Why I do not score wines...

[Anton_D]

@D@vid Bu3ker

@Anton D

Ah, so, the crux of this biscuit is the prose.

As long as the prose includes an apostrophe.

If I were quicker on my feet, I should have spelled it pr*se.

[Subu_Ramachandran]

Oh boy, I did open the pandora box! My initial post was to praise Jeff for the information on his site, but ended up mentioning my issue with assigning points.

Well anyway here are some of the issues with scoring and grading, that I want to highlight.

1. Lack of scientific method, i.e. lack of reproducibility over time and space. As an engineer, if a value (number) is assigned to a measure; it should hold true across time and space. If a score is assigned to a wine, can they be replicated when tasted blind repeatedly? How about 5yrs from now? How about when the grader is not in a good mood?

2. Observer bias: Now that we are all human, any statistical measure is prone to an observer bias and none more so than in wines. Each one has a different palate and this clouds the scoring system. Some like wines that are very fruit forward and some like balanced and nuanced flavors.

3. Numbering bias: If you have to compare scores (despite the bias), they must be normalized. Some people tend to score high and in a small cluster, some tend to score in the whole range possible. For instance, Tanzer and Meadows might be tough critics while Suckling might be hand out points to like kids in a candy store. This is open for misuse by retailers and I am sure most people notice it.

4. Change of Palate: As we all have been through, everyone’s palate is constantly changing and evolving. For me certainly the wines I enjoyed 5 yrs back are not the ones I’m eager to drink now. How about with graders? The scores get set but doesn’t track the year-on-year change in palate.

5. Regional bias: Parker who started the process of scoring wines, started covering Bordeaux hence is biased towards them. Galloni towards Piedmont and you can fill the rest…How about producers one likes/ dislikes and has a history with?

6… Grape bias: Perhaps a result of point 4, grapes have been classified into bucketed into different groups. Reds score over whites…Cabernet is the king…Riesling however loved by geeks is a lost cause…Its just funny that we have a “class/ race” system in wines…oh we humans!!

Maturation profile: Ok, now if I let aside all the biases with regard to scoring. Does two 92 point wine rated by the same person taste the same? How about across time? How does the maturation profile look? Can’t be captured by a single number.

Food context: Wine to me is mostly on the table with food. Does scoring doesn’t help here either. It’s hot and sultry summer days here in NYC, for dinner last night I enjoyed ceviche and salad, paired wonderfully well with Iberian whites. I love Petrus or Haut-Brion but those wines, in the context, “score” way lower than the wines I had. But if I look at wine scores they paint the opposite picture. Hence the point of a score is futile again. Moreover with food, if one asks 2 different somms for pairings we get 10 different suggestions for wines! With such wide variety, scores don’t help in the most used context i.e. in dinner table.

Wine is an agricultural product, it’s a living thing, constantly evolving. Like humans it starts off fresh and vibrant, goes through its closed phase (adolescence) only to re-emerge with more dimensions, gaining complexity with time until it reaches its peak and plateaus and goes through its inevitable decline. We don’t assign numbers to people in our lives, why do it with wine? Its just classless…

Lets look at the target audience:
Experienced wine enthusiasts: they know their palate, they know what they like and what to look for. For them, I include myself here, notes are so much valuable. Points are just silly and is meaningless. Yes if certain reviewer likes wines 1,2 and 3 but 2 more than 3, they claim to use points to highlight preference. Its his preference, for which I don’t care about.

Wine newbies: New in their journey, haven’t discovered their palate let alone the issues associated with scoring. Many retailers just put a post just the highest score, awarded by which ever publication. They chase points and sold some product, they have no clue if they will enjoy, will pair well with their dinner, is for immediate consumption or to be enjoyed later. Points are not helpful and could be very misleading. Just as a knife in the kitchen is a useful tool, but I wouldn’t give it to little children.
For newbies, like I was and still am, the fun is in the journey. Start off, taste, drink, read, discover and its better without points.

