wine ratings: catering to the herd mentality or a necessary evil?

8/8/2019 Wine Ratings: Catering to the Herd Mentality or A Necessary Evil?

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W in e R a t in g s : C a t e r in g T o T h e H e r d M e n t a lit y ,

A N e c e s s a r y E v i l ?

THE CLINICAL AND SOM EW HAT ERRONEOUS M ETHODS OF SCORING OR RATING W INE DOES NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE HUM AN FACTOR, NOT ONL Y D Y SFUNCTIONAL TO ITS PLEASURES, BUT UNFAIRL Y DISQUALIF Y ING OTHERW ISE PERFECTL Y AGREEABLE W INES. Y ET, HOW ELSE DOES THE NO V ICE W INE CONSUM ER OR ENTHUSIAST ALIKE, W ADE THROUGH AN O V ERW HELM ING GLUT OF H Y PE? CURTIS M ARS H EXP LO RES THIS POLEM IC.

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P o i n t ?

Curtis Marsh

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To score or not to score? That is the nagging question every winewriter, wine or hospitality industry pro essional must grapplewith at some stage o their career. For a pro essional wine writer itis discom ortingly critical to ones reputation and possibly the onlyway to establish credibility or make any commercial sense out o anotherwise passion-driven philanthropic occupation.

Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with scoring, gaining muchintellectual stimulation analysing, interpreting and categorisingwine, indeed almost to the point o sel vindication, yet detesting themisinterpretation and exploitation o scores outside o the pro essionalmilieu. As tempting as it is to join the status quo and gloat in the powero the numerical pen, I continue to procrastinate over my duplicitousprincipals; it remains my bte noire and a conundrum I am unlikely toreconcile. I am however, more troubled by the growing cast o wineconsumers in Asia obsessed with scores seemingly an inherent process

or choosing premium wines these days. It is not just the credulous trustin scores that is a concern, but the dependence o wine merchants andmarketers on critics to sell wine through the blatant exploitation o ratings. Even more worrying is the reality that the average consumer inAsia is oblivious to these issues, being relatively new to Western stylewine and coincidently reared on the 100-point scoring system.

In actuality, this epidemic stems rom the United States (US) wheresuch individuals are otherwise known as score whores (aka winesnobs), as divulged by a Master o Wine (MW) who had recently visitedthe US and was amazed by the habitual devotion to wine scores. Thisdeep-seated reverence o the 100-point scale is largely due to endemicwine publications such as the Wine Spectator , an inculcation o wine

scoring and high-pro le wine critics, such as the omnipotent RobertParker (Parker). Be ore you start thinking that this is about to turn intoa Parker bashing article, on the contrary, I have utmost respect andadmiration or Parker. Clearly, he has an extraordinary palate matchedby an exhaustive knowledge o wine. I also like his writing style anddescriptive tasting notes; indeed, I deduce more rom his tasting notesthan the scores. However, that does not mean I agree with all o hisassessments or pre erence o style. I am most certainly not impressedby ormulaic wines that are blatantly ashioned to please the Parkerpalate and also remain sceptical o his methodology o determiningthat a wine should only be given 89 points, just a mere one point shorto that magical 90 points.

What does perturb me though, is Parkers somewhat snobbish andhypocritical approach to certain wine producing countries in hisevolution. Case in point? He did not consider Australia worthy o avisit as there were no rateable wines made there, yet did a completeabout- ace and now has the deepest adoration or Barossa ValleyShiraz or anything rom Australia that is behemothic and scoring thesestyle o wines consistently in the high nineties. Moreover, and I nd itpersonally insulting, he has intonated in the same manner that NewZealand wines are o insigni cant interest to warrant a visit, which istotally preposterous. Clearly, he is ill-in ormed.

To his credit, Parker has realised both his own shortcomings (Burgundybeing the most glaring) i not succumbing to the reality that the wine-world is no longer as small as it was (yes, there is li e a ter Bordeauxand Cali ornia), and it is physically impossible or a single critic to coverevery wine region o signi cance, thats i it ever was, and begettingregional specialists. Moreover, the internet has pro oundly changedthe way we communicate on wine, albeit one hell o a noise coming

rom both amateurs and pro essionals to the point where consumersmight become tone dea to it all. Back to the score whore, a ewyears ago when I was emceeing an options tasting, the entertaining i not masochistic sport o identi ying masked wines guided bymulti-choice questions, one o the participants announced, in anirritating manner, that she and her husband only drank wines rated 95points and above. Blind tastings are merciless to wine snobs and oursel -proclaimed connoisseur humiliated hersel with an unequivocalpre erence or a non-rated, humble Portuguese red (HK$240 per bottle)over and above a celebrated 1998 Henschke Hill o Grace Shiraz, rated97 points by Parker and valued at more than HK$3,000 per bottle at thetime. On the positive side, she was both enlightened and made morecon dent o her own palate when the Portuguese red was announcedthe unanimous avourite o the evening. It was, incidentally, the 2000Quinta do Crasto Reserva Vinho Tinto, an outstanding Douro producer.(visit www.quintadocrasto.pt)

