Galloni generally has been a fan of the Mt. Eden cab, especially recently. One 98 and one 97 among the last handful of vintages. Mostly 90-95 once you go back more than 5 years or so. He hasn’t reviewed Calluna since 2012.
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Regarding Mount Eden, the WA has a weird diversity of coverage, due to the SC location:
2006 and earlier: Parker
2007-2008: Galloni
2011-2012: Dunnuck
2013: Kelley
2014-2016: Brooks
Mostly good scores from all, other than Parker, although he gave the 1974 a 96.
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The Kellys and Kelleys may not take kindly to being called Brits.
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The question - what are ‘good’ scores?
Wtih reviewers regularly giving more ‘modern’ CA wines really really high scores, wondering what ‘good’ means anymore . . .
Cheers
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92-97, depending on the vintage.
Corison might make for another point of comparison as someone Gilman has singled out for praise as “old-school”:
Corison “Napa” (non-vyd-designate) cab, 2016-2020, average score:
Gilman - 94.8
Galloni - 91.2
TWA - only 3 of the 5 vintages rated, average 92.5 (depending on how you score a +)
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Is that for the regular Cab or the Kronos?
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Read my entire post again and then ask yourself how you’d respond if you wrote my post and an associate asked you the question you just asked me. 
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Playing cards??
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Two different reviewers (Lisa and Joe) for TWA, and Lisa, the higher scorer, was impacted by the inclusion of the 2017 vintage. Galloni’s two scores for TWA (for the 2008 and 2009 vintages) were 92 and 94, respectively, so his VM average might be brought down by the inclusion of 2017 and 2020.
Do you think Florida Man is interested in these details? Ferners.
Yep - and look at that discrepancy. My guess is that Gilman’s scores were at the high end of his range (can’t imagine he’s given many 95+ scores) whereas AG’s scores are on the ‘low end’ of his ‘good’ scores these days . . .
Cheers
AG’s VM score for the 2017 is the only sub-90 score in the bunch, to be sure. That said, Gilman’s average also includes 2017 and 2020.
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Some people worship false Gods!!
Tom
I don’t subscribe to any critics (something inevitably stated with an “I went to Harvard” or “I am a vegan” level of self-satisfaction).
But I notice in Kutch releases that Jamie Good, Galloni and Gilman give lavish praise to his wines. Which are not “old school” I guess, but we are talking about pinots and chards in the 12%s natural alcohol, significant whole cluster (in the pinots) and very little oak.
Gilman, Galloni and Dunnuck give high scores to Rhys.
I don’t know how they score big fruit/oak styled wines, but I infer they’re at least open to these styles.
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Galloni routinely gives high marks to extremely nuanced wines with a broad range of flavors like Mount Eden & Togni. It’s one of the reasons I like him.
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My anecdotal impression without crunching the numbers is that 90-96 aren’t all that rare with Gilman, whereas 97 is where he starts to get stingy.
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Just eyeballing, but Galloni routinely gives his highest pinot scores to Occidental and Ceritas (and maybe Rhys). If you are thinking, but those don’t have much in common, that’s the point, and the point I was trying to make in my first response to the OP. One of the great strengths of California wines (more evident in non-Bordeaux grape wines, but true for those as well) is the sheer diversity of styles. Does a critic grade against a particular style or find the good in different styles? Almost all of the main reviewers have consciously adopted the latter approach. Which makes them next to useless for a person like the OP who is looking for a critic with a strong and matching stylistic preference.
Put another way, the main critics judge on criteria different than how most of us taste wine because their criteria are to a very large extent style-neutral.
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Are all of the 95-100 pt scores being given to only ‘more polished’ wines?
Nothing has actually changed since the Parker days. If you want to get big scores as a winemaker - you need to make big wines. Simple as that.
An experiment:
- Is there a single 96-100pts red wine that’s 13.5% alcohol or below?
- Is there a single 96-100pts red wine that’s not from an “approved” variety?
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12.7% and three 96 point scores
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