I took your advice given here, a long time ago. I would find wines that were widely reviewed and rated and taste them myself. I’d then compare my findings with the reviewers and eventually found one whose palate was similar to mine. I didn’t pay much attention to the ratings, but more to the review.
Ratings only came into play when deciding where to make a purchase and that was aligned to more of a PQR decision. When I haven’t tasted it yet and am going off the review only, prudent spend choices have to be considered.
I have a budget and general ‘I won’t spend more than X on a bottle’ rules. This has become easier as I have found so many great, lower cost wines, that I enjoy more than higher dollar wines.
I also get more joy out of sharing an ‘affordable to many’ wine with friends and family. Open several different bottles and see what they like knowing that they would pick some up later.
Sadly, I’ve stopped buying many of my ‘old’ favorites because they have gotten so expensive and I just can’t justify spending 10x for a wine that is only slightly more appealing. The ‘sweet spot’ for me is between $25 and about $70 with a cap of about $100. The great news is that I’m just one sip away from finding a new favorite at any time!
That's a generous sweet spot but certainly one that is wide open for finding high quality wines. In my ongoing series on Rogue Valley wines (and an upcoming post on one of my favorite WV wineries) you will find some spectacular bottles priced under $50.
Paul, a few comments to add to the mix of this important discussion.
It is not only numerical scores that have a high level of inconsistency. Similar problems exist within the competition circuit, and the awarding of medals…so many medals! Platinum, Gold, Best of Class, Best of Show, and what the heck is “Double-Gold”? How do you quantify that one Gold Medal winner is more “Gold” than another? Pray that your wine doesn’t get a Silver (or worse, Bronze) medal, because that is the kiss of death from a marketing perspective. Judges will tell you that any medal winner is a quality wine. Many wineries will tell you that if they don’t get at least a Gold, they won’t publicize the medal at all.
Back in the 1970’s, when I was judging at some of the major competitions, I discovered that it is not unusual for a panel to have one judge whose personality and force of will exert undue influence on the other judges. I know, because there were times when I found myself in that role. That means that the opinion of one judge can override that of two (or more) other judges. I have talked to others who have participated as judges, and most have confirmed that this is commonplace.
Even worse, I have found that the same wine, submitted to two different competitions with the same basic (not exact) judges can bring inconsistent results. I won’t name names, but I know of at least one instance where a wine was awarded a “Double Gold” at one competition, only to receive nothing from the same basic group of judges a few months later. I’ve been sorely tempted to enter the same wine under 2 different labels to a competition, to see if both bottles receive the same accolades.
All judging, whether as an individual review for publication, or in a competition setting, is by its very nature subjective. Our sensory perceptions, both olfactory and gustatory (nose and palate), are by their very nature subjective and ever-changing. The same wine will be perceived differently, depending on the weather, how much sleep the taster had the night before, the taster’s mood, who they are tasting with (if anyone), if there is food involved, etc. If I were to taste a bottle today, I might rate it 93 points…but if I open the same wine a week later, I might give it only 90 points. A good professional can (at least partially) mentally adjust for such factors, but to do so with perfection is not possible.
I am convinced that one good review, or one good medal, while useful from a marketing perspective (or one bad review), means very little about the true quality of a wine. I do think it is impressive to find a wine that has multiple good reviews and/or medals. When a wine has that kind of track record, I think it is one that is well worth trying. Consistency is more important than any one score.
Your advice for consumers to find a good writer, or retailer (also include a good restaurateur), whose taste seems to mesh with yours is the absolute best way to find good wines on a consistent basis. Equally important, it is one of the best ways to learn more about wine. If someone whose taste you trust recommends a wine in a category you don’t know well, it leads you to expand your palate into new worlds!
Will I continue to use scores and medals to market wines? Of course. They are helpful for sales, and without sales we cannot continue to produce wine. I will use them, but the purist in me doesn't like them.
Thanks Fred. I believe that wine pay-to-play judgings are the worst of the worst, and I will dive into that topic in depth sometime in the future. Suffice it to say that they are basically money-making shams and the medals they scatter like confetti at a 4th of July parade are worthless. I appreciate your thoughtful comments!
