Wine reviews are an important aspect of any winery’s marketing program. The impact of a great rating on a wine is huge for both winery and indivudual bottling and has a direct impact on sales. Consumers see this designated number assigned by a wine expert and are attracted to the highly scored wines, not surprisingly.
We like to simplify things as much as possible when making decisions about what products to buy, and to be able to quantify quality through a single number is an appealing aspect of wine reviews. But here’s the problem, high scores don’t mean that you are going to like or love the wine because everybody’s palate is different.
I think wine reviews are very important to our industry, but at the same time I try not to think about the number assigned as the wines score because that is somebody else’s palate, not mine. Wines can get different scores from different critics, which makes the number somewhat arbitrary and abstract. I love to read descriptions by critics and writers while tasting a wine. Although it’s important to make your own opinion before reading these descriptions…
Here is a great article from the Wall Street Journal on wine ratings and their flaws:
Given the high price of wine and the enormous number of choices, a system in which industry experts comb through the forest of wines, judge them, and offer consumers the meaningful shortcut of medals and ratings makes sense.
But what if the successive judgments of the same wine, by the same wine expert, vary so widely that the ratings and medals on which wines base their reputations are merely a powerful illusion? That is the conclusion reached in two recent papers in the Journal of Wine Economics.
Both articles were authored by the same man, a unique blend of winemaker, scientist and statistician. The unlikely revolutionary is a soft-spoken fellow named Robert Hodgson, a retired professor who taught statistics at Humboldt State University. Since 1976, Mr. Hodgson has also been the proprietor of Fieldbrook Winery, a small operation that puts out about 10 wines each year, selling 1,500 cases
A few years ago, Mr. Hodgson began wondering how wines, such as his own, can win a gold medal at one competition, and “end up in the pooper” at others. He decided to take a course in wine judging, and met G.M “Pooch” Pucilowski, chief judge at the California State Fair wine competition, North America’s oldest and most prestigious. Mr. Hodgson joined the Wine Competition’s advisory board, and eventually “begged” to run a controlled scientific study of the tastings, conducted in the same manner as the real-world tastings. The board agreed, but expected the results to be kept confidential.
There is a rich history of scientific research questioning whether wine experts can really make the fine taste distinctions they claim. For example, a 1996 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that even flavor-trained professionals cannot reliably identify more than three or four components in a mixture, although wine critics regularly report tasting six or more. There are eight in this description, from The Wine News, as quoted on wine.com, of a Silverado Limited Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 that sells for more than $100 a bottle: “Dusty, chalky scents followed by mint, plum, tobacco and leather. Tasty cherry with smoky oak accents…” Another publication, The Wine Advocate, describes a wine as having “promising aromas of lavender, roasted herbs, blueberries, and black currants.” What is striking about this pair of descriptions is that, although they are very different, they are descriptions of the same Cabernet. One taster lists eight flavors and scents, the other four, and not one of them coincide.
Click here for the rest of the Wall Street Journal article
Joanie Hudson, Director of National and International Marketing, Santa Barbara Winery / Lafond Winery & Vineyards
The Holiday season is the best time to consume magnums (equivalent of two 750mL bottles of wine), or big bottles, as the larger gatherings of people are able to drink all of that wine in one evening. It is also an impressive addition to your meal presentation. Magnums lie on my cellar floor in special boxes on their sides, and I always reach for them at holiday occasions to add to the memorable aspects of the evening. 
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