I I could emphasise this type o tasting, whilst being a great deal o un as well as providing a relatively unbiased plat orm or enjoying

wine, it is incongruous with the appreciation o subliminal complexitiesin wines such as Henschke Hill o Grace, ideally savoured singularlyand matched to the appropriate cuisine and occasion. Another recent

wine experience highlighting human behavioural inadequacies andits consequences on wine was when I attended a luncheon hosted byChteau Haut-Brion, the celebrated First Growth Bordeaux which alsoowns Chteaux La Mission Haut-Brion and Laville Haut-Brion, all parto the Clarence Dillon empire. Putting aside the new range o genericBordeaux wines produced by the group, ostensibly the reason wewere invited, or shall I say, seduced by the sheer notion o trying topestate wines, our group o so-called wine pro essionals seemed to betotally ocused on comparing or critiquing the more illustrious wines.Indeed, the woman sitting next to me kept badgering me on whichwine I liked the most, and did not comprehend my answer o , All o them! I believe she missed the point I was trying to make, that the2004 Chteau Laville Haut-Brion Blanc was as enjoyable as the 2005Chteau Haut-Brion Blanc, although completely di erent in style orvintage expression. Ditto or the 1998 Chteau La Mission Haut-Brionand 1995 Chteau Haut-Brion and even though I was quietly surprisedhow excellent the subordinate Chteau La Mission Haut-Brion was,Id be damned i I was going to be intimidated by this captious group.What is it with humanoids that we always have to be contentiouslycomparative when there is more than one wine served or become supercritical when there are extraordinarily expensive bottles involved?


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Anything above 95 points is money inthe bank, although a per ect 100 is morelikely to cause a massive headache or thedistributor and is a milestone that hauntsthe producer in successive vintages orthe rest o their days.

The Point Of ScoringThat said, it would be naive to suggest that we could do withoutpersonal opinions or ratings altogether; in reality, it is an entrenchedaspect o the competitive nature o consumers and consumerism.

Perhaps this is the crux o the matter, and i only we could move awayrom the herd mentality and simply become more reliant on our owntastes, or approach wine consumption with a much more adventurous,opened minded manner.

Scores aside, the predictable question wine writers are always askedis, What is your avourite wine? To which I reply, The wine I haventtried yet, emphasising that I gain the most pleasure in discoveringnew taste sensations. The act is: I have a wandering palate or oodand wine, greatly infuenced by my mood and by di erent cuisines,although inevitably, there are certain favours, varieties and regions Ienjoy more than others. The very notion o drinking one type or styleo wine continuously escapes me (completely), and I think this viewis shared by most wine pro essionals and wine enthusiasts. To quotethe jovial New Zealand Master o Wine, Bob Campbell, I am vinouspromiscuous.

The Rating GameAnd yet, seemingly the exact opposite is happening to wine consumerspalates; they are being dictated by scores or power ul critics andcorralled by the herd mentality and slaves o ashion, naively ensnaredin vinous mediocrity. The situation is not helped by the plethora o pedestrian E-mails rom wine merchants in circulation, the contentsare almost entirely a reproduction o scores and tasting notes verbatim,little wonder that consumers are becoming lazier and coerced byscores when it comes to purchasing wine. The embellishing o everypoint above a strategic stratum o 90 points out o 100 is rampant.Anything above 95 points is money in the bank, although a per ect100 is more likely to cause a massive headache or the distributor andis a milestone that haunts the producer in successive vintages or therest o their days. Curiously, it is only the 100-point system that hasany plagiaristic appeal predominantly rom the great Parker who, a terall, invented this scoring system. A ter that, inconsequential in order,comes other expertise in US publications such as Wine Spectator ,Steve TanzersInternational Wine Cellars , Allen MeadowsBurghound and The Wine Enthusiast .

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For reasons unknown, the respected English-based magazineDecanter ,which uses a star-rating system, is rarely quoted, rather ironic giventhat it is the rst international magazine to publish a dedicated Asiaedition printed in Mandarin. Neither does the inde atigable wineauthority Jancis Robinson MW get much airplay, perhaps because sheuses the English establishment 20-point scoring system. Even morepuzzling not a word o theThe World of Fine Wine magazine, arguablythe most serious (albeit a little highbrow at times) wine publication inthe world and admired or its scrupulous pro essional integrity.

