I agree that ranking wines requires one to compare what one is tasting with what one has tasted in the past. This begs the question that if one has not had a 100 point wine in the past then how can one accurately score a wine with a point score at all.

How do you know you have had a 100 point wine. From a Parker Note maybe, very subjective. What if you taste a wine you like better. is that a 101.

TCK

This conversation/post is fascinating & 1 of the most informative I have ever read on ANY Wine Forum(s).

I believe that this actually belongs in the "Wine Learning Center" section. Because, that is exactly what it is to any one that is interested in Wine (on any level).

TCK: I have stated MANY times over the last few months, that I do NOT know. YET...

tck-if you try a wine that you believe is a classic, better than anything you have ever tasted in its category, and parker and a few other critics give it a 100, it probably is a 100. if you give it a 100 and parker gives it a 95, i suggest you taste it again, then search out a 99/100 wine to calibrate against.

I've got to be honest - I've had one 100 point wine (per the Wine Advocate) - the 1994 Harlan Estate.

I've had a 99 pointer (1991 Dominus) and a few 98 pointers ('92 La Jota Anniversary, 1999 Quilceda Creek, and the 1997 Pahlmeyer Red).

I'm not good/experienced enough to say that one is 98, 99, or 100 points. The La Jota (tasted two weeks ago) was so close to perfect I really had to be picky to come up with a personal 98/99 rating. The Pahlmeyer seemed the same way two months ago.

The Harlan, tasted a couple years ago before I REALLY got into wines, remains the most exciting wine I've ever tasted though...It was, to my immature palate, noticeably sensational.

All this being said - I still can't claim the Harlan is a 100 point wine. There may be something better than it that I have yet to try....

I'm just playing devils advocate. In all honesty like Jones I do compare to other wines, usually 90's from Parker. I feel comfortable and confident in my calls here. I have never rated a wine a classic, and I don't drink enough wines in this category to be a good judge of them. If I did feel a wine was in this category I would look for the advice of someone with more tasting experiendce then myself to help make the final call or if that wasn't possible I would simply state that I think the wine is something special.

Short, I have had the '91 Dominus as well and that is as close to perfect as a Cabernet has ever been for me.

jb

This is a terrific topic. I'm probably as guilty as anyone of potentially overating wines. And no, I've never had a 100 pointer. A couple of 98 pointers are my maximum.

That said there should be a way to rate the wine in general and rate the wine per your personal taste. For this I use the 100-point scale as a baseline for convenience. I have a hard time with the 20 point scale such as Clive Coates uses mostly because it is a different baseline.

I've found that through familiarity I know which posters' ratings I gravitate towards. And others whose opinions are equally valuable and interesting but their tastes are not similar to mine. Repetition is the key.

Great thread.

I have routinely overrated wines, I think, no, I KNOW I still do. But, I think I am slowly getting better at this. But it really is all relative to the individual taster's experiences. The more you taste, the better a judge you will be. The more upper end wines you taste, to get an idea for what a 96-100 point wine tastes like, the better a judge you will be of rating all wines.

This is an ever changing world of wine, but the one thing that is a constant, as long as you keep drinking wine and experimenting with new producers and so on, the better a judge you will be.

Tasting wine is subjective. Rating a wine a 100 is no more subjective then rating a wine an 85. Therefore, I know when I have tasted a 100 point wine just the same as when I think a wine gets an 85.

There are gradations within a single point rating. One can rate two wines with a 100 and still prefer one to the other.

I know that you don't like what I am saying but until one tastes the best then that person's ratings are inherently less credible and suspect. Just as in appreciating art, automobiles, or virtually anything else, you need to experience the best before you can reliably rate the rest. The quest to taste the best is one of my goals in appreciating wine in the first place.

I agree 101%, Jones. And, that goes for everything else in life, of course.

I had a few "great" bottles so far. I am sure that many people had wayyy more that I did, though. So, I feel that I can rate Wine(s) or tell the difference between an 85pointer & a 95pointer (for example).

