Let me start off this post by saying that everything in it is my opinion, but I hope you’ll stick around to read about my point of view on wine scores.
Have you ever wandered around the store and seen a bottle with a sticker that said 90 points? A lot of the times that sticker will say the publisher or the name of the reviewer on it as well. If you’ve been in Costco, the signs will also indicate if wines earned points.
Well, what does that actually mean? Essentially when a wine earns points, it’s because a well-known publication or reviewer liked that wine. That’s all it is. A lot of people buy wine based on points, because it is clever marketing. It’s like buying wine because an influencer told you so, but that influencer doesn’t look like you, can’t relate to you, and has an affinity for super oaky Cabernet Sauvignon and maybe a Chardonnay here and there (I’m being dramatic).
I’m against wine scores and here’s why:
Bias
Not all of these publications taste blind. Blind tasting for points should be industry standard, but unfortunately it isn’t. This contributes to bias. What happens when a reviewer sees the label of a brand they really like? They might automatically award the wine a few more points than it deserves just because they like that brand. That’s not fair because the wine they taste next might be at the same quality level and have better complexity, but will receive an equal score. Another thing about bias is that if you know what the wine is beforehand and it’s something you generally don’t like, it’s going to be difficult to objectively taste that wine.
Inconsistency
Wine is always changing. It’ll be different from one day to the next and because of this, how does rating it make sense? Let’s take a bottle of Napa Cab. The wine critics could rate it 92 points today, but what happens if it evolves into something better in a few months and would score even higher? What happens if dormant Brettanomyces decide to liven up in the bottle and it’s completely flawed in a week? Not saying the Brettanomyces thing has ever happened, but the point is that you just don’t know. If you’ve ever analyzed a lot of wine in one day, you’ll notice that your nose and palate get fatigued and start adapting to certain smells and flavors. If you taste XYZ Winery’s Sauvignon Blanc first in a 100 wine lineup and then taste it again as the 101st wine, you definitely won’t give it the same score you originally started out with. Wine scores are inconsistent.
Marketing
All wine scores are is marketing. When I was in wine marketing, I found out that wineries will send their wines to these publications to be tasted. However, it’s not free to send your wines to these publications. It’s actually quite expensive to send them off to be judged. It can cost thousands of dollars. What happens when a small winery wants that type of exposure, but doesn’t have the money for it because they have other costs to be concerned with, such as sending their wines off to labs for analysis? Simply getting points is not budget friendly and these small wineries have to focus their small marketing budgets on social media or other forms of advertisement.
A lot of people will be at the store looking for wines and grab one just because it says 92 points. They think, “It has 92 points, it must be good!” If we shift away from that type of thinking, these smaller wineries have a chance. And how do you know 92 points is good? Do you have the same palate as Robert Parker or James Suckling? Do you trust that these reviewers have your best interest in mind?
My professor was talking about how Robert Parker became so influential that wineries were starting to make wines based on what he liked just so that they could get better scores on their wine. The bad news is that if you don’t have the same palate as Mr. Parker, you wouldn’t understand why he awarded a wine 96 points. I recommend watching Mondovino to learn more about this. Thankfully he’s now retired and hopefully that means we can shift to stop oaking the crap out of these beautiful wines, but who knows.
A Bunch of “Frou-Frou”
Along the lines of marketing is wine writing. Here on She Know Vino, I try to be as straight-forward as I possibly can because I don’t believe that flowery words make wine approachable or accessible. Also, I’m a very straight-forward person which factors into it as well, but I don’t see how I need to care about “savory tones of charcuterie” or whatever wine review I was reading not too long ago. Do you mean cheese, meat, pickles, etc.? Charcuterie is A LOT of things and it is a very flowery word. Be specific and straight-forward and just straight up say, “This wine smells like Gouda.” Your audience will thank you for being approachable about wine. On the winemaker side of things, I think I’d be absolutely PO’ed if a wine critic said my white wine was giving off notes of charcuterie. Even funnier is that if you go down the list for all of the reviews written for one specific wine, you’ll see a bunch of frou-frou wine writing, but also completely different tasting notes for each review, which further proves that wine is subjective and inconsistent.
There’s a Paywall
You know what’s extra annoying? Anytime you want to look up points from these publishers, they’re blocked by a paywall. If you don’t know what a paywall is, it’s where a website page gets blocked by a pop-up or another page and you can’t read the content until you pay for a subscription. So not only are these scores unapproachable, they’re inaccessible too. Unless you’re paying for a bunch of different subscriptions, you wouldn’t be able to read these reviews even if it thought it would help you select a wine at the store. Of course there will be other reviews online, but they won’t be the ones from the famous wine critics.
Consumer Solution: Ask for Help
Well, what do you do when you don’t trust your own palate? Simply ask for help. Wine associates in almost every store are super eager to help you out because they’re passionate about wine. Hell, even ask a stranger in the wine section if they know anything about wine. These people can help you pick apart what you like and don’t like in a wine and make suggestions based on what you like. Unless you know that you have the same palate as these reviewers, buying wines based off points will not guarantee that you will like every single wine you try. You may even be disappointed by most of them.
Along the lines of asking for help, download the Vivino app. This app allows you to read reviews on wines just by scanning the labels in the store, plus you can follow people with similar palates as you, so you can buy what they buy! I’m not sponsored by this app in any way, but it is an extremely useful tool to have when you’re in the store and you need help picking out a wine. There’s even a section in the app where you can add wines to your wishlist so you can just put a few bottles in your cart when you get to the store!
Industry Solution: Ditch the Points System
This might psych out the elitists, but maybe we should ditch the points system altogether. Younger consumers are caring less about scores and are focused on educating themselves to make purchasing decisions. Publishers should focus on making wine knowledge more accessible and easy to understand. You have the customers, they just want to know about what they’re buying before they buy it. My generation in particular is very adamant about reading reviews before trying out new restaurants or buying products. They want to consider the opinion of many people instead of a select few. Besides, it wasn’t until the pandemic when a lot of wineries started selling their wine online. It’s time to modernize the wine industry, people!
Now read Wine Enthusiast’s “Yes, Wine Scores Still Matter” and decide what you think about wine scores.
