Wine ratings

There are a myriad of wine rating systems; numbers, letters, puffs, stars and the odd catch phrase. None of them are my cup of tea and none of them are going away.

As an alternative, I think I’ll start/steal one.
Mine will focus on how a wine goes with a dish or meal that I’m eating. BTW, this not original; I credit on-line personality SFJoe with the idea; a recent post of his got me to thinking; he said that the only real ‘rating’ that means anything is how any wine goes with the food your eating. I agree with him.

Hopefully, by thinking primarily of how the wine goes with the food and trying to put that into words, I will become more attuned to the pairing. I do it every evening at dinner so I should certainly be able to explain why I pick what I do once I know what Diane is cooking and, together, both she and I should be able to say if it worked or not and why.

Please, bear with me while getting started; in a couple of years I should be more sensitive to matching than I was to begin with, but from here on, almost all of my notes will be focused on the pairing of wine and food.

Best, Jim

Just don't tell us you're not buying any more food, Jim...

[James Roscoe]

Jim, you already had my favorite ratings system! You simply say, I'd buy that again." or some variant thereof and thus you let the reader know the wine was a worthy drink. If the wine was less worthy you tell the reader you wouldn't buy it again. I have always thought this to be the best and most elegant of rating systems.

[David M. Bueker]

While I can appreciate your sentiment Jim, not everyone has your wife as a cook & not everyone (well nobody) will be eating the exact same food as you are. Wine and food matching is about as inexact a science as their is, and the most personal one to boot.

Stick to your old method.

Jim,
I agree with James and David, unless, of course, you use the Bob Ross method and also post the recipe.

[James Roscoe]

Jim,
I agree with James and David, unless, of course, you use the Bob Ross method and also post the recipe.

Good call Howie!

Wine ratings mean nothing to me, but I appreciate when someone shares the wine they had and with what food, and under what circumstances - then it gives me a bigger and better picture of their experience with the wine. My wine experience requires food, having enough time to enjoy the wine, to taste and witness the changes it shows throughout the evening. This is why I love wine.

While I can appreciate your sentiment Jim, not everyone has your wife as a cook & not everyone (well nobody) will be eating the exact same food as you are. Wine and food matching is about as inexact a science as their is, and the most personal one to boot.

The point is that its all very nebulous, it isn't science at all and there is no 'perfect' match. It is isn't about finding the best of anything; its about enjoying what you like and if my notes will help break down the stereotype of finding a perfect match and get people to try whatever they like and at the same time avoid the idea that wine is some kind of competition, than my idea will be fulfilling.
Tasting notes are really very ambivilent things; some of the esoteric descriptors I read amaze even me. But they can provide ideas and I hope to be able to do that, in relation to food, so that others will try new things when they dine.
Maybe I'll like white wine with lamb - maybe you'll try it and say, me too. Or maybe you'll say it was a bad idea. Whichever way you go, the note will have provoked an attempt and we both will learn something.
I don't know David, maybe its all just flailing around here - but as I told Steve elsewhere, I'm sick of people thinking of wine as a competitive sport or that wine has some intrinsic quality that can be measured. It isn't and it doesn't.
Best, Jim

....but as I told Steve elsewhere, I'm sick of people thinking of wine as a competitive sport or that wine has some intrinsic quality that can be measured. It isn't and it doesn't.
Best, Jim

Jim, as a home winemaker, I make my wines to pair with food. I believe this is as it should be. Sometimes I enter my wines in competitions, but generally I don't score as well as folks who make their wines to please judges.

I'm surprised at the reaction to the idea of posting food and wine combinations.

Not only do the meals always sound delicious (and thereby give value to the post in and of themselves) but it's not like we need to know how many slivers of onions or how many ounces of cream went into the dish to understand that the wine was set off well by the fat from the dairy or the acid from the citrus, etc..

Which is all good fodder for the discussion board.

Post away.

[David M. Bueker]

I don't know David, maybe its all just flailing around here - but as I told Steve elsewhere, I'm sick of people thinking of wine as a competitive sport or that wine has some intrinsic quality that can be measured. It isn't and it doesn't.
Best, Jim

Jim, I don't like it either, but I don't think your prior process created that sort of atmosphere. More than anything (and I am being totally serious) I think people could sense a bit of joy in your notes. While I am sure many folks would read a note you wrote on a $15 wine & scoff, I think the vast majority (including me) read your notes and look forward to sharing that slice of vinous heaven at a bargain price. Your forays into Muscadet and Beaujolais have shaped many of my recent purchases (remember how I scoffed at those mags of Jadot Beaujolais you picked up in Northampton a few years ago).

The whole food and wine thing is just such a complicated web that I feel like we'll lose that easy understanding of what brings you (and frequently us) joy in the world of wine.

Clearly you should do whatever you feel you need to do (the last thing we want is to lose your voice), but I just want to let you know that you are not part of the problem.

Jim, I don't like it either, but I don't think your prior process created that sort of atmosphere. More than anything (and I am being totally serious) I think people could sense a bit of joy in your notes. While I am sure many folks would read a note you wrote on a $15 wine & scoff, I think the vast majority (including me) read your notes and look forward to sharing that slice of vinous heaven at a bargain price. Your forays into Muscadet and Beaujolais have shaped many of my recent purchases (remember how I scoffed at those mags of Jadot Beaujolais you picked up in Northampton a few years ago).

The whole food and wine thing is just such a complicated web that I feel like we'll lose that easy understanding of what brings you (and frequently us) joy in the world of wine.