Who does it help? Yes its very helpful for retailers and people in the industry to “push sales” on unsuspecting buyer. How many times do we get emails highlighting points in big bold letters? This brings the moral element into it.

In Sum, the process of scoring is filled with flaws, is not useful in aging profile or while pairing with food, its not fully helpful for the target audience and more importantly is just classless. Fine wine, is not an industrialized product to be merely reduced to a number. I’m with Jancis Robinson and many others in wishing that this practice could be stopped in the wine world.

[Robert.A.Jr]

Holy Cow, Marc will never read something that long! PM him an executive summary please.

[Marc_Frontario]

@Robert Alfert

Holy Cow, Marc will never read something that long! PM him an executive summary please.

HA! Truth is I am clinically diagnosed as ADD and do have mild dyslexia…so Yes Robert is right…lol
to read something like that would have me sweating…profusely…like severe hyperhydrosis

[Anton_D]

@John Morris

@Joe B

Up to 5 points for label artwork.

And another 7 for the view from the tasting room porch.

SQN gets +15 points for the bottle itself. +3 for wax.

[Craig_G]

@Robert Alfert

@GregT

Points are only a quick way to indicate whether or not you like a wine. They’re convenient if someone cares to know your opinion without reading the verbiage. They’re nothing absolute, and since most people aren’t great tasters anyway, their likes and dislikes are not particularly important, and their verbiage is less so.

Attaching a score is just a shorthand way of telling you how much they liked a wine at a particular time and place. There’s no need to worry about accuracy - what’s the dif between two points in either direction?

Very much this ^

I agree with almost all of this, but in my opinion the score puts the notes in perspective. That little piece of info about “how much I liked it” can make the whole note more useful.

[Anton_D]

@Subu Ramachandran

Oh boy, I did open the pandora box! My initial post was to praise Jeff for the information on his site, but ended up mentioning my issue with assigning points.


In Sum, the process of scoring is filled with flaws, is not useful in aging profile or while pairing with food, its not fully helpful for the target audience and more importantly is just classless. Fine wine, is not an industrialized product to be merely reduced to a number. I’m with Jancis Robinson and many others in wishing that this practice could be stopped in the wine world.

This has been a common discussion in the past, so you will see many people just having fun with the topic. I don’t think there will be any actual acrimony!

[Marc_Frontario]

@Subu Ramachandran

Oh boy, I did open the pandora box! My initial post was to praise Jeff for the information on his site, but ended up mentioning my issue with assigning points.

Well anyway here are some of the issues with scoring and grading, that I want to highlight.

1. Lack of scientific method, i.e. lack of reproducibility over time and space. As an engineer, if a value (number) is assigned to a measure; it should hold true across time and space. If a score is assigned to a wine, can they be replicated when tasted blind repeatedly? How about 5yrs from now? How about when the grader is not in a good mood?

2. Observer bias: Now that we are all human, any statistical measure is prone to an observer bias and none more so than in wines. Each one has a different palate and this clouds the scoring system. Some like wines that are very fruit forward and some like balanced and nuanced flavors.

3. Numbering bias: If you have to compare scores (despite the bias), they must be normalized. Some people tend to score high and in a small cluster, some tend to score in the whole range possible. For instance, Tanzer and Meadows might be tough critics while Suckling might be hand out points to like kids in a candy store. This is open for misuse by retailers and I am sure most people notice it.

4. Change of Palate: As we all have been through, everyone’s palate is constantly changing and evolving. For me certainly the wines I enjoyed 5 yrs back are not the ones I’m eager to drink now. How about with graders? The scores get set but doesn’t track the year-on-year change in palate.

5. Regional bias: Parker who started the process of scoring wines, started covering Bordeaux hence is biased towards them. Galloni towards Piedmont and you can fill the rest…How about producers one likes/ dislikes and has a history with?

