Comments on: Wine Reviews: A Modest Proposal

By: AJ Linn (Spain)

AJ Linn (Spain) — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 11:51:58 +0000

Hi Daniel, as stated I am writing from Spain, and have no idea where you are located on the globe. In this country at least, thankfully, none of the items you mention are rated. People read informed reviews in the event they exist and decide for themselves what to buy/see/do……

By: Ken Bernsohn

Ken Bernsohn — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:32:46 +0000

Mike, you are a metropolitan man. as Georg Simmel wrote in The Metropolis and Mental Life back in 1903, ” The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy. Here the multiplicity and concentration of economic exchange gives an importance to the means of exchange which the scantiness of rural commerce would not have allowed. Money economy and the dominance of the intellect are intrinsically connected. They share a matter-of-fact attitude in dealing with men and with things; and, in this attitude, a formal justice is often coupled with an inconsiderate hardness. The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations. In the same manner, the individuality of phenomena is not commensurate with the pecuniary principle. Money is concerned only with what is common to all: it asks for the exchange value, it reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much?
All intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in their individuality, whereas in rational relations man is reckoned with like a number, like an element which is in itself indifferent. Only the objective measurable achievement is of interest. Thus metropolitan man reckons with his merchants and customers, his domestic servants and often even with persons with whom he is obliged to have social intercourse… The money economy dominates the metropolis; it has displaced the last survivals of domestic production and the direct barter of goods; it minimizes, from day to day, the amount of work ordered by customers.
The matter-of-fact attitude is obviously so intimately interrelated with the money economy, which is dominant in the metropolis, that nobody can say whether the intellectualistic mentality first promoted the money economy or whether the latter determined the former. The metropolitan way of life is certainly the most fertile soil for this reciprocity, a point which I shall document merely by citing the dictum of the most eminent English constitutional historian: throughout the whole course of English history, London has never acted as England’s heart but often as England’s intellect and always as her moneybag!…
…This physiological source of the metropolitan blasé attitude is joined by another source which flows from the money economy. The essence of the blasé attitude consists in the blunting of discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is the case with the half-wit, but rather that the meaning and differing values of things, and thereby the things themselves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blasé person in an evenly flat and gray tone; no one object deserves preference over any other. This mood is the faithful subjective reflection of the completely internalized money economy. By being the equivalent to all the manifold things in one and the same way, money becomes the most frightful leveler.

Mike, here’s a wine scoring system that avoids all the issues of dollar equivalents and 100 points or star ratings, bottom to top:
vin tres ordinare,
plonk,
cheap and cheerful,
good
yum
(followed rarely by YUM!)
Try it. You just might like it. Or not.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 21:44:42 +0000

AJ,
Sadly, everything now is rated. Beer, yes. Vodka, yes. Films (4 stars!), Electric Shavers, ever read Consumer reports. And with Yelp and other sites like that, every restaurant, sandwich shop, grocery store and place you can imagine is getting some kind of rating by ‘experts’. or at least their customers!

By: AJ Linn (Spain)

AJ Linn (Spain) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:40:06 +0000

As a professional wine writer I have always been totally against any form of wine scoring since my first visit to a US wine store many decades ago when I noticed a number next to the price on the shelves. I asked what this referred to and was told that it was a points-awarding system without which ‘people would not know which wines to buy’.
40 years on I am still amazed that buyers of wine are apparently influenced by ‘experts’ whose own individual tastes can never have a meaningful relationship with other people’s individual tastes.
Even before Parker’s methodology was totally discredited by the activities of his Spanish team, Jay Miller and Pancho Campo, caught with their fingers in the till requesting fees for carrying out tastings (undenied and undeniable proof in spades on the web), the whole system has been brought into massive disrepute. But….
…. what no-one seems able to get into their heads is why wines have to be rated at all. Is beer points-rated? Vodka? Perfume? Films? Electric shavers? Motor cars? Gas stations? Supermarkets? Shoes? Books? Newspapers? TV programmes?
Why is wine one of the very few products in the entire world that people think needs a rating system? It is just sheer lunacy. If I go into a supermarket to buy a bag of peanuts, would it help me if each bag had a points score on it, awarded by some peanut expert?
I confess for my own personal use I keep a score when tasting wines about which I will later write, but I would never presume to think these scores should be made public, and more important – which is why I agree with the Author – my scoring is based purely on a value-for-money basis.
Does it help anyone to read that such-and-such a wine has been awarded 97 points (the price is never referred to), but when you look it up it costs $300? If a wine costs that much it has to be good.
Let’s start a campaign to get wine points-scoring dropped completely. Are wine drinkers such morons that they need more guidance on what to buy than, say, a beer drinker?

By: Doug Wilder

Doug Wilder — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:22:08 +0000

Mike,

This is the first time for me to comment on your site even though I read from time to time. The migration of Decanter to the 100 point system is just another indicator that the scale is not going anywhere. As an intellectual exercise, I think all of us evaluate what a wine is ‘worth’ when we taste it, using our own mental benchmarks. As a wine critic, I purposely don’t look at any of the technical information that comes with a sample until after I have tasted and reviewed it. In addition to a review and score, I also include a designation of a “$V” for wines that demonstrate what I consider ‘over-performance’. I will also append a comment to the review if a wine underperforms. A $V wine could be a $15 tasting like a $22. example, or a $125 tasting like a $200. Simply using a dollar figure for what you would pay for a wine doesn’t address how appropriate that wine may be for a particular setting. A great $75 Cabernet is not as good as a $12 Pinot Gris for a summer garden party.

By: Mike Veseth

Mike Veseth — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:12:55 +0000

Thanks! Yes, I wrote about the DeLong scale a couple of years ago. Great tool. I own the periodic table and several of the great maps, too.

By: Howard

Howard — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:01:26 +0000

Hi Mike… Interesting and thought provoking (as always!)

Wondering if you have ever seen this handy tool from the DeLong’s… Creators of the varietal “periodic” table….

http://www.delongwine.com/how_we_rate_wines.pdf

By: Mike Veseth

Mike Veseth — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:14:18 +0000

Seems like I hit a nerve with my “worth it?” idea — and you’ve all been thinking along these lines already. Thanks for the thoughtful comments!

By: noblewines

noblewines — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:15:15 +0000

I have been frustrated by the different rating systems since I started to pay attention in 1995. The current system is not designed for the end-user, it has been designed and very effectively used as a marketing tool. Wine suppliers, distributors and sales teams are who made these ratings so popular. If wine is rated by any of these critics or publications using a frame it is not obvious to the reader or consumer. By frame I mean a 90 point Sancerre is better than an 88 point Sancerre and price is part of the equation.

My own system that I have used for more than two decades at trade tastings to determine purchasing for clients and former employers is a simple 6 point system. -3, -2, -1 0 +1, +2, +3. Sancerre is currently about $19 – $23 retail for an average one. So if I taste a very good one that would cost $19 or lower at retail I would give the wine a +2 rating. Apples against apples PLUS an economic value. Then when I go to another Sancerre that costs retail $30 but the same quality or only a bit better I’d rate that either 0 or -1.

BUT 3 is less than 93 so I must be wrong.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:52:57 +0000

Mike, I like the worth scale too — but since wine critics rarely pay anything for wine, are they really the best ones to ask how much they’d pay? Daniel, have you seen Wine Blue Book? They’ve been publishing QPR for years.