Back in November, the Oenophiliac, J.M. Garcia III, posted a piece lambasting the 100-point wine rating scale as all but useless . Knowing the piece was bound to raise hackles — and loving a good fight — we sent out a press release on PR Web pointing to the post. The article was duly flamed, and in short order, by a well-known, veteran wine reporter who writes for some mid-sized papers located in the duller parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Without so much as a “dear sir,” he wrote:
About ten years ago or maybe more, Frank Prial, then the NY Times wine columnist, and a very savvy gent, who did not use the 100-point scale, commented on it.
He said he did not mind it in the least because all it meant was that the reviewer who gave one wine 87 points and another wine 86 was saying nothing more than he liked the 87 point wine a little bit better.
Mr. Prial was right then and he is right now. Your rant misses the point, and essentially says that wine is not about small differences, when, in fact, that is exactly what separates one wine from another, one vintage from another, one maker’s Chardonnay from a particular vineyard from another makers’ wine from the same vineyard.
If small differences are of no import ot you, then you are missing the point. Wine is not a non-differentiable commodity like beer or soap and our enjoyment of it has the same characteristics that we bring to the differences between hamburgers or croissants or diamonds or tennis rackets.
They maybe be good, bad or indifferent, but they are distinct in their differences, and it is those differences that cause us to like one version and not another.
An interesting response, we thought. I wrote this intrepid reporter back and asked why he did not submit his comments through the Tasting Notes Blog so that all and sundry could benefit by his wisdom.
The writer responded, saying that his comments were for our eyes alone. He went on to note that:
There is no such thing as a perfect ratings system, and it always strikes me as a bit silly when one reviewer or another or one observer or another proclaims to have found the “truth”.
As one of my readers said, “I don’t care if you use a ten chopstick system”. It is your judgment and comments that count. I can do the rest of the calculus for myself.”
At this point I was at a loss, as this was indeed the gist of Garcia’s “rant.” I began to suspect that this reporter may have read the press release but not the actual article. We wrote, saying, “If you actually read the post, you’d see that we didn’t claim to know ‘the truth.’ The author, Garcia, did however express an opinion. We’re allowed that, are we not?”
Mr. Veteran Wine Reporter then confirmed our suspicion:
I will admit that I had not looked at the actual post when I responded. Instead, I was reading the rather more provocative press release.
That’s some wildly shabby reporting. No wonder he didn’t want to associate his good name with his comments. When I was in journalism school, had I responded in print to a press release without actually investigating the story behind it, I would have gotten an instant “F.” I wonder what the editors at this reporter’s papers would think?
But never mind. Admission of poor reportage out of the way, he went on to slam Garcia again, anyway:
I have now read the entire post. It is more than opinion. It purports to tell people that wines over 90 points are not representative of place and grape.
Here is an actual quote: “To get 90-plus points you cannot make the traditional, authentic wine of the region with the native grape. You must ply the wine with oak, load it up with overripe and jammy fruit, wildly astringent with tannins, and heavy with alcohol until it resembles the other 90-plus wines and not the ideal Beaujolais, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo or Chablis. Which means you can’t pair up this wine with paella, or bucatini amatriciana. And that leaves you back where we started. ”
What arrant nonsense. Has the writer not heard of good Chiantis, great Chablis, mannerly Puligny-Montrachets?
Does the writer mean to say that Matt Smith’s brilliant, gold-medal winning Chenin Blanc is not representative of Chenin Blanc? What arrant nonsense.
I could go on forever with this. It is, of course, true, that wines with intensity will frequently score more highly than wimpy wines. But, the issues are balance, adherance to varietal character and drinkability, not oak, tannin or dried grape concentration. Intensity is not the same as excess. Otherwise, the lack of intensity would be the focus of wine worship.
And does the writer also mean to say that all wines with oak and tannin are inappropriate? I hope not, but that is gist of what is written.
So, I guess I disagree with the direction of the article. I appreciate your willingness to read my comments.
And I hope that your interest in wine will continue to grow, and that you will do as most of us do, listen to your own palate and taste wines broadly. No one, not Parker or me or the Wine Spectator or Mr. Garcia knows all the answers. Your palate will tell you what is right or wrong for you, and whether you like big wines or balanced wines or midsized wines, you will find that the best examples of all of them do adhere to the notions of balance, varietal character and drinkability — even if that drinkability is not always immediate.
Authentic wines of Bordeaux have never been immediately drinkable but they have been and remain authentic.
It would be unfair not to let Garcia respond. Here it is:
The problems with the scale, for those who prefer large fonts and small words is that it does not convey what it says it conveys, and it is not useful to the vast majority of non-Gnostic wine lovers. Using that system, not all wines are, in real terms, eligible for the top scores. The commenter said: “Has the writer not heard of good Chiantis, great Chablis, mannerly Puligny-Montrachets?”
I defy anyone to show me a Chianti that has garnered a 95-plus point review from the major wine media that was not oaky and high in alcohol with masses of jammy fruit. Such wines have more in common with other Very Big Reds than they do with fellow Chianti bottlings.
Some have suggested that adherence to varietal character is what earns a wine a 95-plus point rating. We agree, up to a point…if the varietal is Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, etc. Not so much if the wine is a Barbera or a Viura. One of the flaws of this scale is its glass ceiling for certain varietals. Put bluntly, some varietals, under the present regime, will never earn a 95-plus review if they stay in character.
Another comment chided us for suggesting – we didn’t – that all wines with oak and tannin were bad or somehow “wrong.” Which is, of course, not only drivel but drivel disprovable by a proper reading of the piece. Oak and/or tannin are only appropriate to some wines, and in turn these wines “go” with only certain types of food. If you start making wines with the aim to please the critics, you will eventually arrive at an appalling sameness which leads to a impossibly monotonous menu if your aim is to have a 95-plus wine which complements every meal.
Which is the genesis of the gripe.
The naysayer missed the point. The point is that the 100-pt. scale is putatively an aid to consumers who — one presumes — don’t have time or resources to go touring the Loire in a Citroen with Oz Clarke. Therefore where it stands or falls is in its capacity to aid consumers in making an informed choice. The 100 point scale manifestly fails to do that. If someone thinks it does, I’d be thrilled if he (or she) were to explain it to me, in crayon and monosyllabic words. We can sit and discuss it over a 95-plus point bottle of Albariño or Brouilly.
My treat.
Although I don’t owe this fellow any professional courtesy to do so, I have elected to withhold this guy’s name. (Though I will tell you that the names of two of the Bay Area papers he writes for rhyme with “slimes.”) Futhermore, as a professional reporter, he ought also to know that words like “off the record” and “my comments were are for you only” are completely without meaning, legal or otherwise. “Never tell anything to anybody that you don’t want to see in print” is J. 101.
But such is the state of journalism today.