Clearly you should do whatever you feel you need to do (the last thing we want is to lose your voice), but I just want to let you know that you are not part of the problem.

Kind words, my friend; thank you.
I tell you what, let me post awhile with the new focus and see if my notes lose the things you like. Hopefully, I'll just add a little something in the process.
As always, candid feedback appreciated.
BTW, I still have one of those mags. - who knows when I'll open it?
Best, Jim

[David M. Bueker]

Sounds good Jim.

I'll open a Coudert when I see your new notes.

Your forays into Muscadet and Beaujolais have shaped many of my recent purchases

Agree, but don't forget Soave classico. Jim's notes on Anselmi and Pieropan, etc, led me to a rediscovery of a sort of this very useful wine. Some of my first (very negative) wine experiences were with generic industrial jug Soave, and I had given up on it as a wine to look for.

Jim, I like what you are going to try. Wine in the context of its role at the table is very useful. I don't disagree with David, this is all inexact and highly personal, but I think this will be a great addition to your already most helpful notes TN's.

"Buy again" and "drink vs hold" are also very helpful, would keep these as part of the note.

Jim,
I am with you on this. Over 25 years I have changed from buying only Bordeaux and following Parker, to making my decisions based on tastings and reliable recs, to totally ignoring ratings and reading only the verbage (RP does a good job of this) to now buying and selecting wine totally based on what will be served that night. Still love old Bordeaux and have plenty of it but it gets drank with lamb or by itself with a baguette and a nice cheese.
Walt

Good idea, Jim - I shall try to correct my too rare mentions of food in my posts. Though food is a supremely important part of my enjoyment of wine I rarely mention it in my posts. I find that even a small sip of wine will make me crave for food, ergo I am unable to drink wine without food, so I wonder why I rarely mention it? Some bad influence or other must be blamed! I do hope that in addition you will keep with the buy again or not.

-O-

I do hope that in addition you will keep with the buy again or not.

I have been persuaded.
Best, Jim

Of course, I'm in the wine and food camp but really, Jim, do we need to rate it--do we need another rating system at all?

You already do a good job at talking about the meals and wines you consume. Don't try to make what is good any "gooder." That's like adding flavors to good coffee, or raisins and cinnamon to a fine bagel, or pine resin to white wine...

Of course, I'm in the wine and food camp but really, Jim, do we need to rate it--do we need another rating system at all?

You already do a good job at talking about the meals and wines you consume. Don't try to make what is good any "gooder." That's like adding flavors to good coffee, or raisins and cinnamon to a fine bagel, or pine resin to white wine...

Thomas,
I am (obviously) not Jim, but I think that you might have missed his point, which is not to rate a food/wine combination, but rather to make that the focus of his description. That being said, I have for years employed a crude food/wine match rating that a chef/wino friend introduced me to: you start with a base score of 3 and add or subtract one point if you feel that the wine (or food) is improved (or hurt) by the combination. It's purely an intellectual exercise and rarely finds its way into public, but I find that it assists me in thinking about how the interplay of wine and food. YMMV of course.

Mark Lipton

Craig Goldwyn, formerly of the now-defunct American Wine Review and currently involved with the Beverage Testing Institute, had a similar scale for his wine competitions/ratings system.

He called it, simply, the Hedonic Scale. It was based on starting at zero as the neutral point, then rating the wine on a graduating scale, either up or down to a plus or minus seven, positive or negative, depending on how the wine appealled to you at that moment: i.e., how much pleasure it provided, or how objectionable you found it.

You could approach it systematically, as in assessing positive points for 'tastes goooood' and negative points for brett---assuming the brett was either negative or positive for you, of course, and then ending up with a final score.

Of course the beauty of the Hedonic Scale was in its essential subjective nature: in the final result, the score was "Because I said so."

Of course the beauty of the Hedonic Scale was in its essential subjective nature: in the final result, the score was "Because I said so."

Aren't they all?

I'm not looking for any 'rating system;' candidly, I'm in the camp that says they're all so much nonsense.
But, as Mark notes, I do want to shift my focus toward food; I don't think I can judge wine in a vacuum rather I think the way to judge it is with the food that you eat.
All this crap about one wine being better than another - I'm sure we all ask, to whom? Now, I want to also ask, with what?
Less a competition and more the degree of enjoyment each of us get when we have it with a meal.
Or such is my hope.
Best, Jim

Hoke,

I think Craig Goldwyn is no longer a part of the Beverage Testing Institute. In fact, I wonder what he is doing these days. A good fellow and a fine wine person.

Jim,

Have at it. Although I still think your notes, as they have been, do well in conveying the meal and the wine, if not the sense of conviviality, which I truly appreciate.

As you say, the pairing part can be as equally subjective as anything else connected to taste. I'm still trying to persuade people that acid with acid (tomato with Tuscan red, and not the New World ones) may work, but acid with lushness works even more interestingly (tomato with southern Italian red wine).

When I operated my wine tasting room a woman visitor told me that she drank Riesling with every meal. I asked if she ate red meat and drank Riesling and she said that she just finished telling me that she drinks Riesling with every meal. I told her to "go forth and mulitply, and take a case of my Riesling home of course..."

I told her to "go forth and mulitply, ..."

Sounds like a pretty risque place.
Best, Jim

I told her to "go forth and mulitply, ..."

Sounds like a pretty risque place.
Best, Jim

Well, you know what happens after downing a case of Riesling, with or without sirloin steak...