Why you don’t need to know the score

While writing about wines and offering personal opinionated ratings of them has been around for many decades, the current rage for rating every wine on a scale of (hypothetically) 0 to 100 is more recent. And recent though it may be, it seems to be taking over almost all current wine criticism. I don’t think I am the first to suggest that this is harmful to broadening knowledge and understanding about wine.

There are 3 reasons why I feel this way:

1.       Too many people – and I am talking about people that I know, as well as the broader general public – take these scores as the defining guide to their own wine purchasing and consumption. Rather than learning about wine, seeking out different styles of wines, and cultivating their own personal tastes, they accept the verdict of the pundits and buy and drink according to the pundits’ scores. In so doing, they miss out on so many interesting wines that fall outside the parameters of the pundits’ judgments, and they fail to develop their own critical judgment based on their own acquired knowledge and experience.

Ultimately, there is only one person’s opinion you can rely on – your own! You need to learn about wine, about the great variety and sources and styles and choices available in the world of wine, develop your sensory awareness of what a wine has to offer, and then make your own decisions about the wines you prefer. And when you reach that stage of confidence, you will be able to read the pundits’ opinions, evaluate them in the light of your own experience, and buy according you your own tastes.

2.       The score is supposed to be based on a 100 point scale, but as many have pointed out, it is really a 50 point scale, as all wines are rated between 50 and 100. In practice it is more like a 12 point scale, as the vast majority of wines available to us fall in the range 88 – 95, with a small number of very fine and expensive wines coming in at the top range of 96 – 100 points. As such, its usefulness becomes extremely limited; when a wine catalogue contains dozens or hundreds of wines, almost all rated within a very few points of each other, how much discrimination is involved?

As I write this, I am reviewing a recent Fine Wine and Premium Spirits catalogue. All of the wines in this selection are rare and expensive. Most of them have a point score rating – this is what it shows:

 

–          only one wine was rated below 90 – that wine had a score of 89

–          19 wines were rated 90

–          13 wines were rated 91

–          17 wines were rated 92

–          25 wines were rated 93

–          21 wines were rated 94

–          15 wines were rated 95

–          9 wines were rated 96

–          3 wines were rated 97

–          5 wines were rated 98

–          only one wine rated 99, but 3 were rated 98-100, 1 was rated 96-99, 1 was rated 94-96, 2 were rated 92-95, 2 were rated 91-94, 1 was rated 92-94, 1 was rated 90-93, and 2 were rated 90-92.

So out of 142 wines rated in the catalogue, all fell within 10 points of each other, and this was for a range of wines from champagnes and port to bordeaux and burgundy, from Italian and Spanish to American to Australian. Each wine had a taster’s written opinion, describing the wine in often flowery and exotic language. These descriptions are sometimes very helpful in adding to my understanding of the wines; the numerical scores, however, added nothing that would help me decide which were good values to purchase, which should be laid down in my cellar to age for years or decades and which should be consumed right away.

3.       The score is an attempt to quantify what is at heart a subjective evaluation. There are aspects and attributes of great wine that can be described objectively – things like weight, body, vinosity, complexity, concentration, the layers of different scents and flavours in the wine’s aroma and taste – but to attempt to summarize all this in a single number is ultimately unsatisfying. What does 90 for an aged Rioja Gran Reserva mean against 91 for an exuberant cru from Beaujolais and 92 for an opulent Australian Shiraz? They are all very different wines, different experiences, each a unique expression of its place of origin and historic style, its grapes and soil and the winemaker who made it. Each one may be a wonderful drinking experience, but they cannot be compared to each other on the basis of a ranking by a single number.

So read what the various wine writers have to say, by all means. Many of them are perceptive tasters and fine writers (if a bit florid in style). But do not come to rely on their point-ratings to control your own buying and drinking. Rely on your own tasting experience. Make notes about the wines you like and don’t like. Then you will be able to use your own knowledge and experience as your guide, and you will have become your own expert!

More wine articles

Wine Wicket

The Enigma of Burgundy and its Wines

An Introduction to Bordeaux and its Wines