Jancis Robinson on Napa; 20 and 100 pt scoring system discussion

http://wine.appellationamerica.com/wine ... inson.html

Bob, a couple of thoughts:

1. I've never understood why a winemaker wouldn't label with a sub-AVA -- as a consumer, I know the AVA has to be on the label, and the sub-AVA just adds additional information. Why don't they?

2. Jancis is obviously struggling with scoring wines with numbers; here's a recent post on Purple:

I must say that the background to a wine is hugely important to me as part of my experience of it. I honestly believe that part of enjoying a wine is going halfway to meet it by understanding its context and judging it within that context. If you were simply to judge a glass of wine without knowing where it came from, then wouldn’t you run the risk of judging all wines using exactly the same criteria, measuring them up against some single ideal red and ideal white?

As for the pesky but probably necessary numbers themselves, in general I am pretty mean with my scores (out of 20 - I’m afraid I am just not used to a 100-point system). 18 signifies a humdinger. 19 denotes something truly exceptional. 15 is average but undistinguished. 16 is superior. 17 a definite cut above that. 12-13 is usually unbalanced or faulty in some way. 14 deadly dull or borderline unbalanced.

But in a way, I hope that my suggested drinking dates (which of course are just as subjective and open to question as my scores – and depend on the particular tasting on which they are based) are as useful as the scores themselves. Not just because I’m trying to save people opening bottles too early or too late, but to suggest the style of wine. While scoring the 2004 burgundies for example I find a wide variation in suggested drinking dates. I might score one red ‘17 Drink 2006-08’. This will be a wine that is already very delicious and fruity but certainly should not be kept; so it should probably be avoided by someone whose idea of red burgundy is a venerable, complex wine with considerable bottle age. They might actually prefer a wine about which I wrote ‘16 Drink 2012-18’ because they like particularly mature red burgundy.

I must say that the background to a wine is hugely important to me as part of my experience of it. I honestly believe that part of enjoying a wine is going halfway to meet it by understanding its context and judging it within that context. If you were simply to judge a glass of wine without knowing where it came from, then wouldn’t you run the risk of judging all wines using exactly the same criteria, measuring them up against some single ideal red and ideal white?

Of course, for many people, that is exactly the criteria they use, which comes down to "how good does it taste?". Certain moderators, even entire BBs, come to mind! Those who argue that blind tasting is the only true way to evaluate wine because 'it's about what's in the glass' do rather miss the point, I think. Taking it to the extreme, I would expect such people to only have one wine in their cellar. Yeah, I've got a cellar. Thirty five cases of 82 Mouton, because that's the best wine I ever tasted.

Blind tasting has its place - and it's largely to evaluate you, not the wine. If your pronouncement about a series of blind-tasted wines is merely to rank them in order of your taste preference, and then be curious to see how that differs from their price ranking, or someone's scores out of a hundred, then that seems only to be scraping the surface of the pleasure wine has to give.

The single thing that blind tasting any wine teaches me is how little I know about wine, which is why I don't do it that often, although I'd rather like to. You watch some of these MW types, and it's uncanny how closely they can pin down a wine to its origin on the basis of their observations.

In print, I rather like Jancis. She combines authority and self-deprecation in a way that conveys both experience and a sort of wide-eyed incredulity at the things that she finds. Reading her stuff feels rather like someone opening a series of boxes to show you - and share - their contents, as opposed to feeling that you're sitting in a church pew listening to a harangue from a dogmatist...
cheers,
Graeme

1. I've never understood why a winemaker wouldn't label with a sub-AVA -- as a consumer, I know the AVA has to be on the label, and the sub-AVA just adds additional information. Why don't they?

Bob,
I would say primarily for marketing regions. I know one wnry that uses (to their disadvantage IMHO) "Sierra Foothills" on their label instead of the more specific "Nevada Cnty" (which has no sub-AVAs I believe) because the think the (average/JoeBlow) consumer would think it comes from the state of Nevada, not Calif.
The "Wild Horse" AVA is often not used, I think, because it might cause confusion w/ Wild Horse wnry. Plus the "Wild Horse" AVA is hardly what I call a prestigious sub-AVA and NapaVlly has more cachet.
So I think there are some legitimate (marketing) reasons for not using sub-AVAs. Labels are not always created to satisfy us wine geeks.
Tom

2. Jancis is obviously struggling with scoring wines with numbers; here's a recent post on Purple:

As for the pesky but probably necessary numbers themselves, in general I am pretty mean with my scores (out of 20 - I’m afraid I am just not used to a 100-point system). 18 signifies a humdinger. 19 denotes something truly exceptional. 15 is average but undistinguished. 16 is superior. 17 a definite cut above that. 12-13 is usually unbalanced or faulty in some way. 14 deadly dull or borderline unbalanced.

