine is usually associated with its top possible score…i.e. '61 Latour is a 100 point wine even though most bottles now are probably 95 or 92 or less.
  4. Maybe a combination short score like in eRobertParker with a word scale for quality and word scale for drinkability i.e. Killer at Peak or Good but Old.

I have adopted a strange three star system that has evolved as follows:
No star - Skip
*- Ordinary

  • Good for type i.e. good for beaujolais, good for Bordeaux, good for Premier Cru Burgundy
    *+ Showing more distinction than good examples
    **- Excellent for its type but not spot on
    ** Excellent for its type. Would be proud to serve this to my best friend.
    **+ Excellent for its type and showing some rare qualities
    **- Pushing world class
    *** World Class…equivalent to Broadbent 5
    or maybe a Parker range like 95-98, or a wineberserker’s WOTY or WOTM
    ***+ Mindblowing, worth almost any price

I think this helps equalize the system in my mind because I would not hesitate to buy a * wine or even *- if the price was right. I usually give just the star ratings to begin with, and then might use + or - to fine tune any obvious ranking issues within a * category. I’ve only given out two or three of the top rank ***+

Well, don’t keep us in suspense! What were they?

I shared this post with an ITB friend of mine. He laughed and said " what a group of fools"! Most wine sales go to people that will not pay more than $15 per bottle. Many of the wines sold will not rank 85 on anybody’s scale. On some of the goof balls here, the wines that the majority of wine drinkers buy won’t rank a 1.

Try again clowns! pileon To many people there is still a huge difference between a WS 79 and a WS 83. Of course, most of those wine buyers never read WB, WS, or WA , but know that the ratings mean!

How about one step further:
0 = not worth drinking
1 = worth drinking
2 = unforgettable, lights you up, and worth doing anything in your power to drink more of. Essentially, the stuff you covet.

The “Ammons Trinary System”?

Simple for sure, but there does seem to be a bit of a gulf between 1 and 2?

Mike - if you want, you can add one level. Depends what you want to quantify, but:

0 - not worth drinking
1- worth drinking, but not cellar-worthy
2- worth drinking and worth cellaring
3- unforgettable, etc etc.

In reality, these mirror the current system, but just with 5 point gradations.

0 = Below 85
1 = 85-89
2 = 90-94
3 = 95-100

Honestly Rick, I think this is pretty reasonable. It recognizes the subjectivity of the challenge and the limitations of our sensory perceptions … and yet differentiates between fair, good and great.

This may be “enough” and yet “not too much.” I still believe that unless we’re all willing to put heart and soul into tasting notes (like FMIII did with the Copain JB Syrah), something like this convention is helpful.

Fred – I think you’ve simplified things a little. As a customer of yours back then and someone who was being affected by Parker back then, I and a friend (John Morris who is also on this BB) compared our notes for 1978-1979-1980-1981 clarets with those of Parker and determined that he had credibility (something that he soon began to squander, but that’s another story). Moreover, he followed up his initial review of 1982 clarets from cask samples with reviews of the top wines from each of the good or better claret vintages from 1961 on, thereby adding to his credibility as someone who knew the classic wines and could put the 1982s in context – there was no one else out there at the time who had done anything similar.

I have become enamored of the A, B, C, D, F rating system someone on this board proposed (where F=flawed). (Sorry i can’t recall who wrote about it here, but bravo.) You can add pluses and minuses if desired. Really works for me. Yes, I know this is the same as a 5 point system (or 10 point system with pluses and minuses added for the A thru C levels), but after so many years in school under that system, it just feels more intuitive. And since my notes suck, it does help to have a shorthand way of remembering how relatively excited or repulsed I was by a particular wine. Of course a Grenley “A” makes the wines fly off the shelf.

I too have a binary scoring system:
1.) Tastebuds tell wallet to open.
2.) Tastebuds tell wallet to shut.

No wallet tells tastebuds to shut?

That is why I am grateful, per my signature. [cheers.gif]

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has suggested a ‘grade’ system (A-F) but I did suggest it here with the vintage chart concept - http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=697467#p697467

It is one that all Americans, and most others, could easily understand, as it is widely used throughout the world to grade performance in school. Once again…hopefully Eric LeVine will find a way to integrate this into CT

Todd, that would be fine as well, but school kids are used to + and - grades these days. If you add them all up, it becomes a 13-point scale, which isn’t much different than the typical use of the 100-point scale, or 20-point scale. Maybe it would have different psychological impact, but I kind of doubt it. No one would ever want to buy a “C” wine.

True, but are these ratings for the express purpose of people buying wines? Is that not the irony of the system in the first place, since the scale has been condensed to 10 points to begin with?

Why would people need scores of any sort if not to express to others whether the wines are worth buying?