I’ve decided I can no longer, in good conscience, rate wines using the 100-point scale.
Or, as I prefer to call it, the much-abused 100-point scale.
So abused that it was become laughable among wine professionals and consumers alike. Or so I like to assert. But I am powerless.
The 100-point score is not going anywhere, now that so many wine writers have figured out how to monetize it. It’s not that I’m against scoring. I do find scores, whether 100-point, 20-point, five stars (or apples), etc. — to be quite useful. But without trying to sound like a jerk, I know how to evaluate them and can discern the shinola amongst the shite. For the average consumer, it’s a mug’s game. The innocent wine lover becomes just another sucker at one big wine/poker table.
This system of rating wines has been pilloried for decades, since Robert Parker popularized the 100-point scale in the 1970s to offer doctors and lawyers a by-the-glance, no-brainer justification to allocate ridiculous sums toward wines they would probably never drink and likely never properly enjoy.
Thus began the race among the elites to collect high-scoring 90-plus (or 95-plus) wines, notwithstanding whether or not the buyer found them pleasing. A cellar full of Parker-sanctified “star” wines came with serious bragging rights. It reminds me of the scene in American Psycho, where the Wall Streeters one-up each other with evermore elaborate and expensive printed business cards. It does not end well.
My problem with the plague of high-scorers that have invaded the wine space is that they offer little to no context for their insane numbers — nor much authority or credibility. They are doing no favours to their followers or readers. An insanely high score accompanied by a breathless, exaggerated and non-sensical tasting note does little to advance the reader’s knowledge, nor provide tangible and useful insight into what makes a wine special — or outstanding, in the pure sense of the word.
It was not always thus, as renowned critic Andrew Jefford points out in the article Tasting Notes: The shame of the wine world?. He states:
https://www.goodfoodrevolution.com/the-plague-of-high-scoring-wine-critics/