The Great Wine Scale Debacle

Have you ever gone into a store or picked up Wine Spectator and seen a wine being touted as having 92 points and think, that's a good number, I should try this wine? I'm sure we all have, it is a rather ubiquitous rating scheme now. However, the vast majority of people don't understand what this number really means.

The current 100 point scale used in wine was developed by Robert Parker and his publication The Wine Advocate back in the early 1980's. His thought was that the 20 point scale commonly in use at that time did not offer enough granularity to truly differentiate between wines. Perhaps the first thing people should notice about the scale is that it's not really based on 100 points, but it is really a 50 point scale. Here is how the scale breaks down and what the numbers are supposed to mean:

• 96-100: An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase, and consume.
• 90 - 95: An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
• 80 - 89: A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
• 70 - 79: An average wine with little distinction except that it is a soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.
• 60 - 69: A below average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor, or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.
• 50 - 59: A wine deemed to be unacceptable.

So essentially, Robert Parker took the concept of our grading system for schools, threw away the lower half, and then adopted if for the grading of wines on a scale. Over time, many others have tweaked this system to make it their own, but this is essentially how they all work.

There are a couple of problems with the scale. The first and perhaps most glaring of issues is that wine tasting is a very subjective exercise. This is because each and every palate is different. We can group people's palates into four different broad categories: tolerant, sensitive, hyper-sensitive and sweet. I point this out because unless your palate falls into the same general category as the person that reviewed the wine and gave it the score, your perception of the wine could be vastly different from the person reviewing it.

The second problem with this scale is that wines change over time. Sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a not so good way. That means that the farther away from the review date it is, the less accurate that score becomes. For example, a 2008 Chianti that was given 92 points when rated in June of 2009 may not be able to get a score 85 today because it is well past its prime.

Finally, there is the simple fact of human perception. You may wonder why you never see anything about a wine given a score of 83. After all, that would be an above average wine according to this scale. However, our brains know that the difference between an A and a B in a grading system can be quite significant so we tend to see a wine with a score of 90 as significantly better than a wine with a score of 89. In fact, we look down at wines with scores below 85 so much that they will suffer significantly in the marketplace if their scores are even published.

So the bottom line is this, the 100 point grading system really isn't. It is a 50 point system of which only the top 15 points are used. Then, those 15 points are skewed by human perception and can be totally worthless if your palate is not the same as the palate of the reviewer. As a result of this, I will tell you the same thing I tell people in the tastings that I give, go out and drink more wine. Try things that you haven't tried before. Don't rely on one person's reviews, try things for yourself. Make notes of the things that you like in a wine and find a trusty wine merchant that can make recommendations of wines in a similar vein. Finally, never forget that just because someone else likes a wine, it means that you have to like it too.