Category: OP-ED

To be honest, the relationship between us, the industry, and the wine press has been a varied one over our three (plus) decades.  We started Winex (such as it is) in 1982, roughly about the time The Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator gained substantial enough readership and influence to ‘move the needle’ with respect to sales of a particular wine.  The emerging, expanding wine-drinking population was looking for guidelines to help them select from among the increasing array of wines in the marketplace.  These two publications in particular were in the right place at the right time with formats that were palatable enough to generate substantial followings.  In turn, those ‘followers’ began to have more impact on the marketplace as they reacted to reviews and bought up the lauded wines.

Now that we are about 35 years into this process, and possibly witnessing a change in the landscape, it seemed a reasonable time to assess where we are.  It started simple enough with the reviewers giving their opinions about various wines they tasted, and people heeding that advice.  As a greater number of people started to follow these scribes, the intensity of the reaction elevated.  A big review was like that proverbial magnifying glass focusing the ‘rays’ of demand into a white hot flashpoint that burned up the existing supplies of showcased vinos faster and faster.

The industry had the opportunity to hold their own in the face of this growing phenomenon, but instead largely accepted that it was easier to just paste up reviews than generate their own sales programs.  For most of the time since, buying and selling based on reviews was the only program for most retailers.  Still is.  Exploring most wine web sites, you will find cut-and-paste reviews almost exclusively on most, and virtually no original text.

The introduction of the internet increased the power of the press and made their chosen sites more accessible more quickly.  The whole buying/selling process became much quicker accordingly.  What took a particular wine a few weeks to sell through before could now sometimes go from start to finish in an hour or two thanks to the internet.

The wholesalers/wineries/importers, reacting to getting blindsided by people buying up reviewed wines (and nothing else) did what they always do…overreacted.  Tie-ins (which aren’t technically legal) and abuse of the ‘allocation’ process were chosen as the best defensive tools for purveyors to make sure peole don’t corner too many of the ‘cherries’.  That is loosely where we are today, although it has been a little easier to get some of the high-demand, highly reviewed goods simply because the market is so fiercely competitive thanks to greater variety, higher quality of goods, and a much more widely educated buying public.

As most of you that have followed Winex over the years, we are about as fiercely independent as a merchant can be today.  The wine writers’ hype is a tool for us to use when we like something to get the message to buyers.  But they have never been something to be blindly followed without question.  We have turned down many wines over the years that we could have sold through in a nano-second simply because we don’t think the wines are good enough.  We have had a love/hate relationship with the press for all of these years, which we will explain in a minute.

First let’s give credit where it is due.  The reason that we have a more educated wine-buying population these days can be attributed to a large extent to the wine press, which has explored, explained, and helped develop a broader understanding and appreciation of a number of genres that were not en vogue back in the early days.  People are aware of, and more comfortable with a much wider range of wines than ever before and, because of that, are presented with even more to choose from by virtue of that broader receptiveness.  A lot of this can be credited to the press covering those formerly off-the-beaten-path categories and educating the consumer.  If you write it they will read?

Also the press has revved up the discovery process.  It took years for a brand to develop in the marketplace, even decades.  But a new wine or winery can be an instant icon with some timely press coverage and a couple of big scores.  Yes the ‘waters’ run faster in today’s wine news cycle and things can pass by rather quickly.  But there is plenty to be had if you swim fast enough, and really even if you don’t.

Our point is that, while we sometimes get a little miffed with the wine press, and have pointed out a number of things we see as flaws in the ‘process’, in all fairness they have been a big part of the development of the wine market over the past quarter century.  Now that there are a few more players in the ratings game we’ll see how it shakes out.  More opinions shouldn’t hurt the message, though it could dilute the impact of a particular review.

That being said, we felt the need to mention a couple of things to the writers themselves.  We would ask the banal question ‘who pays your salary?’  Consumers and the trade presumably are using ratings services to help them evaluate choices in the marketplace.  Do they have the same objectives?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  But the ‘why?’ isn’t the issue.  So much stuff hits the market every year at such a high rate, every byte of usable information can help sort it out.   It is the definition of ‘usable’ that we are debating today.

