Background

1970s. Back in the Dark Ages of wine--about 1975 or so--journalistic accounts of new wines depended solely on words. Writers may have told you in Burgundy prose if they liked a wine, or disliked it--but it never would have occurred to them to transform their subjective opinions into something so seemingly objective as a number. A score. A rating. But there was a problem: How on earth do you find out which of the scads of wines coming into the market every year are dynamite?

1980s. Times of crisis cry out for men of vision, and in the early 1980s one man--one lonely pioneer of wine journalism--strode to the stage and provided a solution for thousands. Robert Parker, Maryland attorney and fledgling wine writer, decided to affix a point score to every wine he judged. Reasoning that every red-blooded American went to a school where 65 on a test was a passing grade, 80 was a big relief, and 90-plus meant your parents might buy you stuff, Parker instituted the 100-point scale. Lots of other wine writers and wine publications immediately decried this trivialization of wine, this transmogrification of an aesthetic entity into a quantifiable commodity. Within two years they were all using the 100-point scale.

Today. In the early 21st century, the 100-point scale is a huge fact of life in the wine world. Every major publication employs it, most wine drinkers pay lots of attention to it, and most advertising and marketing campaigns are built on the number that Parker or "The Wine Spectator" dreamed up for a given wine.

Understanding Wine Ratings

Scales. The first thing you must realize about wine ratings is that it's virtually impossible to rate wine on a 100-point scale. Try it. Line up ten different wines, taste them, and give them numbers. Somewhere between the second and third wine, as you start saying "Geez, is this a 79? An 84? An 88?", you'll realize that today it might be a 79 and tomorrow it might be an 88. Whole blocks of numbers--like the 70s, the 80s, the 90s--might make some kind of broad sense, but fine-tuning it to 83 or 84 is nuts. In other words, I can live with a ten-point scale but I'll never understand the passion with which consumers follow the 100-point scale.

Consistency. Some writers--such as Robert Parker himself--are rather remarkably consistent in their judgments. That's good, because when Parker rates a wine in the 70s, or the 90s, I have some sense of what that means. Unfortunately, other individuals are not as consistent in their ratings. Worse, some of our most influential wine publications give you ratings from different tasters--sometimes identified with the taster's name, sometimes not! And sometimes their ratings for a single wine are done by committee--an average of ratings given to a bottle by a group of people. That's nuts! That tells me nothing! A number objectifies a taster's preferences, and enables me to compare the number against that taster's other numbers--but if I don't know who the taster is, and what he stands for, what good is it?

Rating Guidelines

Whites. When rating whites, it's massive fruit, oak (with resulting vanilla and spice), weight, lushness, and alcohol that are being judged.

Reds. Here, it's massive fruit, oak, weight, lushness, alcohol, tannin.

Exceptions. What about that lively little Muscadet that gives so much pleasure? What about that silly Beaujolais that most people would much rather drink than a 99-point California Cab? What about that ethereally light but haunting old red Rioja? Lower scores for all of them, I'm afraid. They don't fit the model. Forget the fact that they may be more delicious than the big guys. Definitely forget the fact that they may be a whole lot easier to match with food--and that some foods positively demand them. The model can't accommodate these wines. They'll take an 81 and they'll be happy with it.

Other Alternatives

I say if your palate is a kind of scale, and if pouring heavy wine on it makes the number on the scale climb and that makes you happy, by all means pay attention to the ratings. But I've got a better plan. Find yourself some writers who appreciate each wine for what it is, idiosyncratically, and understand what each wine might do for you at the table. Read their words. Love wine for its variety, not for its sameness. There are only ten numerals--but there are hundreds of thousands of wines.

-David Rosengarten