Now, can I tell a "real" difference between a 96+pointer & a 98+pointer or even a 99+pointer (even if Parker rates in as that)...probably Not. To me, a 96+ to 100 is VERY tough call (for now).

Example: I had the '97 Etude with Board_O. He rated it a 98+ & may be as high as 99+. I rated it a 96+ or 97+ (cannot remember exactly). Why???

a. I felt that this Wine can still improve,
b. I felt that the Glasses that we were using were NOT good enough, &
c. Most important---Did Not feel comfortable rating it any higher than that. I admit the "lack of experience". Although, like I mentioned that I have enjoyed some beauties over the years.

P.S.: I love my friends that Never went to a "real fine" Restaurant but yet tell me that the Food that they eat is as Good as "those fancy shmancy" places. And, I just "PAY for the NAME". I Love them so I do NOT argue.

Jones
Actually I agree with what you are saying. I do think that I know a 90 point wine when I tasted one. I know an 85 point wine when I taste one for that matter. However if I were to taste a wine that was obviously better then that - again I would honestly refrain from rating it and instead turn to someone such as yourself to assist me in rating the wine and explaining why the wine deserves such a rating.

Also, at this stage of my life our goals are diffrent in this hobby. My goal is to learn as much about wine as is humanlly possible. At this stage of my life tasting the perfect bottle of wine is not that important. This goal could of course change in the future and most likely. As I have said before my wine knowledge has raced past my pallet developement. It will take me years to actually taste everything that I have taught myself. I look forward to it.

TCK

Great point re restaurants LCC.

IIRC Parker rated the 97 Etude as a 96/7 so it sounds like you were right in the ballpark with Parker. Of course, so was Board-O. One of these days I should dig out a bottle. I have a case of 750s and a case of mags buried in the cellar. I gave the wine a 94 when a friend of mine opened one up but that was a few years ago.

First of all ,
Parker , WS and a number of others all utilise a similar system which is actually a fifty point system with scores from 50-100. This is based on the classic twenty point judging system used to establish Medals and Awards. This system was utilised initially by the French and was standardised by the ISO.

This system ensures that no wine can score less than 5 points, simply because even the most faulted wine can score one point for each category.
The system breaks down into Colour and Clarity, Bouquet, Palate flavours and your Overall Impresion (which only accounts for 15% of the entire score).

Even the poorest wines often scor two points out of four for Colour and Clarity, at least two for Bouquet and two for Palate and one for overall. So the minimum score is often nearer 7/20.

The differance for Parkes system is the rating is scored from fifty to 100 on the same categories. No wine can score less than fifty points because then it isn't wine. IE; If it is made from grapes, has alcohol acids and other basic flavourals it automatically scores fifty points. Because it has the basics necessary to score essential points-thats is it has colour, aromas, texture etc...which gaurantee fifty points on the spectrum. Grape juice may only score 35 points simply because it lacks certain elements which make it necesary to score (ie; no alcohol or apprpriate flavourals and aromas.)

Personally I've had some enjoyable 80 point wines, not wow but just nice. I feel that company and atmosphere often make up a big part of enjoying the wine. I still think my best bottle of wine I ever had was a cheap Chianti up in the hills over looking Florence with a young lady who was showing me around the area. We sat down and had some nice cheese and some great bread and some wine which I'v still yet to find an equal to. Later reading Parkers write ups and scores it failed to even meet the 80 points required to be noted.

Call me a philistine I'll agree.

Never one to blindly agree, I'll throw in the following food for thought, which I'm sure we all know, but may have forgotten:

-Everyone's scale is different, so there is no right or wrong.

-Everyone's definition of 100 pts is different. Further,judging perfection is impossible. To say "I know a 100 pt wine, because Parker rated it so", assumes Parker is right. But wine tasting and rating is subjective so the assumption is incorrect. This doesn't even touch the ? of a)-is perfection a single item "eg God" or are there many perfections? b)-Do we downshift all other wines when a new perfection is tasted?

