Do members pay much attention to wine critics ?

It seems that many members here are good at describing their wines, how they go with certain foods and details of their experiences, and do not bother much with scores. I admire and somewhat envy them, but i am really bad at such things. I am probably better at criticism (there are quite a lot of wines I would not drink again unless I heard from one of a few critics that they had changed for the better) than at descriptive praise, and so I find scores very helpful.
I determine which left bank red Bordeaux (my favorite type of wine) by in the past looking at Robert Parker's score (horrors! some may think) and nowadays (rather weirdly, but it seems to work well for me) adding 1/3 of Neal Martin's score and 2/3 of Antonio Galloni"s. I usually check price and availability on Wine Searcher unless I know from somewhere else I (I probably would still check with W.S. then). Then I try one bottle and give it my own score, right or wrong, but the taste buds are my own and up to now I have trusted them. If I consider the price sensible (preferably by a good margin) and have given red Bdx. at least 92.5 I buy at least a case of the wine (when there is enough room, but I can often find a bit more). Naturally I prefer wines scoring 95.5 to 96.5. Above that in red Bdx. these days I simply cannot find sensibly priced wines . (A wine scoring 95.5 or above has the potential to me of being of very low first growth quality in a fine year, when the Wine Advocate Vintage Rating is at least 96 for the sub-area for the wine). I do much the same with Napa Cabs,, checking the score of Galloni if I am not familiar with the wine. My own score is what matters.
For Pinot Noirs these days I usually get those from Sta, Rita Hills, as these often to me have a good QPR. I occasionally get some Morgon Cote du Py and Moulin-a-Vent (maybe a bottle or two in a mixed case with Sancerres). Occasionally we try other wines, red or white mostly at a wine dinner at our club.

For white wines my wife and I don't really bother with scores . We just buy what we like if the price is reasonable. (As I think an Italian professor of oenology said: there are three types of wine: good, bad, would drink it if someone else paid for it.). We save a lot of money by liking Chards with little if any oak (Rombauer has as much oak as can stand and I never buy it for us). We love a South African Chardonnay costing $6.99, the regular Brander Sauvignnon Blanc, Margerum Sybarite Sauvignon Blanc and various well-priced Sancerres. My wife drinks mostly whites and I drink more reds than whites (my wife occasionally has a glass of each, and a bit more often I do the same. I suggest to her that she should eat lots of blueberries). Best to all, Richard L

Richard, my attitude to wine critics depends on how far the individual critic's taste coincides with my own. I still subscribe to La Revue du Vin de France, whose critics by and large seem reliable for my palate, but I have dropped subscriptions to Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate and Decanter long ago. English speaking wine critics I like include the late Michael Broadbent, Jancis Robinson, Claude Kolm, Allen Meadows, Robin Garr.....

I'm quite allergic to scores, particularly to high scores on the 100 point scale, and find them, when used by wine merchants and web sellers as a main sales argument, to be a real turn-off. However, I do use that scale myself on CT. Why? Basically as my feeble drop into the ocean in favour of elegant wines in the face of an audience largely biased in favour of blockbusters.

If a wine writer in the newspaper praises a wine I haven't had from a retailer I use, and it sounds like a wine I'd also like then I might try it, and I try to get winners of the annual Top 10 Pinotage competition and Platter 5 star wines, but otherwise I'm not influenced.

I've never read Parker et el.

[David M. Bueker]

I have been through the wine critic phase, and am largely past it except for critics that I know personally. David Schildknecht is the best example of that, as I have known him for decades, and have had multiple opportunities to drink with his, and thereby fully understand his palate, and have a deeper insight into his often complicated tasting notes.

As for scores themselves...don't care about them, and rarely use them unless it is required (e.g. when my tasting group does our blind tastings, and scores all the wines before they are revealed).

[Jenise]

As I've already said, not a score person. In particular I don't give a fig what the Wine Spectator or god forbid James Suckling think about anything. My palate calibrates best with Tanzer and Galloni, but I don't subscribe to anyone anymore. I only very occasionally apply points myself when filing tasting notes on Cellar Tracker on a wine whose score is unjustly high or low, hoping to add some reasonableness.

Do you live in California, maybe the Santa Barbara area? Not many people know Brander or Margerum and they're rarely seen outside of that area--I like both of those Sauv Blancs.