We were reading the Wine Spectator the other day and happened to notice their review of the 2014 Ramonet Montrachet at 98 points.  The piece stated that ten cases were imported.  You can only imagine our relief at knowing that someone had tasted one of the rarest and most collectable white wines in the world, in an outstanding vintage, and deemed it worthy.  We can rest secure in the knowledge that if we had $1100 to drop on a single bottle of Chardonnay (if you could even get it for that) and could find one of the remaining 119 bottles that came into the U.S., it would be OK to pull the trigger.   Is this usable knowledge?

We can say the same thing about a number of other highly reviewed icon wines.  Does it really matter to anyone if Sine Qua Non gets a 98 or 100?  OK maybe to Manfred Krankl, though the guy doesn’t really need the hype to sell wine any more.  It might matter to the few guys that buy wines like that to ‘flip’ so they can seek a higher resale return.  But to most folks, what is the message?  That the reviewer got to taste the wines and you didn’t?  That you should start thinking about getting on the waiting list to be on the waiting list?  Is this usable knowledge for most folks?

We grabbed a few ‘special report’ titles from Wine Advocate to further illustrate our point:

–A Retrospective of Barone Ricasoli’s Vin Santo del Chianti Classico -30 tasting notes

–Sunday Prayers with Trotanoy 18 tasting notes

–Tenuta San Guido – Bolgheri Sassicaia Retrospective 47 tasting notes

–Chateau Montrose 1893 – 2014 62 tasting notes

–Valandraud Complete- 45 tasting notes

–2007 Southern Rhônes – Living Up to the Hype at Age Ten?  192 tasting notes

–Bordeaux: The Pauillac of Margaux – Brane-Cantenac 1971-2013

It didn’t take long to get that list, and we could dig deeper into multiple publications and create the ‘mother of all lists’ regarding this sort of thing, but the point is that the information in many of those articles isn’t necessarily actionable or of any real value to most readers in a conventional context.

Is there an audience for these pieces or is it writer’s self-indulgence?  If you are telling me in detail about wines I have little likelihood of seeing, let alone tasting, how am I enriched?  By sharing in your experience vicariously?  Thanks a bunch.  I would question how many subscribers were actually seeking this kind of information when they signed up.  But since the publication already has the money, readers don’t have a lot of say about they are being served.

There will be arguments that these kinds of tastings augment the tasters’ experience and therefore their ability to assess wines oveerall.  Street cred.  To that we would rebut that such experiences can have just the opposite affect and jade the palate beyond reason and make everything else such people taste seem ordinary.  We know people like that.

A ‘consumer report’ that delivers the message that virtually everything is banal or ordinary, except a few things that you likely can’t buy, doesn’t really help those consumers very much.  Yet this is the direction such publications seem to be leaning over the last few years in particular.  If writers view their role as being the de facto sales department for winery-only, boutique wines or the guy with the 119 bottles of Montrachet, let them pay you, too.

We say to the wine press, come down off your high horse.  Reviewing page after page of wines that most folks will never see, except at a restaurant at three times an already hefty price doesn’t benefit most consumers.  Climb down out of your high castle and be among the little people.  We drink pretty well ourselves and still think a lot of this stuff you writers do is indulgent and over the top.  What’s next?  Jayer Cros Parantoux vertical?  The 1947 Bordeaux 70 years on?  Favorite 5-case production wines? We’re sure it will make for compelling reading, but really what is the point?

Simply, when writers take up space with this kind of stuff, we don’t believe they are serving the best interests of the majority of their clients.  We can say for ourselves that we read much less in these publications than we used to.  Are we jealous?  Would we like to get paid for our detailed notes on the 1985 Romanee Conti lineup?  Sure!  But we can’t imagine who would pay for that, nor do we really need such info from somebody else.  It is more likely, if we adopted that business model, we’d end up on a freeway off-ramp with a cardboard sign that says, “will pontificate for food.”

 

 

 

 

It has been almost a half century since a guy named Antinori decided that the ‘rules’ in Chianti were far too restrictive.  The rules were put into place to prevent people from cutting corners and, in so doing, protect the appellation.  In the case of this producer, they turned out to be counter-productive.  The Antinoris were looking to reach beyond the appellation with better grape blends and a more refined barrel regimen.  The ‘appellation police’ essentially said ‘no’, that Antinori had to conform to the rules of the DOC if he wanted to identify with Chianti.  He said no, and the rest is history.

To Antinori the existing narrow boundary for winemaking and requirement to use certain ‘second tier’ varietals in the wine, were a severe handicap.  Since he felt constrained by following the rules, he said ‘forget it!’, essentially causing the ‘super Tuscan’ category to emerge. But the wine industry thrives on tradition, and breaking out of the ‘beaten path’ is harder than it would appear.