Terroir is a particular set of naturally-occuring circumstances and environmental conditions. The type, degree, duration, and usage of oak barrels is a set of choices in technique and practices. The two are entirely separate.
"Wines carrying high prices are almost always more expensive to produce." Well, that's the way it works ideally. But that's a question of degree and on that score, wine pricing becomes just as much a matter of desired perception as production costs. The idea that all producers predicate pricing only on what it costs them to turn out each bottle is never gonna hold up. Those with scruples and consciences will price that way but scruples and consciences, as we all know all too well, are in short supply, nowadays.
And the old trade complaints about "score whores"? All true. The dynamic of people hinging all their buying decisions on a 90+ score became one of the things that drove me out of wine retail. Parker and Spectator became nearly as reverentially regarded as the Bible - and I am by NO means convinced that that is all past us. I think those folks just get their numbers from different sources, now. Because I was constantly tasting, my own recommendations to customers only incidentally dove-tailed with high scores. People would ask me for a wine suggestion and I would name a truly exceptional bottle that I had come to trust over repeated sampling and their first response would be, "What kind of numbers did it get?" If I quoted an 89 or some source their limited exposure to wine critics didn't recognize, they were leaving without that bottle, 90% of the time.
Those of us whose jobs it is to taste and evaluate wines are NOT a part of some guild or some governing body or principle that homogenizes our approaches to tastings OR how we express ourselves in describing those wines. What Paul Gregutt means when he writes "generally accepted standards" may well not be what I mean in writing that. The whole business of evaluating wine wears huge, baggy, shapeless pants, accommodating all shapes and sizes and preferences. In terms of interpretabilty, wine scores exist on the same tier as the Bible. BUT...and this is a Nicki Minaj-size BUT, people WANT scores. They WANT short-cuts, capsule reviews, instant reference material, in short, validation that they have bought a wine that will delight them and impress their friends. They WILL have those numbers and if you won't give them, they will find somewhere else who will. So, all the erudite refutations we can muster are, ultimately, just chin music that serves to persuade almost no one of the genuine wisdom of that most basic of human concepts: "Make up your own mind."
Jonathan Rowell had me right up until his last sentence: "Funny how different the expression of terroir might have been appreciated if flavouring wines with oak was taken out of the equation!” I don't know how many, if any, people who are not actually making wines have had the experience but I tasted maybe a dozen completely unoaked, buck nekkid, Napa Cabs either from the tank or, VERY rarely, in a bottle, one in a shiner mailed to me. There is no doubt that oak became the hallmark of Napa but to say that the only way to a gaudy score for a Napa wine was decadent oak has become just as much of a crutch as the feeling of necessity for big oak became to Napa's winemakers. And just as empty. Those unoaked Napa Cabs were every but as lush and deep and complex as the oak bombs. We can bang on Charles Krug and Peter Mondavi, Sr., until our whip arms fall off but it WAS customers who drove all the blood-lust for More Oak, because THEY LIKED IT. And wineries back then were no less obliged to make $$$ than those now. Equating scores with oak is easy and facile. It runs on past what ELSE besides oak was in those bottles and I think we need to accept that, just maybe, the wines of that era may have deserved those scores on their overall merits. If prices got out of hand, what is that but simple, fundamental free enterprise, supply and demand, the marketplace at work?
Wines cost whatever the producer says they cost. We will buy them or we won't. But any notion that we will ever galvanize a movement toward some grass-roots attempt to regulate either prices or scores is pure fantasy...for the same reason that all the QAnon conspiracy theories are pure BS: it would require that a significant number of people would agree to refuse to buy those wines out of sheer principle. And trying to get ANY large number of Americans to agree on anything is like trying to push the moon out of orbit by just wishing.
No argument from me Steve. My fraught relationship with scores and scoring has been documented over and over in my books, blogs and columns. But as you note, the trade demands scores because their customers demand scores. Wineries want scores because their customers (both trade and consumers) want scores. So all I can do is pad those scores with detailed commentary, background, context and history, which is the purpose of this Substack.