For some of us that have the 20-point system in-grained, it's not that easy to switch to the 100-point system. One of the reasons I don't like it, is because people who have historically have used the 20-point system use some kind of conversion to get to 100 points - but person A's conversion may be different to person B's conversion.

I understand the difference between 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and 14. I wish I understood the difference between 95, 94, 93, 92, and 91.

I hope Jancis never switches.

BTW, the 20-point system is what is used in wine shows in NZ and Australia, with 18.5 the lowest score a wine can get to receive a gold medal or 5-star rating. I wish I knew where the perceived delineation was between silver and gold was in the 100 point system (but then who's 100-point system???). I bet Jancis does too.

Like Jancis, I don't usually assign scores in my general writing, which has definitely been a wrong decision, given that today everyone is points crazy. I believe it is you people in the USA - both consumers and marketers that want the scores. Here it is more the marketers that want the scores. That way the carefully thought out and penned wine description can be dispensed with and we end up with wine, score and sometimes the actual reviewer's name.

From the article "And Robinson admits, “Wine doesn't submit very happily to scores, but I realize people making buying decisions are in a hurry … We live in a very impatient age.”

That sums it up rather succinctly I feel.

[David M. Bueker]

I have been "forced", due to a tasting group I have been in for 10 years, to use a 20 point system. It has only reinforced the complete incompatibility of the 20 and 100 point systems for me. If you have done one it's really hard to move over to the other.

All that said...consider this:

I actually think the 20 point system is really a 16 point system where each point is actually a half point. Once you hit 12 it's pretty much down the drain, so 0-12 is irrelevant. The 100 point system used to run about 25 points back in the old days when Parker used and published some pretty low scores. Now, due to consumer pressure, it's just around a 15 point scale with 85+ being recommended. So if you're looking for translation I just go like so:

12 (84), 12.5 (85), 13 (86), 13.5 (87), 14 (88) and so on up to the high numbers of 19 (98), 19.5 (99) and 20 (100).

Not exact, especially at the lower end, but it works for me in a pinch.

But I do really hate scoring.

Blind tasting has its place - and it's largely to evaluate you, not the wine. If your pronouncement about a series of blind-tasted wines is merely to rank them in order of your taste preference, and then be curious to see how that differs from their price ranking, or someone's scores out of a hundred, then that seems only to be scraping the surface of the pleasure wine has to give.

The single thing that blind tasting any wine teaches me is how little I know about wine, which is why I don't do it that often, although I'd rather like to. You watch some of these MW types, and it's uncanny how closely they can pin down a wine to its origin on the basis of their observations.

In print, I rather like Jancis. She combines authority and self-deprecation in a way that conveys both experience and a sort of wide-eyed incredulity at the things that she finds. Reading her stuff feels rather like someone opening a series of boxes to show you - and share - their contents, as opposed to feeling that you're sitting in a church pew listening to a harangue from a dogmatist...
cheers,
Graeme

Graeme,

For me the ideal is being able to fairly reliably identify wines blind (major wine types, anyway), and to taste wines in similar groups 'single blind,' but to drink looking at the label. I don't think we really start to challenge ourselves in tasting until we do some blind tasting, it's too easy to allow what we know to influence what we're tasting.

Jancis is my hero.

I have been "forced", due to a tasting group I have been in for 10 years, to use a 20 point system. It has only reinforced the complete incompatibility of the 20 and 100 point systems for me. If you have done one it's really hard to move over to the other.

All that said...consider this:

I actually think the 20 point system is really a 16 point system where each point is actually a half point. Once you hit 12 it's pretty much down the drain, so 0-12 is irrelevant. The 100 point system used to run about 25 points back in the old days when Parker used and published some pretty low scores. Now, due to consumer pressure, it's just around a 15 point scale with 85+ being recommended. So if you're looking for translation I just go like so:

12 (84), 12.5 (85), 13 (86), 13.5 (87), 14 (88) and so on up to the high numbers of 19 (98), 19.5 (99) and 20 (100).

Not exact, especially at the lower end, but it works for me in a pinch.

But I do really hate scoring.

David,
I really can't see an 85 translating to 12.5. This is verging on undrinkable in my book - yet as you say, 85+ is recommended. This has to equate to commercially acceptable, may be just short of a bronze medal in a show? Or a low bronze in a show? Or is it higher?
I see it as a curve on a graph, where at 85 the slope starts to increase gradually but near the upper 90's it is steep.

