Wine rating system "nonsensical"

NYT

THIS is what a blessing looks like in the wine business: Wine Spectator, a handsome glossy monthly that markets itself as a field guide for wine aficionados, recently bestowed a rating of 90 on a 2004 cabernet sauvignon from the Valentin Bianchi Famiglia winery in Argentina.

William R. Tisherman, who writes as Tish, said he reluctantly adopted the 100-point system during his tenure as editor of Wine Enthusiast.

This is what a blessing does: After the wine received the 90, Brian Zucker, who oversees online sales for K&L Wine Merchants, a large retailer in San Francisco, decided to promote the Valentin Bianchi cabernet in an e-mail message to tens of thousands of customers.

If it had scored an 89, Mr. Zucker said, “we would have sold a tiny fraction of what we’ll end up moving.” But because of the 90, and considering the wine’s price, $12.99, he declared himself “absolutely confident” that K&L would sell out its inventory of the Argentinean cabernet.

Mr. Zucker said he was promoting the Valentin Bianchi because he thought it an attractive buy even before Wine Spectator treated it to a 90. But that is hardly always the case with a high-scoring wine. “A wine that is highly rated takes on a life of its own,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily represent the best value, but that doesn’t seem to matter.”

A rating system that draws a distinction between a cabernet scoring 90 and one receiving an 89 implies a precision of the senses that even many wine critics agree that human beings do not possess. Ratings are quick judgments that a single individual renders early in the life of a bottle of wine that, once expressed numerically, magically transform the nebulous and subjective into the authoritative and objective.

When pressed, critics allow that numerical ratings mean little if they are unaccompanied by corresponding tasting notes (“hints of blackberry,” “a good nose”). Yet in the hands of the marketers who have transformed wine into a multibillion-dollar industry, The Number is often all that counts. It is one of the wheels that keep the glamorous, lucrative machinery of the wine business turning, but it has become so overused and ubiquitous that it may well be meaningless — other than as an index of how a once mystical, high-end product for the elite has become embroidered with the same marketing high jinks as other products peddled to the masses.

“On many levels it’s nonsensical,” Joshua Greene, the editor and publisher of Wine & Spirits, said. He has been using the 100-point system to judge wines in his magazine for about a dozen years.

Mr. Greene’s ratings, especially when he awards a 90 or higher, often figure prominently in newspaper advertisements and promotional materials. Still, he said of the 100-point scoring system, “I don’t think it’s a very valuable piece of information.” To Mr. Greene, The Number is an unfortunate remnant of a time long past, when America was only starting to appreciate wines sold in something other than a green glass jug — akin to a set of training wheels that should have been removed years ago.

Yet Mr. Greene continues to use the 100-point system because he believes that he has no choice; to do otherwise is to court potential financial disaster. Because he is “determined to find a way to talk about wine without using scores,” he publishes a scoreless issue of Wine & Spirits once a year — and then braces for a corresponding decline in circulation and advertising revenue.

Once upon a time, a rating of 90 might have made a wine stand out. Today, so many critics are using the 100-point scale that the odds of a bottle earning a place on, say, Wine.com’s listing of “90+ Rated Wines Under $20” have increased immeasurably — in part because Wine.com, among other retailers, has joined the ranks of those scoring wines.

MANY wine buyers may think that The Number has the same integrity as the ratings that Consumer Reports bestows on products like cars or household appliances. But virtually every critic using the 100-point system deviates from the stringent standards that Consumer Reports, a nonprofit magazine, has adopted to ensure objectivity.

“The deeper you get into this, the more you realize how misleading and misguided this all is,” said William R. Tisherman, a former editor of Wine Enthusiast, who is more broadly known within the wine business by his nom de plume, Tish. Mr. Tisherman said he “only reluctantly” started using numbers to rate wines in Wine Enthusiast in the mid-1990’s.

Still, there is no denying the power of the 100-point system, no matter how flawed or hollow. It provides a simple point of reference in the often bewildering world of wine, a life preserver for anyone drowning in a sea of choice. As a consequence, its effects are felt throughout the industry. Even critics acknowledge that The Number has helped to elevate the overall quality of wine, and experts say it has also influenced the popularity of certain grapes that producers select. Its most direct impact, however, may be in the way that wine is sold.

Wine shop managers might dismiss ratings as overly simplistic — numbers devoid of context, such as a merchant’s sense of individual customer tastes. But the ratings are helping to feed two significant trends ripping through the business: the might of discount retailers like Costco and the growth of online retail outlets. For better or for worse, The Number is proving an effective stand-in for the knowledgeable wine shop salesclerk.

“It’s a guide,” said Marvin R. Shanken, the editor and publisher of Wine Spectator, which helped to popularize the 100-point system. “It’s not an absolute.” But a numerical score suggests anything but an approximation — and try telling a winery suffering the economic consequences of a disappointing 89 for its signature vintage that The Number is nothing more than a guide.

“Every day I have people come in the store,” said Larry Leventhal, a manager of First Avenue Vintner in Manhattan, “and they tell me they’re not interested in hearing about any wine unless Parker gave it at least a 90.”