The feckless half-measure I would LIKE to see happen - which MAY be somewhat achievable - is to at least convince the score-mongers to read the accompanying verbiage, instead of just latching onto a number and tossing commentary like a discarded candy wrapper. But then, I'm a dreamer.
You could go one further with the argument of "terroir" and oak aging in Napa, Steve, as the fullest definition of the term includes traditional winemaking techniques of the region. It might be a stretch to call anything "tradition" in the new world yet, but I'd argue that oak aging was *part* of Napa's terroir at the time, when considering this understanding of the term. Unoaked California Cab is often quite delicious - oak is certainly not necessary. But terroir is also about what winemakers are making and consumers are consuming, inside any given era.
It's an easy case to make, that the commercial wine-scoring system is hopelessly biased and probably unfixable. The average wine buyer shows up at a grocery store, sees an array of hundreds of different options on the wine aisle, and is hopelessly confused. Expert reviews don't serve that consumer at all--a whitheringly small fraction of those wines ever get an expert review. Its easy to see why crowd-source wine reviews are expanding quickly to fill that void, for good or ill. The wine lover with a few bucks of disposable income and a willingness to go the extra mile to find a special wine--Paul, I'm one of those, and you serve me well, thank you. My local wine shop does, too, mostly. But, I think I'm in a shrinking market. The trophy-wine market is growing, as is the market for folks who opt for beer, cider, hard seltzer is growing, too. My big question is when are supermarkets going to decide they have a better use for the space in the wine aisle.
You are indeed a shrinking market. The entire wine-drinking population is a shrinking market. But crowd-sourced reviews are no better or different than asking your neighbor who knows little or nothing about wine to come over and have a glass. You ask them what they think of it? They give it a yay or a nay, nothing more. Do that 100 times and that's crowd-sourcing.
I don't miss the days when everyone in a wine shop was looking up every wine in their Advocate/Spectator "cheat sheet". Probably what really changed is now the retailers feel required to put the scores on the descriptor tag.
Kudos for the recommendation of finding a wine shop owner [or in some cases, staff member] who is able to learn, appreciate, and guide one's palate.
I took your advice given here, a long time ago. I would find wines that were widely reviewed and rated and taste them myself. I’d then compare my findings with the reviewers and eventually found one whose palate was similar to mine. I didn’t pay much attention to the ratings, but more to the review.
Ratings only came into play when deciding where to make a purchase and that was aligned to more of a PQR decision. When I haven’t tasted it yet and am going off the review only, prudent spend choices have to be considered.
I have a budget and general ‘I won’t spend more than X on a bottle’ rules. This has become easier as I have found so many great, lower cost wines, that I enjoy more than higher dollar wines.
I also get more joy out of sharing an ‘affordable to many’ wine with friends and family. Open several different bottles and see what they like knowing that they would pick some up later.
Sadly, I’ve stopped buying many of my ‘old’ favorites because they have gotten so expensive and I just can’t justify spending 10x for a wine that is only slightly more appealing. The ‘sweet spot’ for me is between $25 and about $70 with a cap of about $100. The great news is that I’m just one sip away from finding a new favorite at any time!
That's a generous sweet spot but certainly one that is wide open for finding high quality wines. In my ongoing series on Rogue Valley wines (and an upcoming post on one of my favorite WV wineries) you will find some spectacular bottles priced under $50.
Paul, a few comments to add to the mix of this important discussion.
It is not only numerical scores that have a high level of inconsistency. Similar problems exist within the competition circuit, and the awarding of medals…so many medals! Platinum, Gold, Best of Class, Best of Show, and what the heck is “Double-Gold”? How do you quantify that one Gold Medal winner is more “Gold” than another? Pray that your wine doesn’t get a Silver (or worse, Bronze) medal, because that is the kiss of death from a marketing perspective. Judges will tell you that any medal winner is a quality wine. Many wineries will tell you that if they don’t get at least a Gold, they won’t publicize the medal at all.
Back in the 1970’s, when I was judging at some of the major competitions, I discovered that it is not unusual for a panel to have one judge whose personality and force of will exert undue influence on the other judges. I know, because there were times when I found myself in that role. That means that the opinion of one judge can override that of two (or more) other judges. I have talked to others who have participated as judges, and most have confirmed that this is commonplace.