6… Grape bias: Perhaps a result of point 4, grapes have been classified into bucketed into different groups. Reds score over whites…Cabernet is the king…Riesling however loved by geeks is a lost cause…Its just funny that we have a “class/ race” system in wines…oh we humans!!

Maturation profile: Ok, now if I let aside all the biases with regard to scoring. Does two 92 point wine rated by the same person taste the same? How about across time? How does the maturation profile look? Can’t be captured by a single number.

Food context: Wine to me is mostly on the table with food. Does scoring doesn’t help here either. It’s hot and sultry summer days here in NYC, for dinner last night I enjoyed ceviche and salad, paired wonderfully well with Iberian whites. I love Petrus or Haut-Brion but those wines, in the context, “score” way lower than the wines I had. But if I look at wine scores they paint the opposite picture. Hence the point of a score is futile again. Moreover with food, if one asks 2 different somms for pairings we get 10 different suggestions for wines! With such wide variety, scores don’t help in the most used context i.e. in dinner table.

Wine is an agricultural product, it’s a living thing, constantly evolving. Like humans it starts off fresh and vibrant, goes through its closed phase (adolescence) only to re-emerge with more dimensions, gaining complexity with time until it reaches its peak and plateaus and goes through its inevitable decline. We don’t assign numbers to people in our lives, why do it with wine? Its just classless…

Lets look at the target audience:
Experienced wine enthusiasts: they know their palate, they know what they like and what to look for. For them, I include myself here, notes are so much valuable. Points are just silly and is meaningless. Yes if certain reviewer likes wines 1,2 and 3 but 2 more than 3, they claim to use points to highlight preference. Its his preference, for which I don’t care about.

Wine newbies: New in their journey, haven’t discovered their palate let alone the issues associated with scoring. Many retailers just put a post just the highest score, awarded by which ever publication. They chase points and sold some product, they have no clue if they will enjoy, will pair well with their dinner, is for immediate consumption or to be enjoyed later. Points are not helpful and could be very misleading. Just as a knife in the kitchen is a useful tool, but I wouldn’t give it to little children.
For newbies, like I was and still am, the fun is in the journey. Start off, taste, drink, read, discover and its better without points.

Who does it help? Yes its very helpful for retailers and people in the industry to “push sales” on unsuspecting buyer. How many times do we get emails highlighting points in big bold letters? This brings the moral element into it.

In Sum, the process of scoring is filled with flaws, is not useful in aging profile or while pairing with food, its not fully helpful for the target audience and more importantly is just classless. Fine wine, is not an industrialized product to be merely reduced to a number. I’m with Jancis Robinson and many others in wishing that this practice could be stopped in the wine world.

Fuq, I wish I could read this…but I get your points from skimming through…Truth is Subu, I’ve been a lazy fuq …for I have been wanting to make this post for sometime now, you just helped unleash my inner Kracken!!

[Neal.Mollen]

@Marc Frontario

@Robert Alfert

Holy Cow, Marc will never read something that long! PM him an executive summary please.

HA! Truth is I am clinically diagnosed as ADD and do have mild dyslexia…so Yes Robert is right…lol
to read something like that would have me sweating…profusely…like severe hyperhidrosis

Tasting notes aren’t science. They’re based on personal biases and predilections, and people might not agree. Indeed, the taster may not agree about the same wine next week or next year.

To which I say: all true, but beside the point. They are not a unit of measure but an expression of enthusiasm, of a time and a place and a person. Accepted for these limitations, they are not uninformative. Also not necessary.

[Neal.Mollen]

@Anton D

@John Morris

@Joe B

Up to 5 points for label artwork.

And another 7 for the view from the tasting room porch.

SQN gets +15 points for the bottle itself. +3 for wax.

-3 for wax

[Craig_G]

@Anton D

@Subu Ramachandran

Oh boy, I did open the pandora box! My initial post was to praise Jeff for the information on his site, but ended up mentioning my issue with assigning points.


