WSJ On WineScores..

Intersting article in the WSJ from some time ago that I just read:

WSJ/WineScores

May be old stuff to some folks.

Tom

Articles like this is why I think savy buyers are relying more on their own research and sources like cellartracker. Also the more experience you have the more you learn to trust your own palate and could care less what a critic’s score happens to be.

Glad to see this research going on. More would be better, despite the commercial side of the biz seemingly heavily vested in the status quo. Hell, 2 nights ago I mistook an 01 CdR for a 4 - 6 year old Nero d’Avola.

RT

This is why I rely on Cellartracker for reviews, gives a broader range for bottle variation, setting, tasters preferences, etc…

Tom, your opinions of the article’s content?

RT

Opinions, Richard?? Moi??? Perish the thought!!! [snort.gif]
But any author who quotes NeilsBohr is just fine in my book!!!

I thought it a pretty interesting article and well-researched. It pretty much confirms my suspicion of these large
wine competitions where you throw a bunch of wines at assembled wine judging panels. It’s pretty much a crap
shot as to who gets the golds and who gets the dross.
As for Parker’s claim to be within 2-3 pts of his previous scores on wines…I accept that with a large grain of salt.
Perhaps w/ Bdx’s, his area of expertise, he can achieve that precision. And maybe w/ Rhones. But outside that,
I doubt that claimed precision. His scores are claimed to be based on the wine at its peak. I doubt they are that precise
ten yrs out from his original evaluation. Predicting how a wine iis going to evolve requires that you have tracked those wines
over many yrs oof evolution. With Ch.Mouton…maybe he can. With Qupe Syrah…I doubt it.
All in all, an interesting and well-written article that casts some legitimate doubts on wine judgings and the 100-pt scale.
Doubts that many of us already have. But it’s not going to spell the doom of the 100-pt scale. Most of us that post around
here already know its limitations. But for folks who go out and buy a wine because it got a 96 pt score…few of them will read it
and change their behavior.
Tom

Indeed, a rather large grain of salt, from my reading of the article:

Mr. Parker … sent me the results of a blind tasting in which he did participate.

The tasting consisted of three flights of five wines each. The participants knew they were 2005 Bordeaux. Though they didn’t know which wine was which, > they were provided with a list of the 15 wines, with Mr. Parker’s prior ratings > Mr. Parker’s first rating of > all the wines fell between 95 and 100> .

Mr. Parker pointed out that, > except in three cases, his second rating for each wine fell “within a 2-3 point deviation” of his first> .

So… knowing all 15 wines in the tasting scored between 95-100, he was able to hit within 3 points 80% of the time. Nice spin [thumbs-up.gif]

Another way of looking at this, 20% of the wines fall into the category of scoring 99-100 in one tasting and 95-96 in another.

Now, I’ve heard it said that RMP acknowledges that the difference between 96 and 100 can be attributed to his mood on a given day, so maybe he doesn’t deserve any criticism for this (although his “proof” that he’s usually within 2-3 points doesn’t pass the sniff test). It does point out that the price inflation accorded to a 100 point wine, compared to a 95 point wine, is insane (unless you can buy into the idea that 20% of the time, a 95 point wine could be anywhere from a 91 to 99 points, but a 99 point wine is probably realistically limited to somewhere between 95-103 [swoon.gif] ).

Anyway… I thought it was a really good article illustrating the false precision of the 100-point scale, and non-repeatability of wine rankings. Taking a statistical approach offers some compelling evidence, the article really only skims the surface of the numerous problems with the way wines are tasted and ranked these days.

Decent read if a bit unfocused. He makes some points that several of us have here in the various dust ups over scoring and 100pt scales.

One of the researchers, Bob Hodgson, is a Humboldt winemaker and a friend of mine.

He likes to put ghost wines into competitions. He puts the same wine into a flight twice. It is a good way to see if a taster is giving you good info.

We use the same technique when we evaluate our winemaking methods.

Even though my stepfather is a champion taster, we still find that blinding and using ghosts helps us know when we can draw meaningful conclusions about what we are doing.

Tom, Vous! Niels Bohr channeling Yogi Berra: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

Here’s the 100 point scale, reliability within 3 points:

6 = 100, 99, 98
5 = 97, 96, 95
4 = 94, 93, 92
3 = 91, 90, 89
2 = 88, 87, 86
1 = 85, 84, 83
0 = Not worth a written review

RT

If he would have just rated all 15 of the wines in the tasting 97 points - he would have been within 3 points an astonishing 100% of the time…