Even worse, I have found that the same wine, submitted to two different competitions with the same basic (not exact) judges can bring inconsistent results. I won’t name names, but I know of at least one instance where a wine was awarded a “Double Gold” at one competition, only to receive nothing from the same basic group of judges a few months later. I’ve been sorely tempted to enter the same wine under 2 different labels to a competition, to see if both bottles receive the same accolades.
All judging, whether as an individual review for publication, or in a competition setting, is by its very nature subjective. Our sensory perceptions, both olfactory and gustatory (nose and palate), are by their very nature subjective and ever-changing. The same wine will be perceived differently, depending on the weather, how much sleep the taster had the night before, the taster’s mood, who they are tasting with (if anyone), if there is food involved, etc. If I were to taste a bottle today, I might rate it 93 points…but if I open the same wine a week later, I might give it only 90 points. A good professional can (at least partially) mentally adjust for such factors, but to do so with perfection is not possible.
I am convinced that one good review, or one good medal, while useful from a marketing perspective (or one bad review), means very little about the true quality of a wine. I do think it is impressive to find a wine that has multiple good reviews and/or medals. When a wine has that kind of track record, I think it is one that is well worth trying. Consistency is more important than any one score.
Your advice for consumers to find a good writer, or retailer (also include a good restaurateur), whose taste seems to mesh with yours is the absolute best way to find good wines on a consistent basis. Equally important, it is one of the best ways to learn more about wine. If someone whose taste you trust recommends a wine in a category you don’t know well, it leads you to expand your palate into new worlds!
Will I continue to use scores and medals to market wines? Of course. They are helpful for sales, and without sales we cannot continue to produce wine. I will use them, but the purist in me doesn't like them.
Thanks Fred. I believe that wine pay-to-play judgings are the worst of the worst, and I will dive into that topic in depth sometime in the future. Suffice it to say that they are basically money-making shams and the medals they scatter like confetti at a 4th of July parade are worthless. I appreciate your thoughtful comments!
Terroir is a particular set of naturally-occuring circumstances and environmental conditions. The type, degree, duration, and usage of oak barrels is a set of choices in technique and practices. The two are entirely separate.
Agreed. Which is why I carefully phrased my reference in the original post.
That comment was actually intended as a reply to Dave Baxter's thing about oak being part of California "terroir".
Well said Paul.
"Wines carrying high prices are almost always more expensive to produce." Well, that's the way it works ideally. But that's a question of degree and on that score, wine pricing becomes just as much a matter of desired perception as production costs. The idea that all producers predicate pricing only on what it costs them to turn out each bottle is never gonna hold up. Those with scruples and consciences will price that way but scruples and consciences, as we all know all too well, are in short supply, nowadays.
And the old trade complaints about "score whores"? All true. The dynamic of people hinging all their buying decisions on a 90+ score became one of the things that drove me out of wine retail. Parker and Spectator became nearly as reverentially regarded as the Bible - and I am by NO means convinced that that is all past us. I think those folks just get their numbers from different sources, now. Because I was constantly tasting, my own recommendations to customers only incidentally dove-tailed with high scores. People would ask me for a wine suggestion and I would name a truly exceptional bottle that I had come to trust over repeated sampling and their first response would be, "What kind of numbers did it get?" If I quoted an 89 or some source their limited exposure to wine critics didn't recognize, they were leaving without that bottle, 90% of the time.
Those of us whose jobs it is to taste and evaluate wines are NOT a part of some guild or some governing body or principle that homogenizes our approaches to tastings OR how we express ourselves in describing those wines. What Paul Gregutt means when he writes "generally accepted standards" may well not be what I mean in writing that. The whole business of evaluating wine wears huge, baggy, shapeless pants, accommodating all shapes and sizes and preferences. In terms of interpretabilty, wine scores exist on the same tier as the Bible. BUT...and this is a Nicki Minaj-size BUT, people WANT scores. They WANT short-cuts, capsule reviews, instant reference material, in short, validation that they have bought a wine that will delight them and impress their friends. They WILL have those numbers and if you won't give them, they will find somewhere else who will. So, all the erudite refutations we can muster are, ultimately, just chin music that serves to persuade almost no one of the genuine wisdom of that most basic of human concepts: "Make up your own mind."
