Wine scores 1-8-2025

This is the weekly colum

Wine scores. Oh, my. On one level, ridiculous. On another level, essential to wine’s success over the past half century. Some observations.

Anyone who ever took a test or got a report card in grade school immediately understands a wine score. Robert Parker was the most visible person to grasp that, and a parade of imitators reinforced it. Many were based on a 100-point scale, but in practice it is a 80-100 point scale. If your wine score was a 79 or less, you might as well drink it alone, directly out of the bottle, preferably disguised by a brown paper bag so as not to reveal your pathetic wine-buying error.

There are other scoring schemes. Jancis Robinson, England’s gracious gift to worldwide wine information, uses a scoring system that goes from 12 to 20 points, but she also opts for decimals, so her 20-point scale actually is a 17-point scale. Others use stars, usually 5, and half stars can be awarded.

Except, wait. Wine evaluation is not sweating students filling in boxes with No.2 pencils while the clock ticks and gimlet-eyed proctors observe. The exact same wine tastes different given the circumstances of the sipping. How many of you experienced exalting joy sipping wine at a winery redolent with the bonhomie atmosphere of friends and a bucolic tableau spilling forth from the charcuterie board and tasting area, only to later discover you did not experience the same elevated bliss at home, in the kitchen, with last night’s dirty dishes stacked in the sink awaiting Scotch-Brite Heavy Duty attention?

Professional wine scorers often taste multiple wines at a time. Taste, spit, punch a one or two sentence description into the laptop, assign a score. Rinse. Repeat with another wine. That is not how normal human beings experience wine.

For the 17 years of this wine column, I have eschewed scores. I understand their simplicity and value, but I decided to go with my strength as a story teller and entertaining writer for my lane. The world did not need another pince-nezed cognoscente to contribute to effluence of wine tasting evaluations in a grade school paradigm.

I hope you agree, and thank you for being part of the adventure.

Tasting notes

• Cline Family Cellars Hat Strap Chardonnay, Los Carneros, Sonoma County 2021: Rich, full-bodied, admirable restraint on the oak and butter, while still deftly delivering some of that popular style. $25-30 Link to my review

• Rodney Strong Vineyards Russian River Valley Reserve Pinot Noir 2021: Smooth, compelling complexity and depth. Easy drinker with delicious fruit. $60 Link to my review

Last round

Last night I watched Dancing with the Tsars. Peter and Catherine were great. But Ivan was terrible. Wine time.