Antinori was a rebel, and his challenge of the status quo was legendary. But the wine industry is not afraid to change in many ways.  There are constant discussions about various techniques of winemaking, viticulture…how to make better wine, how to grow better grapes, etc.  But as far as questioning the very ‘definitions’ and ‘guidelines’ by which appellations are defined…revolts such as Antinori’s have been historically rare.

That said, there is a significant uprising going on in Spain that not a lot of folks have heard much about.  True there are a lot of rumblings in Spain these days about a lot of things9.  In the area of Catalunia in the northeast, which was an independent kingdom for a couple of centuries, there have been definitely been aspirations to secede from Spain proper.  Heck, the Basques to the north act like an independent country to some extent.  There has long been ‘turbulence’ in Spain, but nothing thus far has actually gone beyond that.  But there are disturbances in Spain, specifically Rioja, that threaten to significantly alter the modus operandi of the region.

A long-simmering conflict in Rioja kind of erupted when Bodegas y Vinedos Artadi announced its “decision to leave the Consejo Regulador of the D.O.C Rioja,” the region’s governing organization.  Artadi was founded in 1985 by a group of vintners led by Juan Carlos López de Lacalle and is located in the village of Laguardia, part of the Rioja Alavesa subregion.   We have sold Artadi for a long time (since the early 2000s) and they have never really marketed under the ‘traditional’ banner.  But eschewing the regional banner is a new twist.

The bodega has focused more on origin (bottling a number of single-vineyard wines, including its flagship El Pison) than on the common Rioja designations of Crianza, Reserva and Gran Reserva. Artadi isn’t the only winery to do that. Muga, for example, makes a couple of wines that don’t follow the specific guideline of the appellation.  They don’t use the ‘official’ nomenclature, however.  They simply give those less traditional bottlings other names like Torre Muga and Seleccion that don’t confuse themselves with the ‘traditional’ designations that Muga also produces, and they still call everything ‘Rioja’.

What makes the move by Artadi notable is that, moving forward, their wines will not say Rioja on them at all!   According to the article we read, Lopez de Lacale says he is not trying to be a revolutionary.  In fact, in his mind, he isn’t doing anything different at all!  He was quoted as saying, “We would like to highlight that there is no change in our project…We will keep betting on the land and the vineyard as the main sources of value for our wines.”

Senor Lopez de Lacale claims he isn’t trying to lead a secessionist movement.  But it is a pretty major move to buck a century plus of tradition without a clear end game.  His wines aren’t going to say Rioja on them.  So what are they? The Riojanos have put in more than a century of work to get their region’s identity established in the world market.  A number of large concerns are benefitting from that identity, and the region seems to have made some real progress over the last decade or so in raising awareness.

Now what?  Where does it go from here? Is Artadi a ‘lone wolf’ or will more bodegas follow the Artadi lead, and to what end?  There are a lot of issues swirling around, and it is unlikely that a solution that will garner widespread support can be cobbled soon given the range of diverse range of concerns that seem to be at the heart of the matter.  There don’t seem to be any easy answers.

Part of the problem is philosophical. Rioja’s classification system permits only one geographical indication… Rioja.  That works as long as everybody is on board and all of the ‘players’ conform at least to the task of solidarity in representing the region.  Rioja has done a lot to elevate itself in the international wine market.  That solidarity of image has been a key part of the program.  Sure there are some mavericks that experiment with more modernist approaches to winemaking, but all under the “Rioja’ banner.

But there are forces that are pushing for a more specific identity within the region as a whole.  Telmo Rodriguez, a highly visible winemaker who has projects all over Spain, has been advocating implementation of a “village” appellation system (a la Burgundy) in Rioja for years. In January, El Grupo Rioja, the largest association of wineries in the region, issued a proposal to move in this direction, including formalization of criteria for village and single-vineyard designations!  A ‘Grand Cu’ map for Rioja in other words.

Also, Rioja’s three sub-regions (Rioja Alavesa, Rioja Alta and Rioja Baja) have been looking towards an opportunity to express their own specific areas beyond the simple catch-all ‘Rioja’ appellation.  According to an article in Wine Spectator, the Alavesa region (located within the very independent Basque area) wants to put the Rioja Alaveza designation on bottles.  In June 2015, 120 bodegas in the Alavesa region requested permission to add this indication to their labels, and officials in the Basque government have indicated their support.