Jonathan Rowell had me right up until his last sentence: "Funny how different the expression of terroir might have been appreciated if flavouring wines with oak was taken out of the equation!” I don't know how many, if any, people who are not actually making wines have had the experience but I tasted maybe a dozen completely unoaked, buck nekkid, Napa Cabs either from the tank or, VERY rarely, in a bottle, one in a shiner mailed to me. There is no doubt that oak became the hallmark of Napa but to say that the only way to a gaudy score for a Napa wine was decadent oak has become just as much of a crutch as the feeling of necessity for big oak became to Napa's winemakers. And just as empty. Those unoaked Napa Cabs were every but as lush and deep and complex as the oak bombs. We can bang on Charles Krug and Peter Mondavi, Sr., until our whip arms fall off but it WAS customers who drove all the blood-lust for More Oak, because THEY LIKED IT. And wineries back then were no less obliged to make $$$ than those now. Equating scores with oak is easy and facile. It runs on past what ELSE besides oak was in those bottles and I think we need to accept that, just maybe, the wines of that era may have deserved those scores on their overall merits. If prices got out of hand, what is that but simple, fundamental free enterprise, supply and demand, the marketplace at work?
Wines cost whatever the producer says they cost. We will buy them or we won't. But any notion that we will ever galvanize a movement toward some grass-roots attempt to regulate either prices or scores is pure fantasy...for the same reason that all the QAnon conspiracy theories are pure BS: it would require that a significant number of people would agree to refuse to buy those wines out of sheer principle. And trying to get ANY large number of Americans to agree on anything is like trying to push the moon out of orbit by just wishing.
No argument from me Steve. My fraught relationship with scores and scoring has been documented over and over in my books, blogs and columns. But as you note, the trade demands scores because their customers demand scores. Wineries want scores because their customers (both trade and consumers) want scores. So all I can do is pad those scores with detailed commentary, background, context and history, which is the purpose of this Substack.
The feckless half-measure I would LIKE to see happen - which MAY be somewhat achievable - is to at least convince the score-mongers to read the accompanying verbiage, instead of just latching onto a number and tossing commentary like a discarded candy wrapper. But then, I'm a dreamer.
You could go one further with the argument of "terroir" and oak aging in Napa, Steve, as the fullest definition of the term includes traditional winemaking techniques of the region. It might be a stretch to call anything "tradition" in the new world yet, but I'd argue that oak aging was *part* of Napa's terroir at the time, when considering this understanding of the term. Unoaked California Cab is often quite delicious - oak is certainly not necessary. But terroir is also about what winemakers are making and consumers are consuming, inside any given era.
It's an easy case to make, that the commercial wine-scoring system is hopelessly biased and probably unfixable. The average wine buyer shows up at a grocery store, sees an array of hundreds of different options on the wine aisle, and is hopelessly confused. Expert reviews don't serve that consumer at all--a whitheringly small fraction of those wines ever get an expert review. Its easy to see why crowd-source wine reviews are expanding quickly to fill that void, for good or ill. The wine lover with a few bucks of disposable income and a willingness to go the extra mile to find a special wine--Paul, I'm one of those, and you serve me well, thank you. My local wine shop does, too, mostly. But, I think I'm in a shrinking market. The trophy-wine market is growing, as is the market for folks who opt for beer, cider, hard seltzer is growing, too. My big question is when are supermarkets going to decide they have a better use for the space in the wine aisle.
You are indeed a shrinking market. The entire wine-drinking population is a shrinking market. But crowd-sourced reviews are no better or different than asking your neighbor who knows little or nothing about wine to come over and have a glass. You ask them what they think of it? They give it a yay or a nay, nothing more. Do that 100 times and that's crowd-sourcing.
I don't miss the days when everyone in a wine shop was looking up every wine in their Advocate/Spectator "cheat sheet". Probably what really changed is now the retailers feel required to put the scores on the descriptor tag.