The points race

Points are important, as every student about to sit their Leaving Certificate will be painfully aware. However they can also be a vital part of a wine seller’s armoury. In 2012, when the all-powerful American wine guru Robert Parker upgraded his scores for the 2009 vintage, it was believed to have added $100 million dollars to the value of the wines overnight. Parker is the man who brought scores to wine tasting. Prior to this, critics simply wrote a few lines, giving limp plaudits or damning a wine with faint praise. It was sometimes hard to know if they liked it or not.

Parker changed all that, bursting on to the scene with his critique of the 1982 vintage. It helped that he was also enthusiastic in his notes on the wines he loved. He called 1982 “one of the greatest vintages of this century”. “From a purely hedonistic viewpoint”, he wrote, “the vintage has probably produced the most perfect and enjoyable wines in the post-World War II era.” The wines were “sensationally great”. It wasn’t just the effusive descriptions. Parker didn’t sit on the fence. He scored the wines, using the American SAT system, out of 100 points. Although this seems to offer great scope, in effect it is a 15 to 20 point rating system, as an average wine will score 70-79 points (death to any wine) and above average to very good 80-89 points. The interest really only starts at 90-95 points, an outstanding wine, and 96-100, an extraordinary wine.

The same system has been adopted by other influential publications, including the American Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, International Wine Cellar (Stephen Tanzer) as well as more local critics such as the Spanish writer José Peñin. (Critics in the UK generally prefer a 20 point system.)

A rating of 100 will gain you instant fame and the ability to increase your prices dramatically. Wineries have been made by one really good score from Parker. I have talked to producers who could have sold a particular wine 20 times over once it received a good score. Wine shops in the US and elsewhere will advertise their wines purely by score and price.

Can a wine really be understood on the basis of a score? Tasting notes can be hard to quantify; if you see scores of 90 and 95, you can safely assume that the critic preferred the latter; that can be more difficult if you have only two reasonably positive notes. And how useful are tasting notes? One person’s pears can be another taster’s peaches? I get irritated by notes that refer to a wine as an “Audrey Hepburn” or another celebrity, but I know others love this. And I probably know what the critic means.

Points or notes, it helps if you know and agree with the tastes of a particular critic. Parker likes big, gusty wines, which is great if you share his tastes (although you may have to pay for the pleasure). Others, myself included, prefer more elegant wines. A tasting note should be an accurate description and help a consumer to make a choice. A score can be a useful addition to that. I tend to read both scores and tasting notes, but I must admit if I am trawling through a list of 100, all of them white Burgundy from a specific vintage, my eye tends to veer towards those with a better score.

In case you are wondering, I do score every wine I taste, largely because it forces me to make a decision as to the quality of the wine. However I am very aware that tasting is a subjective exercise influenced by a multitude of factors; giving a score seems to imply objectivity. For this reason I don’t generally publish my scores.

I recently took part in an interesting discussion on scores and tasting notes at Litfest with a colleague who uses the 100 point system in his column. I don’t think the debate was conclusive, but then we didn’t ask the audience to score us.

This week I feature four wines that have received high scores from various publications. The Sein received 92/100 from Robert Parker, the Maturana has received 92, and even 94 in one vintage, and the Lagar de Costa earned 92 points. All should, therefore, be outstanding wines . Lastly the Protocolo, a perennial favourite of this column, which received 86/100 from the Wine Spectator, a great score for a wine at this price.