The 100 Point Wine Rating System: Simple and Elegant

Wine Reviews and What They Mean

The 100 point wine rating system is fairly intuitive for most people; all they have to do is think of grade school and, immediately, the fundamental workings of the method are revealed:  higher scores are like an A+ and lower ones like an F (the range is 50 to 100—anything rated below 50 is probably not even wine).  This readily understood means of measuring a wine’s quality is convenient and straightforward for wine enthusiasts (whether amateur or expert) , but there are those who take issue with this way of conducting wine reviews and those who need to know exactly what it represents; and why it is still a very useful  guide to purchasing wine.

The Advantages of 100 Point Wine Rating System for Wine Reviews, and ‘Blind’ Tasting

A lot of present day wine reviews (i.e. those with the 50-100 scale) seem to rest on the shoulders of one man:  Robert Parker—an extremely well regarded wine-taster, which is what we hope he is if it is his system many use to judge a wine’s character.  Throughout his career as a wine-taster, he has repeatedly emphasized the need for a system that is both independent from the wine industry and is greatly flexible with its assignment of value judgments to its products.  Consider the difficulties with the following two scenarios.  

First, a taster who is paid to taste a wine by its very creators.  See the problem?  Someone is not very likely to be too critical in their review of a product when its makers are the ones paying him/her to review it to begin with.  Wouldn’t want to lose rapport, and therefore money in this case, would s/he?  Situations like these (essentially vested interests) are what Parker, along with others in the past and present, sought to expunge from the world of wine reviews.  They also led to the advent of blind tasting, a tasting in which the taster does not know the name or ingredients of the wine beforehand and must make his/her decision solely on, well, what s/he tastes.  Taste is all we want backing wine reviews right?

Second, a rating system whose range is limited to, say, 1-20.  There is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with a system that has a shorter interval of judgments, but it can significantly diminish the variety of judgments possible, which, in turn, can mean a lot in the dynamic realm of wines.  One (whether a pro-taster or consumer) has to ask herself/himself if such an interval is enough for a good wine review.  For some it is, and that is fine (it is quite popular among British wine reviewers).  For many (especially Mr. Parker) such a scale is too limiting and cannot capture enough of the nuances between one bottle and another.  Of course, no one wants a scale so large that it is virtually impossible to carry out wine reviews with it (think of the carnage a scale of 1-1000 would cause).

Wine Reviews Are Not Meant to Scare You from Your Tastes

Note that Robert Parker and other adherents of the 100 point wine rating system (or any wine rating system, really) do not see their judgments as unquestionable authority; they all know about subjectivity and its importance in wine reviews, but are also well aware of the value of informed opinion (if they weren’t, they wouldn’t bother with tasting or rating wines).  Since they are all experienced tasters, they and many wine enthusiasts find it convenient to have a means of conveying and understanding their opinions using a simple, elegant, elastic scale.  In short, the numbers are useful guidelines suggested by wine review professionals; they do not usually signify the end of discussion. 

Nevertheless, the 100 point rating system almost always enables reviewers to provide deep insight into just about any wine, and we are committed to ensuring that you have access to those wines which have been thoroughly examined and highly praised by the finest reviewers of the finest publications.  There is a reason why we started our 90 Pont Plus Wine Club! Enjoy!

Tags: 100 point wine rating system, wine rating system, Wine Review, Wine Reviews

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 10:26 am and is filed under Wine Business, Wine Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post