Ratings suck - 5 millionth verse same as the first

[Covert]

I thumbed through the new Wine Spectator today, which I still like for its profiles on people and regions. I loved that they profiled the pretty sommelier at my favorite restaurant, No. 9 Park, in Boston. But when I get to the ratings reports, I almost get sick. I know they don’t do an experienced wine drinker much good, but I am thinking they don’t do anyone a service.

The minute you tell somebody a wine is good, with, say 89 points, you are disavowing the personal relationship a person has with a wine, which is the magic for me. Nobody but a man dull of mind and spirit never finds a tart attractive when he is in a certain mood. Does he always admire only the likes of Kate Middleton or Kate Beckinsale? Moods change and so do girls and wines. A chubby girl warranting a Wine Spectator 79 might go to a summer camp and get all tanned and skinny, with her butt sticking out for the first time and her hair all over the place, looking sexy instead of like a helmet, and voila! she is hot!

Different “quality” wines go with different moods and through evolutions, like people. They are living organisms. I bought four 2001 Durfort Vivens because they were cheap and rated 82 by some rag, rather than in spite of the fact. An aristocrat can have a bad hair day, I thought. The first one tasted like what I might rate an 82. But the third, a few years later, was majestic, inspiring my wife to ask plaintively if there were more. One I said, but that was enough to elicit a beatific smile.

I know this is the oldest cliché in the world, that ratings are bullshit. But if we don’t keep saying it, blokes will live and die buying numbers instead of experiencing one of the great joys of wine, the Pas de deux to changing melodies.

[Carl Eppig]

Amen, and amen again!

[Richard Fadeley]

I would also agree with you, except for the fact that the ratings probably result in overall better quality wine than we would have otherwise. The low scoring wines that need more aging can be our little secret. To my pallet Parker's 88 and 89 pt. wines are typically my favorites, lower prices and lower alcohol. So don't rock the boat. Let them have fun, drive up the prices on the high alcohol wines, and we can be the "bottom feeders" persevering on the (wink-wink) lower scoring plonk.
Ratings have their place and without them there would be no Spectator, Enthusiast, or RP, but not something that I pay a lot of attention to. It's kind of like Walmart, too late to stop them now.

[Covert]

I would also agree with you, except for the fact that the ratings probably result in overall better quality wine than we would have otherwise. The low scoring wines that need more aging can be our little secret. To my pallet Parker's 88 and 89 pt. wines are typically my favorites, lower prices and lower alcohol. So don't rock the boat. Let them have fun, drive up the prices on the high alcohol wines, and we can be the "bottom feeders" persevering on the (wink-wink) lower scoring plonk.
Ratings have their place and without them there would be no Spectator, Enthusiast, or RP, but not something that I pay a lot of attention to. It's kind of like Walmart, too late to stop them now.

Yeah, like I guess you need shit to make mushrooms. But as in the case of mushrooms, novice wine drinkers are by ratings kept in the dark and fed shit. But, just like we need pesky drunk driving laws to keep the drunken maniacs somewhat in check, we need ratings, given the fact that many wine buyers follow them blindly, to keep some vintners trying. Parker was all that was needed for me, since I drink primarily Bordeaux. That's probably why I didn't at least think about your valid qualifing point when I wrote what I did.

[Covert]

Amen, and amen again!

Thanks, Carl. I like the way you guys in Maine think. I used to get there twice a year, but stopped making the trek when we bought our Adirondack camp. I need to just go.