It is not that I am questioning the competence o those who chooseto score or rate wines. On the contrary, there are countless writers,critics, winemakers, wine and hospitality industry pro essionals withencyclopaedic knowledge and seriously sharp palates who can dissectand assess a wine with the precision and thoroughness o a orensicscientist per orming an autopsy, detecting winemaking aults in nano-proportions. It is crucial, however, to keep in mind that individual scoresare highly subjective and that you need to synchronise the personalityand particular tastes or track record o the critic with your own likes or

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dislikes. Where scores are a result o a tasting panel, we encounter oneo the most serious faws associated with numerical ratings o wines,and the Mathematics is not simple. The permutations in calculating themean score are highly manipulative, and like any statistic, the range ordi erence between the largest and smallest value alters the outcomesigni cantly. Panel tasting outcomes can also be greatly obscuredby invited guest judges, particularly i in an international sense, asit invariably takes some time to acclimatise their palates and theirscores can be widely divergent rom the local panellists. These typeso tastings or any wine show, while topical and held in the spirit o healthy competition, should not be seen as conclusive.

One should also take into account there is a predominance to assesswine at the tasting bench and in exhaustive batches. While undoubtedlyexecuted pro essionally, normally arranged by region or variety withwines masked to increase objectivity, the method lacks soul, and thereis the unavoidable element o comparisons that are o ten unjust. Thereis also the question o the tasters methodology or philosophy and

whether they are assessing the wine in context o the regions knowncharacteristics or an accepted style, or have an all-encompassingqualitative view. This issue is controversial, with some critics havingto de end their assessments. For example, James Halliday awardedthe 2006 De Bortoli Pinot Noir Ros, Yarra Valley 94 points out o 100points, and rightly so. However, there was much lamenting rom other

journalists about how a Ros (implying a simple wine) could be onlythree points away rom Pen olds Grange (Australias icon and viewedas pro ound), scored 97 points, the highest level in his2008 AustralianWine Companion . Obviously, Halliday rates his wines in accordance tostyle and I applaud this.

Likewise, Jancis Robinson MW goes to great pains to explain how she

scores wine in a regional context, although she openly admits she isnot entirely satis ed with any scoring system. She too has encounteredcriticism in her Purple Pages blog, (www.jancisrobinson.com) where

rustrated, want-to-be-wine critics have taken her to task, and I amtalking speci cally about being interrogated on how she could scoreQuartz Ree Pinot Noir rom Central Otago, New Zealand (seeminglyunknown or o no pedigree) 18 points out o 20 points and ChteauPetrus, Bordeaux (renowned and revered by wine snobs) also 18 points.Notwithstanding her amazing tolerance and humility to answer theseinquisitions at great length, her nal reply emphasised the Quartz Ree was assessed in the context o New World Pinot Noir and the ChteauPetrus in the context o Bordeaux. She mused, But perhaps, strangely

or someone who studied Mathematics at Ox ord, Im not a great ano the conjunction o numbers and wine. Once numbers are involved,it is all too easy to reduce wine to a nancial commodity rather thankeep its precious status as a uniquely stimulating source o sensualpleasure and conviviality.

Technical issues aside, the main faw in clinically rating wines is thatthere is no accounting or the favour and enhancing infuences o

ood, mood or your state o mind at the time o imbibing all o whichwill have a pro ound e ect on your opinion o the wine. I can think o endless personal experiences that demonstrate this, a prime exampleis when absorbed in the surroundings and culture while travelling the

wine route: memories o a trip to the south o France, in the hills o theLanguedoc, an idyllic part o the world where Roman generals chose toretire among the joie de vivre cultures o Catalonia and France. We arein the tiny village o Sainte Croix de Quintillargues, luxuriating in the

jovial hospitality o Pierre Clavel on an impeccably radiant Provinciala ternoon. Pondering how unjustly maligned white wines are rom thisregion, we sip his unpretentious Cascaille Blanc, a blend o Roussanne,Grenache Blanc and Rolle; rich, yet lively and savoury with dried herbsand a salty nish. Relishing in the plump green olives, picked romthe trees surrounding us, along with all number o home-cured andsmoked pig parts and terrines, the synergies between the wine, oodand ambience were sublime. I compelled, I would score the wine aper ect 100 points. For that matter, readers should search out PierreClavel wines (www.vins-clavel. r).