Finally, the folks in Rioja have worked long and hard to create an international image for themselves.  They seem to be finally getting to a good place and a number of their ‘native sons’ are doing better than ever.  Is it worth blowing the economics of a united thrust for the sake of individualism? The largest bodegas have also built worldwide brands based largely on multi-regional blends of vineyards from all over Rioja.  If Rioja becomes a subservient appellation to, say, Rioja Alavesa, where are they left in the consumers view?

If a bunch of bodegas, arguably some of the more prestigious ones among them, eschew the Rioja handle altogether for something like Rioja Alavesa or Rioja Alta, or even something more specific like Logronio or La Guardia, where does it end?  What does that do to Rioja’s larger marketing thrust?  Most important, how will consumers, many of whom are just recently coming to grips with Rioja and loving it, deal with the confusion this kind of ‘upheaval’ can create?

“Clarity” is important part of the wine experience.  A lot of people like to be comfortable with regions and varietals before they settle in with the genre.  If things happen that cloud the identity of the region in the consumers mind, or a lot of big names back out of using the appellation name, it could undo a lot of what Rioja has done to elevate itself in the wine market over the last decade.

By the same token, how do the secessionists garner any kind of attention for themselves?  We are reminded of one of our favorite Spanish producers, Mauro, who hail from the Ribera del Duero adjacent, nebulously defined (in consumers’ minds) Vinos de Tierra y Leon.  The Garcia family makes killer wines here, but they don’t necessarily fall into a category that gets reviewed by a majority of the pundits.  They are technically ‘other Spanish wines’. So their name doesn’t get in front of consumers as much the wine merits simply because they are effectively independents.

The same would happen with those Rioja guys that aren’t calling it Rioja.  There isn’t a ‘category’ for ‘folks in Rioja that aren’t calling themselves Rioja’.  The whole fuss causes would-be buyers to have a more muddled picture of what the region, and the wines, are about. That is usually not a positive from a marketing and imagery perspective.

It is possible that, ultimately, a terroir-centric orientation might play better with the wine cognoscenti.  But it would involve a bit of back-tracking in re-educating people to the new terminology and the more specific landscape in Rioja. They make a lot of wine in Rioja, and something that undermines the broad message of Rioja would seem to be something to avoid.

Granted those rebels in Tuscany ended up creating a whole new category (‘super Tuscans’) that has elevated the whole region.  But it is important to note that those wines are typically estate, rather than regionally focused.  It’s ‘Tignanello’ or ‘Orenellaia’ that most people know, not the dirt they sit on.  Yes, Burgundy is a terroir focused region.  But it has taken centuries to develop the vineyard framework and most people still don’t understand it.  So if you like confusion, you already have Burgundy for that.

Rioja has never outwardly been about site specifics.  We don’t deny the importance of the terroir with something very specific like Senorio de San Vincente.  But they still call themselves Rioja.   We can’t really contemplate all of the complications that might occur down the road, particularly for Artadi who is the one pushing the issue.

We understand the independent spirit of Artadi, Rioja Alavesa, and Basque country.  We get the idea that the winery feels site specificity is important to their program.  As independent types ourselves, we admire their courage.  But having pioneered a number of genres ourselves over the years and taught consumers about all kinds of things they were not familiar with.  We are well aware of how difficult the education process can be even when it is relatively straight forward.  There can be wine-speak, curious foreign words, maps, and all manner of ‘information’ that isn’t necessarily easily digestible.

We also know the more complicated the explanation, the smaller the audience will be at the end.  As students of business, we have to wonder what the long term benefit for this kind of ‘declaration of independence’ is, and what kind of marketing mess it will create if more people follow suit.

 

Global warming and its effect are a concern worldwide.  Whether you choose to believe it is caused by greenhouse gasses, or is simply a part of some 10,000 year weather cycle, or choose to ignore it altogether, the effects are the same and the proof is there.  Yeah, polar ice caps melting and oceans rising is bad stuff.  But the problem isn’t right now, it is moving forward.  If the warming continues, the effects are serious.  But we aren’t scientists and can’t speak to the array of problems that will from temperatures continuing to edge up unabated.  We can relate it to wine, though.