-We have fallen into rating wines as single digits. Scientific testing has shown this is fallacious, as bottles vary, tasting sensitivity and for the lack of a better word tasting "cortical desire" vary in the same individual from hour to hour day to day. Ranges are more appropriate; 3-5 point variance has been shown as real in scientific studies of expert tasters, but we have gotten used to the single point method on the forums, a lesson learned through years of grade school. For example, can you imagine getting a math test score of 88-91? Give me my 91=A, damn it. I suppose the single point rating is valid as long as we don't put too much faith in small point differences as being statistically significant. jb's 92 is in line with ojeffso's 90 and lcc's 94. An excellent but not outstanding wine.

-The idea of "average" wine is a moving target, as the sample population varies over time. It means little until we have had years and years of tasting all manners of wine from the lowest to the greatest. Further, our experience (or lack of it)in different varietals may allow us or may not allow us to formulate the concept of average. Moreover, what most of us would have considered average years ago is now not worth our drinking. Our "average" wine is now higher quality. In fact, our objective is unlike Parker's though we try to emulate him. We want to try as many of the best wines as possible. We try to buy those of his highest ratings or greatest qpr. So we don't even know what average really is anymore, despite our attempts to stay in tune with average, very good, good etc since we no longer taste it routinely, but now must define it as the middle ground of what we drink. In that sense, I agree with STW. An average wine could really thus be a high 80's wine. Though it's a best guess since I rarely drink that 83 pointer.

So that said, given my and many others' objective is to avoid average wines, our scales are off kilter, and therefore maybe our rating systems are more arbitrary than we are willing to admit and average really means a mediocre point that is the discriminatory threshold below which I don't want to tread.

Dr. x-man: Yes. Very well stated. Very nice. This topic is really "good stuff".

...But, aren't we all rating based on our "taste"? Parker rates a Wine a 95. JL an 89. Happens MANY Times---WHY???

Both are "so-called" EXPERTS. Why such a BIG Difference?

...So, they too are rating it "randomly"??? Or, based on their "taste"? Or, just because they had "formal" training & their name means "something", we take their opinion as more "official"?

...Then, why the BIG Difference(they have loads of experience)? May be, this question is rhetorical. Or, may be, you are 100% correct.

lcc-
This has blossomed into a great topic for debate.

Again, I feel that my goals are different than those of any taster eg Parker. My aim is to buy relatively few but excellent or better quality wines and drink the whole bottle rather than spit them out.I don't need to have a huge database as I have no intent to publish to the consumer. I just want a fine bottle to drink.

Parker has no doubt tried 100,000+ wines as his data base. So has Tanzer, and Laube. (And still they don't necessarily agree.)While they can appreciate similar components of excellent(and poorer)wines, it is still their subjective palate which causes the standard deviations. Like circle diagrams where the circles only partly overlap each other.

I have no hope of ever getting there, even if I raid Jones', ojeffso's, and GATC's cellars.

Dr T,

It sounds like you are in favor of a rating system that I utilized when I first started drinking wine. I would simply give wines stars (5 is roughly a 95 to 100 point wine). It seems to me that as you stated many people here rate wines within 5 points or so of each other and thats roughly how I corelated my scores. for instance people are debating the Whitehall lane rating recently - some say it's a 91 WS says 93, I heard a 92 in there. I would say that the debate is over in my book this wine gets 4 stars we all seem to agree on that.

In practice I don't use this system anymore basically because it isn't the prefered method of todays wine drinkers but it does smooth out the margin of error you pointed out.

I do still use this method for rating producers in general.

TCK

I think we use single number ratings, because of how we grew up in the competitive environment of the US, and as part of tasting we are trying to be precise in our analysis, description like a "wine classroom". I use it, but understand the error range involved as I iterated above.