BTW I've scored wines lower than 12 when judging in wine shows. The aggregate score gets back to the winemaker, so hopefully they will realise there is something disgustingly wrong with their wine. Too often, though, they have are so used to drinking it, they can't see the wood for the trees.

What I want to know, in the 100-point system, is where is the cut off for gold, silver and bronze as I know it. Then I could start to make some sense out of it.

I'd like to know how Jancis would do the conversion, if she had to.

[David M. Bueker]

David,
I really can't see an 85 translating to 12.5. This is verging on undrinkable in my book - yet as you say, 85+ is recommended. This has to equate to commercially acceptable, may be just short of a bronze medal in a show? Or a low bronze in a show? Or is it higher?
I see it as a curve on a graph, where at 85 the slope starts to increase gradually but near the upper 90's it is steep.

BTW I've scored wines lower than 12 when judging in wine shows. The aggregate score gets back to the winemaker, so hopefully they will realise there is something disgustingly wrong with their wine. Too often, though, they have are so used to drinking it, they can't see the wood for the trees.

What I want to know, in the 100-point system, is where is the cut off for gold, silver and bronze as I know it. Then I could start to make some sense out of it.

I'd like to know how Jancis would do the conversion, if she had to.

Well when you look at it in the way the scores are received it makes perfect sense. An 85 is the death knell for a wine in the commercial marketplace. Might as well be a 12.5.

As for the medals - I habven't done enough show judging to know the cutoff in the 20 point system, so you would have to fill me in on that. Alternatively are there any Riesling shows coming up in NZ? Perhaps a trade association could fly me to NZ as a judge.

Bob Parsons,

Thanks for the pointer to the article. Some thoughts:

Suppose the wine pundit being interviewed had been Robert Parker or Hugh Johnson or some other male. Would the reporter have bothered to describe how he was dressed?

As to the main question of why sub-AVAs aren't appearing on labels, I can think of two possible reasons off hand: (1) They don't have any name recognition with most of the wine-drinking public yet. I certainly don't know anything about any of the sub-AVAs of Napa, other than that some of them exist. (2) Perhaps wineries don't want to be geographically pinned down in this way. If they don't advertise the sub-AVA, they are free to buy fruit from a grower in a different sub-AVA if they wish, without having to change their label.

If (2) is the case, maybe it means that the sub-AVAs are a sham, anyway, and there isn't sufficient differentiation between them and the wines they produce (i.e., no terroir). Perhaps the TTB realizes this or suspects it, and that's why they've put a moratorium on creating any new ones.

-Paul W.

I am amazed at JR's mild response to the question about ripeness and balance, although I quite agree with her about a touch of herbaceousness being 'refreshing.' Anyone who likes Loire reds would tend to agree.

Well when you look at it in the way the scores are received it makes perfect sense. An 85 is the death knell for a wine in the commercial marketplace. Might as well be a 12.5.

Really! an 85 wine is perceived that badly!!!!

As for the medals - I haven't done enough show judging to know the cutoff in the 20 point system, so you would have to fill me in on that.

Wines judged out of 20 in half point increments. Supposed to be colour - 3, aroma - 7, taste - 10 but after you've been doing for years, you get a feel where a wine sits in the scale.
15.5, 16, 16.5 = bronze
17, 17.5, 18 = silver
18.5 and over = gold.

Usually the three senior judges scores on the panel are aggregated, so
46.5 to 50.5 = bronze.
51 to 55= silver
55.5 to 60 = gold

Alternatively are there any Riesling shows coming up in NZ? Perhaps a trade association could fly me to NZ as a judge.

None in NZ - but there is the International Riesling Challenge in Australia.
http://www.rieslingchallenge.com. Robin knows the Chief Judge.

Bob Parsons,

Thanks for the pointer to the article. Some thoughts:

Suppose the wine pundit being interviewed had been Robert Parker or Hugh Johnson or some other male. Would the reporter have bothered to describe how he was dressed?

I hope so!

An 85 is the death knell for a wine in the commercial marketplace.

Doesn't seem to have done Yellowtail much harm.

[David M. Bueker]

An 85 is the death knell for a wine in the commercial marketplace.

Doesn't seem to have done Yellowtail much harm.

Ask ten fans of Yellowtail "Who is Robert Parker?" 9 or 10 will answer: "You mean the novelist?"

An 85 is the death knell for a wine in the commercial marketplace.

Doesn't seem to have done Yellowtail much harm.

Ask ten fans of Yellowtail "Who is Robert Parker?" 9 or 10 will answer: "You mean the novelist?"

Quite.

Well when you look at it in the way the scores are received it makes perfect sense. An 85 is the death knell for a wine in the commercial marketplace. Might as well be a 12.5.

