I’ve been
meaning to write this piece for a couple of years now but in the ensuing time a
little boy, moving house, and a new job have all conspired to give me an excuse
not to write it. Recent events, however, have brought back a bit of fire to the
belly.
The issue is
the growing irrelevance of the 100 point scoring system, rendered largely useless
by the artificially inflated scores of many prominent wine critics.
Without
going into the full detail of the 100 point scoring system,
historically wines scoring in the 70s had significant issues/flaws, wines in
the 80s were decent quality drinkable wines, while wines of 90 and above were
excellent, and 95 and above were benchmark, world class wines. There will be
debates at the margins in terms of what I have just described, but it roughly
captures the original design and usage of the scoring system that has dominated
wine appraisal over the past 3 decades.
Like any
scoring system it has strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths is the
ability to have a wide range of scores available to you to make both nuanced
and large score differentials between wines. When you score one wine 92 and
another 91, you are making a distinction that isn’t available to say a 5 star
system (something I still use). This advantage of the 100 point system, however,
has been much diminished in recent years.
Points Inflation
The past
decade or so has seen an inflation of points scoring from a significant number
of prominent critics. It has been a gradual but undoubted trend. In particular, wines scoring
95 and above abound in a way they never have before. Examples are legion, but
perhaps the most infamous of recent times was the eighteen 100 point scores
Robert Parker delivered for 2009 Bordeaux.
Only a few years previously he had delivered only two 100 point wines from
a similarly lauded Bordeaux vintage, that being 2005.
The local
example, but by no means the only one, is James Halliday. He is undoubtedly
Australia’s most famous wine critic, and someone I have always greatly admired. What has happened over the past decade however, has been an
increasing points creep in his scoring that has almost moved to the point of
farce. A decade ago, had I read a review of his that rated a reasonably priced
wine at 93 points, my interest would have been piqued. In more recent years the
equivalent quality wine would almost inevitably get something like a 96 point
score. Accordingly, I’ve found myself in what seems like the ridiculous
situation of largely ignoring any Halliday reviews for wines scoring less than
96 points. It seems like I will have to revise that up again now, with Halliday
awarding a 97 point score to a whopping 166 wines in his latest annual guide, 98 points to
24 wines, and 99 points to a further two.
Undoubtedly
in this tally are some genuinely world class, benchmark wines. But looking
through those awarded 97 points, there are many that are not. A case in point is
the 2012 St Hallett’s Blackwell Shiraz from the Barossa Valley which Halliday gave 97. It’s a wine I’ve
generally really enjoyed most vintages and when I tasted the 2012 over 3 days recently
I once again found it to be an excellent wine. It was to my mind a 92/93 point wine, which
particularly given the $25 price tag makes it a fantastic buy if you enjoy your
Barossa Shiraz, and a wine I would highly recommend. Having said this, it is
not a benchmark wine, and I don’t think any serious consideration of this wine
would label it as profound.
Moving
beyond just Halliday, more recently there has been a frenzy around the release
of the 2010 Penfolds Grange. This is undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest
wines and 2010 was a very good vintage in South Australia. That it would
therefore get some very high scores upon release is no surprise. However, as
with the broader trend of points inflation, Grange score inflation has
followed suit. To the point now where this wine has already received 100 point
scores upon release from critics like Andrew Caillard MW, Nick Stock, and Tyson Stelzer. Never mind that this is
a wine that typically takes a couple of decades to reveal its full potential,
it has been given a hat-trick of perfect scores straight off the bat. What happens when these
critics taste and score the wine in 20 years time, once the wine is in full bloom, is anyone’s guess.
Of course
not every critic has joined in this arms race, and I hope those that continue
to show restraint will hold the line.
However, my inbox now receives so many daily offers of wines that have been rated
95, 96, and 97 points by a prominent critic that it would appear that world
class wine is simply a mouse ckick away. What has happened in the past decade has made the distinction between
truly great wine and very good wine difficult to discern.
Does any of this even matter?
Plenty of people have suggested it’s not really a big deal, and
that we should just take a cup of tea, a bex and a good lie down. Some of the
typical refrains are -
Scoring wine is a nonsense in the first
place, so who cares
A score
stakes a claim as to your genuine opinion on the wine, or anything that you’re
critiquing for that matter. People argue to the contrary that you should just
read the tasting note and make an assessment from there. For mine, with a tasting note alone it is virtually impossible to both genuinely convey the quality, flavours and textures of a wine in a way that
consumers can easily get their heads around, while also subsequently enabling them to compare and contrast different options available to
them. I’ve increasingly come to the view that a tasting note without a score is
a bit meaningless. They compliment one another. Scoring wine remains important.
As long as the range used is consistent what
does it matter?
Have a think about anything else in life that is scored (movies,
restaurants, the credit ratings of banks). Imagine now that you just decide to
move everything up a notch. A David and Margaret reviewed 3 star movie (At The Movies), which has always been
the kind of solid, ok movie that you would watch if it’s in your style or there
is nothing else to watch, now becomes a recommended 3.5 or 4 star movie. In
this new regime, the scoring might be consistent, but it is far less
meaningful. The critic is not doing their job of sorting the wheat from the chaff. With the scoring of wine it is no different.
If you don’t like the way the critic scores
just ignore it?
Unfortunately
that’s not really possible. I
guess if it was largely irrelevant bloggers like myself that were throwing out
97 points with gay abandon then yes it would be possible to ignore. People like
Parker and Halliday and other critics, however, are too ubiquitous in their
respective areas of focus. They have an affect. If you are passionate about
wine, you can’t just ignore them or the issue more broadly.
Integrity
Wine criticism is a profession riven with conflicts of interest (a topic for another day). However, I used to be of the belief that these conflicts could largely be managed. However, it seems I was wrong. The plethora of overrated wine about the place would appear to be evidence of this. Ultimately I believe
it’s incumbent on people who are scoring things in their professional fields to
show a level of restraint and integrity in the way they rate things. Giving
everyone a guernsey does no one any good in the long term.
In my day job I’m
involved in reviewing and rating investment opportunities for clients. I know
that if I were to adopt the Parker or Halliday approach to my scoring I might
make some fund managers happy in the short-term, but my credibility would
ultimately come under question, and in the end I would be out of a job.
Admittedly overrating a wine won’t have the same consequences as putting
someone’s life savings in a dud investment, but I’ve got no doubt that if this
points inflation trend continues, critics might ultimately find themselves out
of a gig. There are only so many times a
consumer will buy what they are told is a 96 point wine before it starts to become
shorthand for just a solid bottle of wine, at which point how relevant is a wine critic?
Red