If you go back in time, the greatest wine sites established themselves by virtue of quality.  But quality, while accepting terroir is a significant aspect of the process, doesn’t happen if the grapes don’t get ripe.  Incumbent in a site’s success is the ability to ripen grapes properly on a consistent basis.  The Piemontese, a generally practical people, figured out that the best sites for growing top grapes would be where the snow melted first.  We suspect the monks used similar wisdom way-back-when to figure out the whole Burgundy scheme.  The problem with global warming is that the successful sites, the ones with the greatest exposure, will get too much exposure.  They will be too warm.

But thus far that hasn’t been a serious issue.  How many times has a vintage like 2003 in Europe, with the extreme blazing temperatures, come along?  The rest of the time, the weather has been pretty friendly and we have experienced consistent strings of quality vintages in many important regions.  Sure there are inopportune rain storms and occasions where the grapes had a little difficulty getting fully ripe.  But the batting average has gone way up over the last 20 years.

Red Bordeaux perhaps provides the handiest example.  Let’s go back to the 20 year span from 1961 to 1981. During the period 1960, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1974, and 1977 were complete stinkers.  Beyond that 1964 was a half vintage (Right Bank, yes, Left Bank not so much), 1967 was nothing to write home about, and 1980 yielded a few forgettable early drinkers that were saved by emerging technology to an extent.  In other words, the sweeping generality was that more than half the vintages ranged from ‘not-very-good’ to ‘downright crummy’.

It got a little better over the next two decades, but there were still some serious misses (1984, 1987, 1991, 1992 and 1997) and a couple more (1993, 1994) in the ‘meh’ column.  Since 2000, how many truly bad vintages have there been?  Maybe two (2013 and 2007 though the Bordelais might argue 2013 is ‘useful’ and we’d add that the problem with 2007 was the prices more than the wines themselves)?  During that same period there have been 5-7 ‘vintages of the century’ (depending on how tough you want to be) and 4-5 others that would have caused dancing in the streets back in the ‘dark times’ of the 60s-70s.

Technology has had a hand in all of it, for sure.  But the point is that there hasn’t been as much need for the ‘magic’.  It has been a pretty good run thanks in part to global warming.  The batting average has been quite good in a number of prestige regions for a period of time.  So, tongue-in-cheek, we say ‘yeah’ to global warming.  It has been “berry, berry good” to the wine world thus far.  Ice has been a much more significant issue.  Frost and hail have had much more significant impact than heat in some key places.

There has been a lot of talk about frost this year in particular as one of the occurrences devastated vineyards in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Northern Italy, and Spain.  The Loire has been a particular ‘whipping boy’ of the inclement weather turns.  There have been ice issues (frost, hail) seemingly on a regular basis.  The Loire claimed 70% crop losses in 2016, and took a pretty good beating this again year.  To make a point, here’s a quote from Wine Spectator attributed to said Guillaume Lapaque, director of the Indre-et-Loire and Sarthe wine federation, which represents 600 vintners, “Montlouis has lost three of its last five crops”.

The effect of frost and hail are devastating not only for the short-term but possibly beyond.  When a frost comes, it freezes whatever has grown on the vines, be that new buds in early April or established flower/fruit growth in June or July.  It disrupts the ripening cycle, sets back the plant, and, if it is severe enough, will even kill the vine.  The afflicted areas certainly will not recover for this harvest and possibly not the next.

The effect of hail is different, but no less devastating.  Essentially hail hitting a vine can knock off all the growth and even shred the leaves and canes in severe cases.   It’s like getting pummeled by thousands of little rocks, which isn’t a positive at any time during the growing cycle.  It damagges by virtue of knocking off the flowers or nascent fruit in the early stages of the plant cycle or damaging the fruit later on which, if it doesn’t destroy it outright, will open the path to all kinds of diseases.

A hailstorm, in August mind you, decimated 50,000 hectares in Burgundy and Bordeaux in 2013.  Guys in the Languedoc were cruising along just fine until a freak hailstorm wiped out 2500 acres in about a half hour.  Chablis got hit hard last year.  There are countless more stories, but the point is heat so far has not been the enemy.  Overall it seems vintages have improved some or at least become more consistent.  It’s the cold snaps that cause the serious problems and it seems we hear more reports of such things over the last few years.  This year in Europe has been something of a freak show for all kinds of ‘cold’ blights.

