by Paul Winalski » Thu Sep 05, 2024 10:49 am
I don't believe in numeric wine scores, either. I do (in a sort of tongue-in-cheek fashion) use Stuart Yaniger's Three Stooges wine scoring system.
One thing to keep in mind when studying those score distributions is that professional wine reviewers tend to publish only good reviews. They nearly always keep quiet about any drek that they encounter. They have to--they are prime targets for libel lawsuits over bad reviews.
I was an early subscriber to The Wine Advocate and bought most of the back issues from the late 1970s. When Robert Parker started out he was exactly what he claimed to be--an outsider looking in at the wine industry. He went out to local wine shops in the Washington DC area, bought whatever he could afford and published reviews for the whole lot. There were a good number of scores in the 60s and 70s. His reviews could get quite brutal and he had a good turn of phrase. The bad reviews made for entertaining reading. The lowest score I recall him giving out was 53 for a California cabernet sauvignon. He called it "the vinous equivalent of Liquid Plumber". I had the misfortune of buying that wine and I agree with his assessment. I took it to our Dungeons & Dragons game. We each took one sip from our glasses, spit it back out into the glass, and then had a long argument over what to do with the wine. Our host at first refused to let us pour it down the sink or the toilet--he was concerned about damage to his plumbing. We finally convinced him it should be safe.
His success tempted Parker into joining the dark side and participating in barrel tastings and whatnot. He lost his outsider status and became an integral cog in the wine industry. He perforce had to become more selective about what reviews he published and the end result is the distribution graph shown in the article--a fairly narrow bell curve centered around 90.
My wine merchant told me that the joke in the industry was that there are only two Parker scores for wines. Wines scoring over 90 points you can't find. Wines scoring under 90 points you can't sell.
-Paul W.
