Wine Spectator Buying Guide= Yet another Rant

I skimmed through this tonight at the grocery store. Boy, I must have a bad palette because some of my favorite wines got sub-80 scores.
I can't even figure it out. Generally the fruit bombs got high scores. But, the Paul Hobbs Hyde Vineyard Cab-a lean, almost vegetal wine-got a 93. Do they just rate high certain preferred producers. I'm sorry-75 points for Sequoia Grove REserve Cab?

Maybe I should just give up drinking wine!

People don't call it the Wine Speculator for nothing. In fairness, I find them spot on a good portion of the time, but some reviews leave me scratching my head....

Don't forget they are in the business of selling magazines. Flashy and showy is their mantra. Pointy wines and "Best Of" lists sell magazines. The more magazines, the more ad revenue. It is a business. I don't think Sequoia Grove even makes a blip on their radar screen.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I just feel a little, almost, "insulted" that my tastes seem to be so different than the media moguls want us to drink. (Although, they "got" one right-I would give that Paul Hobbs Cab a rating of 93 at least-I liked it enough to splurge on it. $$$) Quite a few wines that are enjoyable in the more "european" style got dinged-Corison.

Quite a few wines that are enjoyable in the more "european" style got dinged-Corison.

Know what you mean -- if it isn't gobby, massively extracted, 15 percent alcohol, and 100 percent new oak, it isn't in the clique.

Man, you're just Full of Rants, aren't you??!!

I am not embarassed to say that I only look at the Spec
for the titilating pictures of Corton, Wehlener Sonnenurh,
and the Hermitage hill.

My wife and I looked through the buying guide and felt the same way. The final blow to us was the Champagne ratings. We had tried 5 champagnes in the past two months and we really loved the Pierre Peters. We thought that the 97 was the best of everything we tried and that the NV was a not too distant second. The NV Aubry was also another we liked. Believe the NV were mid 80 wines and the 97 I do not think was even rated (maybe prior year). Others that we were not as impressed with such as the Gaston and the Duval-Leroy were 90+ I believe.

Considering how hard it is for me to find Pierre Peters right now I am happy it got such a low score. I sure do not want everybody fighting for it. I will gladly buy all I can especially since the NV was the cheapest bottle of the five we tried.

Why do we keep commenting on this subject. WS, WA plus many others are all the same. Once you develop a taste for wine and know your palate it is useless, IMHO, to even look at these publications. I can honestly say I will never buy a wine based on the number of points it received. Will occasionally admit to reading some of RP's descriptors but ignore his rating.

Can't find that avitar for beating a dead horse.

Pat yourself on the back, you know something about wine and what you enjoy.

Walt

Cathy Corison is doing something very different from the vast majority of Napa producers, it would be odd if they liked some of the high-Brix monsters and her wines. I love them.

Why do we keep commenting on this subject.

Why do we talk about the weather?

"Avatar for beating a dead horse."

Maybe this one would work, Walt. [My "Upload Picture" function is stuck, so I can't post the pix itself.]

A beaten dead horse.

I know I am beating the dead horse. I was just kinda surprised at the ratings-and how arbitrary they seemed.. I'll stick to Wine and Spirits.

I think because people can’t see the workings of their minds, they forget, or never learn, that perception is very far removed from the supposed thing being perceived. Have you ever seen Bob walking up the street just to learn that it was Jim as he got closer? Patterns of neurons that create a picture or experience in the mind are triggered by many factors. If you think you are seeing Bob, the neurons for creating Bob fire, whether you actually see Bob or not. Those neurons fire in almost the same way if you actually see Bob.

I say almost, because the exact same group of neurons never fires twice, since there are so many neurons and they are affected by the slightest side thought, zephyr of air blowing against one’s head, and the new array of memories that make up the memory portion of the mind every millisecond. The constantly changing set of memory neurons mix with, and fire with, any new set inspired by a stimulus, such as a glass of a new wine.

If you are a heterosexual young man enjoying a glass of wine with a beautiful young girl, the firing neurons that are creating that wine experience are very far removed from the neurons that would have fired with a glass from another bottle of the same wine the evening prior while drinking it alone after a taxing day at work. It is the set of neurons firing that is the experience, not the glass of wine, which is involved with triggering the experience.

We (meaning any old blokes) discuss wine endlessly, like we do the weather, Anna Nicole Smith, the stock market, our jobs, etc., because we do. It doesn’t have much to do with anything.

I very rarely drink wine with anybody except my wife; but when I do I am amazed at how much differently those people report their wine experience of the wine we are sharing. From this learning, I don’t even recommend a particular wine to anybody else, except one person. There is almost no relationship between my taste and the next person’s.

Like a lot of people, before I learned much I paid attention to what The Wine Spectator said and actually sought wines that they recommended, – until I bought a bottle of 1996 Cinq Cepages, one of their wines of the year, took a sip, gagged, and reflexly dumped the bottle down the drain, before realizing we could have cooked with it.

Obviously, other perfectly capable people probably loved that wine, and they certainly were not wrong. The only entity in the world that I pay attention to now with regard to wine recommendations is Jenise Louise Stone. (My wife doesn’t make recommendations, or I would take her advice, too, since our wine opinions are nearly identical, – and they probably wouldn’t be if we had been raised apart.)

I will admit that I have had good success with the WS "Smart Buys". They are often spot on. For example this month they included the 2005 Jolivet P-F in the Smart Buy list. I was quite impressed with that wine when I tasted it last month. I have been in agreement with their Smart Buys more often than not. On the other hand every time I've tried something off of their "Highly Recommended" list I've gotten pissed off.