It is possible there is a connection to global warming and altered weather patterns, but we certainly don’t know enough to make that point if we wanted to.  The thing is that, unless you read the wine magazines pretty religiously, you wouldn’t necessarily know any of this was going on.  The vintage charts don’t tell you this.  In fact, an area that was hit hard early on in the harvest cycle can still produce a high quality crop and the vintage chart may look rosy because what little wine was made was quite good because of the Nature induced reduction of yields.  But there can be a lot less wine. Significant crop loss can leave the grower with devastating financial shortfalls.  Also, it is more likely to hit the smaller, artisan type producers we like to work with than some large corporate wine concern with economies of scale.

Global warming hasn’t destroyed grape-growers livelihoods that we know of as yet.  In fact the consistency of vintages over the last couple of decades might suggest that, thus far, it has been a plus for growers.  But there are some vintners in serious financial straits thanks to these little icy ‘surprises’ that seem to be happening with a bit more regularity.  It is hard not to feel for people whose anticipated income was ripped away without warning, and losing big chunks of quality juice does cause a ripple in the industry supply chain and can affect prices in an unwelcome way.

Yeah, global warming is a problem for a lot of reasons, particularly moving forward (though we did read about a company claiming to have the technology to mitigate greenhouse gasses the other day).  But as far as wine goes, we are presently much more concerned about the viticultural and economic effects of the ‘ice’ than the ‘fire’.

In an article in the newspaper the other day (yes, some of us still read those), there was a discussion about how much films have depended on reviews to generate interest.  The piece was making the point that box office receipts, in fact the difference between success and failure for newly released motions pictures, was predicated directly on receiving positive reviews.  Reviews have had an impact on a lot of things over the years…movies, restaurants, books, and, of course, fermented beverages.  But the gist of this article was that, these days, reviews are pretty much a life and death proposition for films.

Is this really news?  People are busier and the competition for consumer dollars is fierce.  There are so many choices for virtually everything, and consumers, faced with making decisions about entertainment, dining, appliances, etc., like to have someone to turn to for advice more than ever.  The critic fills that role and is put in a position of elevated power as a tastemaker these days.  It has to be frustrating (to say the least) for a studio to invest millions (tens of millions?, hundreds of millions?) into a picture or TV series only to have the whole thing derailed by a couple of bad reviews.  Talk about life on the edge.  But while this may be a frightening scenario to Hollywood types, all we in the wine biz can say is, ‘Welcome to our world’.

We have been doing this long enough to remember a time before everything was dictated by reviews.  OK, maybe that isn’t entirely true.  In olden times, wine scribes would write about wines in newspapers, offer their opinion using (gasp) words!  One guy talked about a wine he liked, people would read it, and perhaps go out and try it.  But then the paper would go in the recycling bin and eventually those flowery words would be forgotten.  Three things changed that had far reaching effects on the power of the review.

First was the review format itself.  Rather than occasional pieces and regular columns in a newspaper, or something published in a food-centric magazine that was usually no longer timely when it finally got into print, there were wine specific publications that came out on a regular basis that dealt specifically with wine.  The second thing was the familiar 100-point rating system which effectively ranks the wines in some kind of digestible pecking order.  People could save the books, magazines, or issues, and refer to them whenever they wanted to find out something.  Unfortunately these printed formats did have to be manually gone through when someone needed information.

As it has with so many other things, the internet changed all of that.  A wine buyer today can call on databases from a number of different publications 24/7 and has the ‘answer’ (if you want to call it that) right at their fingertips.  Consumers have the critic in their pocket, as well as price search tools, and even maps should they actually decide to drive somewhere in the context of wine buying. It has never been easier to get information.

Now there has been plenty of discussion on these pages about how a critical, scored review is like a photo, a picture of a wine at a particular moment in time, within the context of all kinds of variables including bottle development, wine temperature, barometric pressure, the biodynamic calendar, and a whole host of other things, all affecting the showing.  Then you have the critic interpreting what they see at that very fluid moment in time and passing judgment on the wine, absolutely and forever.  Finally all of this information is encapsulated and expressed in a single number that defines everything, and measures the wine’s value in the marketplace vis-à-vis other choices available to the consumer.

Ultimately that ‘number’ will be the most significant tool in the majority of decisions made about any particular wine by most people.  Does that seem fair?  Would you like your entire ‘being’ subjectively evaluated based on a single day or couple of days, for all of eternity?  Of course not!  Yet that is exactly what is happening with wines (and apparently a lot of other things these days) on a regular basis.  What is particularly disturbing is that this whole mentality has trickled down to the most peripheral of wine buyers and folks who aren’t particularly ‘dialed in’ on wine ask about rating validation before purchasing.