Really! an 85 wine is perceived that badly!!!!

Sue,

The joke in the American wine trade is that the 100-point scale (which is really a 51-point scale, since 50 is the lowest possible score) is really a 10-point scale, running from 85-95. With a score below 85, a wine's impossible to sell. With a score of 95 or above, a wine's impossible to obtain.

-Paul W.

Sue,

The joke in the American wine trade is that the 100-point scale (which is really a 51-point scale, since 50 is the lowest possible score) is really a 10-point scale, running from 85-95. With a score below 85, a wine's impossible to sell. With a score of 95 or above, a wine's impossible to obtain.

-Paul W.

LOL - Thanks, Paul.

The more ironic that, according to friend who is a veteran wine judge at public tastings and historian of wine criticism, "100-point" wine rating schemes came to notable use in Australia before they were introduced to the US by Robert Parker a couple of decades ago. (I don't have further details handy on the Australian part.)

The more ironic that, according to friend who is a veteran wine judge at public tastings and historian of wine criticism, "100-point" wine rating schemes came to notable use in Australia before they were introduced to the US by Robert Parker a couple of decades ago. (I don't have further details handy on the Australian part.)

All hail Dan Murphy, a proponent of the 100 point scale a quarter of a century before Parker adopted it.

In terms of equating different methods of scoring, I like the table drawn up by Geoff Kelly, as well as his comments on what a wine score actually means, including wines below 85 points.

Mike

All hail Dan Murphy, a proponent of the 100 point scale a quarter of a century before Parker adopted it.

It'd be interesting to see more written also on what I gather was the well-established Australian 100-point scoring custom.

Parker certainly helped popularize 100-point scoring in the US. (I saw it spread to some other US wine publications as Parker's popularity grew in the 1980s.) But even with a large previous history, experience argues that no amount of writing will dispel a notion that Parker fundamentally pioneered 100-point wine scoring. (Well-informed writing has done little, after all, to change a US popular notion that Julia Child "introduced" the country to French cooking, or made it approachable for the first time. That's a pretty stark misconception, given the long series of best-selling US authors on French cooking from early 19th century right up to Julia's time. What she did of course was put it on TV, so that "US TV cooking personality" was what she more accurately pioneered. "Celebrity Chef" doesn't quite fit, because she wasn't a chef, as she said defensively when the point came up, though she made no recorded objection that I know of to being titled "French Chef" for years on TV.)

All hail Dan Murphy, a proponent of the 100 point scale a quarter of a century before Parker adopted it.

It'd be interesting to see more written also on what I gather was the well-established Australian 100-point scoring custom.

If you click on Dan Murphy in my earlier post it will take you to a post on my blog about Murphy and the 100 point system he used to assess wines in Australia.

In brief, Dan Murphy wrote a book titled A Guide to Wine Tasting (Sun Books, Melbourne, 1977). Chapter Fourteen is devoted to Score Cards. In discussing examples of existing score cards, Murphy wrote “Many judges in various countries think that a scale of 100 has its value, since a judge may include far more individual facets of the wines and allot points (or subtract them) accordingly. This may help his accuracy and consistency.”

He then went on, in Figures 7 through 13, to show “a series of score cards which I have used in my business for twenty-five years and which I find useful also for scoring wines at shows.”

Although Murphy had been using a 100 point system since the early 1950's its not clear who first used 100 points to score wine. Additionally, Murphy had subtly different scoring systems for different wine styles. Placing more (or less) emphasis (read points) on the attributes of a wine style may make sense but its probably far to complicated for many of the wine critics of today! Hence the current 100 point format is more popular and if I remember correctly (from a certain book) the greatest proponent no longer scores attributes independently, instead a number just forms in his mind.

Mike

In terms of equating different methods of scoring, I like the table drawn up by Geoff Kelly, as well as his comments on what a wine score actually means, including wines below 85 points.
Mike

Now Geoff Kelly's table is something I can relate to. Still I'm surprised that 85 is as high as a 'silver'.

Incidentally, the Air New Zealand Wine Awards (judged at beg. of November) lifted the minimum points for a bronze medal rating to 16 point, this year. They want the 'bronze' to have more meaning. They are not bad wines, they are not wines that should not be dissed. They are wines that do have some redeeming features, they are fine wines for Joe Public. Geoff mentions different rating between critics. So one person's 85 could be another's 78, it seems. Still perfectly drinkable.

Sue wrote;
“I really can't see an 85 translating to 12.5. This is verging on undrinkable in my book………”

Sue can you please give us your “break down” of the scores in your 20 point scale.

Score range Extraordinary
Score range Excellent
Score range Good (above average)
So on

Salute