I recall a bittersweet experience o running a small business when Idiscovered that my administration manager, who had impressed theentire wine community with his unrivalled knowledge o old and rarewines, was enjoying his research at my expense. Some time a ter hisexpeditious departure, we unearthed a magnum o 1949 Comte de

Vogue, `Le Musigny Vielles Vignes Grand Cru red Burgundy, indeed rareand expensive. Usually one only gets to eulogize such wines at ormaldinners, served in thimble proportions, consequently the enjoymentexclusive to the bouquet. In a consoling act o decadence, I decidedto share the wine with three devoted drinking comrades. We werein nirvana as we toasted both his exodus and expertise, immersingourselves in our gluttony and the captivating sweet per ume andevocative secondary aromas o antique woods, wild mushrooms, tru fesand earthy minerals. Words will never do justice to the complex nuanceso this wine, and it remains my benchmark or Pinot Noir to this day.As or a score, I would rate it 200 points out 100 points.

Technical issues aside, themain faw in clinically ratingwines is that there is noaccounting or the favour

and enhancing infuences o ood, mood or your state o

mind at the time o imbibing all o which will have apro ound e ect on youropinion o the wine.


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Points Versus PricesAll this said, I could be on the wrong train altogether as ar as Asiasmentality on wine ranking and perhaps scores have less impact than Iperceive. I recall sitting next to the owner o a prominent Cantoneserestaurant in Hong Kong a ew years ago whereupon a line-up o

the best Australian whites and reds were paired impeccably with thecuisine. It was clear he was unimpressed with the wines until comingacross the Jasper Hill Georgias Paddock Shiraz rom Heathcote, wherehis discernable grunt o appreciation and obvious pre erence or redswith some substance prompted me to enquire on what he pre ers todrink or serve to his personal guests. He replied explicitly, Only FirstGrowths i you are a riend, otherwise Second Growths i I do not knowyou so well. Does it simply boil down to prestige and ace?

In the imper ect world o wine rankings, and out o all the di erentmethods, I personally pre er the Gambero Rosso three-glass systemwhich is unquestionably approached with integrity, as is everythingassociated with the Slow Food Editore (www.slow ood.com, also

imperative or travelling Italy, the in allible Slow Food Osterie andLocande Guide). In addition to the glass-rating, which corresponds toa range o scores using the 100-point system, the Gambero Rosso alsoindicates the price range o the wine with a numerical categorisationo one to eight, the latter being the most expensive. At rst glancethis can be a con using and mistaken or a rating or vintage evaluationhowever, its intended purpose is to put in context the glasses awardedand price/quality rapport.

Price/quality rapport is perilously subjective and clearly linked to onesdisposable income and perhaps the overriding actor in categorisingwine, period. Invariably there are, discernable re erence points to makea judgement whether a wine is over-delivering, or under-delivering orthat matter, at its price point. Moreover, a tangible appreciation andanecdotal corroboration amongst in ormed wine drinkers that o tenset wines apart and naturally invokes the laws o supply and demand.I suspect that many Asians, just like Caucasians, regardless o theirwealth, appreciate good value or, even better, a bargain. The greatestvalue and bargains in todays highly competitive world o wine is themid-ground, where passionate, dedicated owner-operators are tryingharder than ever to gain recognition and an edge.

When it comes to magazines publishing ratings or using regional orcomparative tastings as eatures, I personally believe the star-ratingsystem is the most just, even ethical method. It might not be asglamorous or attention grabbing as the 100 points scale however; it

is not as controversial, placing a wine in a category or range o pointsthat allows or the short alls o panel tastings yet, at the same timegiving a clear enough indication o quality. This method is used bythe highly respected magazine Decanter and in the same ideology by

the world doyen o wine writers, Hugh Johnson. Johnson, I believe, iseven more correct, and perhaps diplomatic, in ocusing his star-ratingon the vineyard itsel rather than individual wines. As you becomemore amiliar with wine and begin travelling the wine regions o theworld an enormous pleasure in its own and unquestionably thebest way to grasp the in nite nuances o wine, you come to realise itis the producer that is paramount, and ratings or even vintages haveless relevance.

On a nal note, in assessing any wine, this is only but a snapshot o aliving thing that undergoes a delicate, continuous trans ormation o chemistry and integration o organisms. Ultimately, wine is subjectiveand should not be constrained by numbers. CM

The greatest value and bargains in todayshighly competitive world o wine is the mid-ground, where passionate, dedicated owner-operators are trying harder than ever to gainrecognition and an edge.

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wine ratings: catering to the herd mentality or a necessary evil?

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