One supposes it’s easier that way, and someone can merely react to a perceived validation rather than wade through a lot of ‘winespeak’ (buttery minerals, creamy jimmies, blah, blah).  Busy people need fast answers, even if those answers don’t necessarily hold up under scrutiny.  What does a ‘92’ taste like? Hey, we get it. Though we don’t necessarily embrace it, we’ve learned how to play it.  A lazy industry handed the critics the power long ago, and that has been the way of things for three decades.  But as things continue to develop, and more would-be reviewers come on line, how is the consumer best served?

It has to be getting more difficult for consumers these days.  There are so many reviewers flinging scores out there, and often those numbers get detached from the actual reviewer and exist in a vacuum.  We do this every day and we have trouble keeping it all straight!  We’ve have gotten to the point (truth be told we have been this way for a long time) where we take nothing at face value.  Purveyors interject a score into a conversation without reference, and we ask who it is from.  Then we look it up.  The ratio of how often we are given the wrong data by suppliers, either cavalierly, ignorantly or with intent to deceive, is appalling.

But even if all of the information is correct and appropriately conveyed (good luck with that part), it is still a rather muddy proposition.  It’s a simple fact that big numbers sell wine.  You’ll have someone grouse about how a reviewer is too generous with their scoring, yet that same person isn’t likely to buy a $40 Cabernet that ‘only’ got 91 points, even if that is a strong recommendation for the particular critic that gave the score.

The person who makes a $50 Chardonnay is incensed when a critic gives him a ‘90’ even if there are only a couple of other wines that scored higher.  The problem isn’t the review in the publication, because no one will see it (most buyers won’t read down that far). It’s that the score will be there for all eternity when people look it up.  Is the consumer really served by this?  Does a 90-point $10 Chardonnay taste the same as a 90-point $50 example?  Is the price taken into account? Critics don’t address those questions, or make any statement about what the ratings mean.  So what is the takeaway?

As more reviewers crowd the field, the ‘numbers’ will only go higher.   Purveyors and merchants aren’t going to talk about how this or that wine got ‘89s’.  In the real world, no one cares or takes the time to calibrate, even if that 89 represents an enthusiastic tout for the particular reviewer.  Writers know that, and it is a real balancing act for them to generate reviews that people will quote while at the same time maintaining credibility with subscribers (we presume they think about that stuff).

Why do the writers care about being quoted by the industry?  Most of them won’t admit it, but that is their best form of advertising.  A review service is, after all, a business that relies on people paying into it.  The industry is a big supporter from a research standpoint (we now subscribe to six and very loosely follow a few others).  But consumer followers are clearly important, too.  Yet as the number of review services expands, we have to wonder how much the influence of each will be diluted.  Given that, who will be the ones that people follow (if any, maybe everyone will just read Yelp…ugh)?

The newer ‘services’ seem to generate somewhat higher scores.  Are they trying to deliberately get people to pay attention with more ‘quotable’ work (i.e. higher numbers), or are they just more enthusiastic?  Who’s to gauge whether it isn’t incrementally more exciting finding a sensational wine under $20 than an icon for the ages?  A couple of extra points aren’t hurting anyone if it guides people to cool stuff, right?

At the other end of the spectrum are the reviewers that score conservatively.  Respected writers like Stephan Tanzer (Vinous) and Alan Meadows (Burghound) don’t give away points like Halloween candy.  So even though they are specialists, and typically deal with pricier goods, their scores don’t seem very thrilling in the big arena with inflated scores being the norm these days.  A $300 Grand Cru gets a ‘93’ and a $12 Spanish red gets a ‘92’.  How is anyone supposed to make sense out of that, even when both reviews are well intentioned?

Take the California editor for Wine Spectator, James Laube (or ‘Angry Jim’ as we refer to him here).  The magazine in general, and he in particular, have seemingly taken on a ‘tough guy’ attitude with respect to scores.  One has to wonder how many people are going to be compelled to try anything after reading column after column of 91 point Cabernets with $100+ price tags.

The real question is which ‘camp’ is really serving its readers best in this market with a staggering number of choices and numbers flying everywhere?  And where will it go from here?