[Robin Garr]

Richard, I managed to escape the wine critic phase entirely, maybe because I got into wine writing early as a young, barely qualified wine writer as a side gig at The Louisville Times, where I was a full-time reporter, in 1980, before Parker was widely known and when the Wine Spectator was just getting started as a newspaper-style report out of Southern California before Marvin Shanken bought it out. There were wine writers around in those days - I loved Hugh Johnson's little annual pocket book, for example, and paid attention to his star ratings (for wine regions, mostly, only rarely producers); and I faithfully read Frank Prial's NY Times columns and Terry Robards before him. By the time Parker hit it big with his reports on the 1982 vintage and the Spectator went slick, I had already developed my own tastes and confidence in them, and didn't feel a need for reviews. As time went by and suddenly it was the modern age, my personal preferences had diverged significantly from the Big Names. They wanted big, strong, and expensive; I wanted subtle, lean, and affordable. I totally agree with David about Schildknecht (who, remarkably, worked at a big wine shop here in Louisville at the time and I often got to sit with him and others at the tasting table). I loved Terry Theise, too. And Kermit Lynch. But the bottom line is that I'm almost invariably looking for QPR wines, mostly from Europe, and trying to find the bottles that taste expensive but aren't, and thus generally escape the critics' attention. Sorry for the longish reply, I got wound up there.

I am probably pretty atypical for this crowd. I pay very little attention to either scores or reviews from any professional reviewers. I have been drinking wine for a long time. My wife and I will never see 70 again and we know what we like. We have a number of preferred wines and producers that we have histories with. I probably already have enough wine in my basement to last for our lifetimes. Our primary method of trying new wines used to be in restaurants with sommeliers...although a few have steered me wrong (mostly by assuming I didn't know what I was talking about.) But that avenue has been blocked off to us for the last year+ for obvious reasons. I am hoping for a return to travel and restaurants later this year. I am sorry but the very concept of grading a wine down to a half a point is beyond my comprehension but more power to you if you can.

Best wishes.

I only know the tastes of a relatively few people. They generally more or less agree with mine, except for one friend who likes lots of oak in her Chardonnays, but likes the same reds as my wife and I do. I seem to be much better at scoring left bank red Bordeaux and California Cabs than I am at describing them, and my "method" seems to work well for my wife and me, so I don't care if it is a bit eccentric. I feel fortunate in liking several different kinds (not all) of left bank red Bdx. Best wishes to all, Richard L (P.S. Jenise, my wife and I do live near Santa Barbara <great climate!> and the times given for my posts seems late by three hours. You are very perceptive.)

Like Dave I've moved past the wine critic stage. I tend to ignore them. I subscribed to The WIne Advocate back in the 1980s but cancelled my subscription as I saw that Parker's taste in wine and my own were diverging. Regarding wine scores, the numeric scoring systems are an affront to all of my training as a scientist on how to report numeric measurements. Anything claiming more precision than 1-5 stars is, IMO, bogus. My personal preference is Stuart Yaniger's Three Stooges wine rating system.

-Paul W.

To anyone who thinks that I feel I can really rate wines to half a point, that is somewhat of a misconception. If I cannot choose between giving a wine 93 or 94 I just give it a 93.5 . As we have few left bank red Bordeaux that are not to me between 92.5 and 96.5, and the half points do not really count, that leaves 92 to 97, and the 97 is never reached. Thus of the wines i like a lot the scoring range seems manageably narrow. Richard L

Having thought a little more about it, I think I can simplify matters by calling wines I score from 92.5 to 95 "very good", and wines I score above that "great". "Better late than never". Best wishes to all members, Richard L

[David M. Bueker]

If it works for you then it works!

The only critic I subscribe to is John Gilman (View from the Cellar).. Like David Schildknecht to David, John is a personal friend and we've tasted together many many times. I don't always agree with his views, but I have a pretty good idea of wine when I read one. I love how opinionated he is. A good review from say William Kelly might push me to buy something I was already kind of wanting to, but not buy on its own. But mostly I stick to wines I historically like, or are recommended by someone I trust, whether a critic (John Gilman),. a merchant (David or Jamie at Chambers), or a friend.

[Jenise]

I am probably pretty atypical for this crowd. I pay very little attention to either scores or reviews from any professional reviewers.

Actually, I think that makes you very TYPICAL for this crowd.

I used to follow Parker closely for his reviews of Bordeaux, and until the styles started fundamentally changing circa 2003, he was a generally reliable barometer for me along the Gironde. He chronically underrated a few chateau like Magdelaine but that just helped to keep the prices down.

Since those days, my favorite wine authority probably is WLDG’s very own Dale W. If Dale likes it, I can safely assume I will too (seriously). The only region I haven’t really tested it in is red burgundy, as I drink so little of those. Personal interactions certainly help. I remember one night at a big Pauillac dinner in NYC in 2006 with like 20 attendees, and even though Dale and I were at opposite ends of the table, I saw that he and I voted for the same 3 top wines (including a medievally-styled bottle of the 1975 Haut Bages Liberal). Not surprisingly, John Gilman is the professional critic I pay the most attention GUI.

In a similar vein, there are a half dozen or so additional folks on CellarTracker whom I know my palate aligns with and I usually look to see what they’ve had to say about a wine.