In Sum, the process of scoring is filled with flaws, is not useful in aging profile or while pairing with food, its not fully helpful for the target audience and more importantly is just classless. Fine wine, is not an industrialized product to be merely reduced to a number. I’m with Jancis Robinson and many others in wishing that this practice could be stopped in the wine world.

This has been a common discussion in the past, so you will see many people just having fun with the topic. I don’t think there will be any actual acrimony!

Screw off!

[Marc_Frontario]

@Anton D

@John Morris

@Joe B

Up to 5 points for label artwork.

And another 7 for the view from the tasting room porch.

SQN gets +15 points for the bottle itself. +3 for wax.

I’ve tasted SQN, so I wholeheartedly agree!

[Neal.Mollen]

@Craig G

Screw off!

God not the closure debate again

[Bruce_Leiser_owitz]

@GregT

wine 1: 50+20(taste)+9 (nose)+3 (color) +8 (overall quality) score: 90 points

wine 2: 50+17(taste)+13 (nose)+5 (color) +9 (overall quality) score: 94 points

It’s why I don’t understand most people’s tasting notes.

Points for color?

Points for the aroma?
__

_The old UC Davis 20 point system assigns various numbers for various attributes, including color & bouquet:

http://www.musingsonthevine.com/MusingsUCDavisForm.pdf\

So IF you are going to score wines, and if you want to introduce a consistent scoring methodology, the UCD 20 point scale actually has merit.

But most lay people who assign scores to wine are using an impressionistic, hedonistic scale. It’s as if they are using the old Test of Strength machine to see how high each wine
will score.

Bruce_

[Marc_Frontario]

@Neal.Mollen

@Marc Frontario

@Robert Alfert

Holy Cow, Marc will never read something that long! PM him an executive summary please.

HA! Truth is I am clinically diagnosed as ADD and do have mild dyslexia…so Yes Robert is right…lol
to read something like that would have me sweating…profusely…like severe hyperhidrosis

Tasting notes aren’t science. They’re based on personal biases and predilections, and people might not agree. Indeed, the taster may not agree about the same wine next week or next year.

To which I say: all true, but beside the point. They are not a unit of measure but an expression of enthusiasm, of a time and a place and a person. Accepted for these limitations, they are not uninformative. Also not necessary.

I like your perspective, yes nothing is black and white, but for some (re: points) the reality lies somewhere else.

[Anton_D]

@Neal.Mollen

@Anton D

+3 for wax.

-3 for wax

We clearly have differing opinions on waxed vs. unwaxed.

[Marc_Frontario]

@Bruce Leiser_owitz

@GregT

wine 1: 50+20(taste)+9 (nose)+3 (color) +8 (overall quality) score: 90 points

wine 2: 50+17(taste)+13 (nose)+5 (color) +9 (overall quality) score: 94 points

It’s why I don’t understand most people’s tasting notes.

Points for color?

Points for the aroma?
__

_The old UC Davis 20 point system assigns various numbers for various attributes, including color & bouquet:

http://www.musingsonthevine.com/MusingsUCDavisForm.pdf\

So IF you are going to score wines, and if you want to introduce a consistent scoring methodology, the UCD 20 point scale actually has merit.

But most lay people who assign scores to wine are using an impressionistic, hedonistic scale. It’s as if they are using the old Test of Strength machine to see how high each wine
will score.

Bruce_

Yes sir, which I believe gives the score much less merit

[Subu_Ramachandran]

@Marc Frontario

Fuq, I wish I could read this…but I get your points from skimming through…Truth is Subu, I’ve been a lazy fuq …for I have been wanting to make this post for sometime now, you just helped unleash my inner Kracken!!

Glad, haha I could help!!

[Robert.A.Jr]

@Anton D

@Neal.Mollen

@Anton D

+3 for wax.

-3 for wax

We clearly have differing opinions on waxed vs. unwaxed.

Lol. Bring back old-school!

[Marc_Frontario]

I was waiting for that Bobby



It was only a matter of time…if you build it…he will come