IN the beginning there was Robert M. Parker Jr. This lawyer turned self-employed wine critic introduced the 100-point system to the wine world in 1978, when he started a wine buying guide called The Wine Advocate, published every two months.

Until that time, critics in both the United States and abroad tended to use a simple 5-point system — if they used any scoring system at all. But Mr. Parker fashioned himself after Ralph Nader, a crusading consumer advocate on a quest, in this case to enlighten the discriminating wine buyer. Scoring wines on a scale of 50 to 100 seemed the perfect vehicle to advance his cause.

“Consumers understood the 100-point rating system almost viscerally,” said Elin McCoy, author of “The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste,” published last month in paperback. “Whatever a person knew or didn’t know about wine, they understood that a grade of 98 is a good thing, and a 72 not so good.” To avoid being influenced by the name or reputation of a winery, Mr. Parker tasted batches of wine together, slipping the bottles into individual paper bags and then mixing them up and rating each one. Under his system, a 96 to 100 is an extraordinary wine, 90 to 95 is excellent, and 80 to 89 is above average to very good.

As Mr. Parker’s influence grew, retailers started quoting “Parker Points” in advertisements and other promotional materials. That raised his profile and that of The Wine Advocate — and inspired other publications, eager to market their own titles, to adopt a 100-point scale, Ms. McCoy said. Wine Spectator was the first, in the mid-1980’s.

Wine Spectator actually began scoring wines in 1980, Mr. Shanken said, shortly after he paid $40,000 to buy it. A buying guide, he understood, would be crucial to the Spectator’s success. The magazine experimented with 9- and 20-point scales before adopting the 100-point system. Mr. Shanken bristled when asked if he adopted the 100-point scale in a bid to emulate Mr. Parker’s success, but he also gave his better-known rival his due.

“He certainly deserves the credit for using it first in wine,” Mr. Shanken said.

Another 10 years or so passed before the next set of magazines, Wine Enthusiast and Wine & Spirits, adopted 100-point systems, both in the mid-1990’s. But by that time the American wine industry had changed notably.

Wine consumption in the United States began to grow appreciably beginning in the late 1960’s, analysts say, but that translated primarily into a huge increase in the sale of jug wines, like Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy and sweet fizzy concoctions like Riunite Lambrusco.

America’s lusty embrace of pricier wines sold in 750-milliliter bottles did not start until about 1980, those same experts say. Mr. Parker and Mr. Shanken both rode and drove that trend. Today, those in the wine industry — wine makers, wine merchants, wine writers and other self-described “cork dorks” — say the United States is in the midst of a golden age of wine, in no small part because of the Parker scoring system.

“There’s no doubt that the 100-point score has played a role in the growing popularity of wine,” said Jon A. Fredrikson, a wine consultant in Woodside, Calif.

Per capita wine consumption in the United States fell in the 1980’s, when the industry weathered a national antidrug campaign that lumped in alcoholic beverages with narcotics. The greatest factor in reversing that trend, Mr. Fredrikson said, was studies demonstrating the health benefits of moderate consumption of red wine. Assigning numerical scores to wines also proved pivotal, he said, as the uninitiated began looking for a way to distinguish one bottle of wine from another by a means other than price.

“The retail trade didn’t pay attention until we moved to the 100-point score,” said Mr. Greene at Wine & Spirits, who had been using a four-star system to rate wines until he switched in 1994 or so.

Mr. Tisherman, then editor of Wine Enthusiast, also realized that he risked irrelevancy if he did not follow suit. He watched the Spectator use what Mr. Shanken called “the advance”— the scores his magazine sends out weeks ahead of the actual publication date so that retailers can stock up on highly rated wines — to entrench itself as a central player in the wine industry.

“Basically the Spectator was saying, ‘Use our numbers, which we’ll send you ahead of time, so you can order a lot of that wine and then watch it fly out of the store,’ ” Mr. Tisherman said. “We didn’t feel we had any choice.”

Apparently, others felt the same way: today, at least a dozen sources publish a 100-point score, including assorted Web sites and Beverages and More, a 55-store chain in California.

The Number has also found a partner in shelf talkers — the capsule wine reviews that sometimes adorn shelves beneath select bottles in retail outlets. “The way the industry works now,” said David Graves, a founder of Saintsbury Winery in Napa Valley, “if you send out enough wine samples, you might get a real high number that you can put on your shelf talker.”

Cork dorks say that even today, the only scores that count are those of the first two publications to embrace the 100-point score: Mr. Parker’s Wine Advocate and Mr. Shanken’s Wine Spectator. That has not stopped retailers from cherry-picking high scores no matter who comes up with them. Wine.com uses no less than seven sources when fishing for members of the 90+ club, including The Wine News, the Connoisseurs Guide and the International Wine Cellar. And in a pinch, Wine.com is not above turning to an eighth source.

When promoting Capcanes 2001 Costers del Gravet, a Spanish wine, for instance, Wine.com quoted a well-regarded publication, International Wine Cellar, written by Stephen Tanzer, in its review. But the source of the 91 that earned the 2001 Costers a place on its 90+ list was Wine.com itself. (The company did not return a call seeking comment.)

Consumer Reports, which began rating wines in 1997 (without a numerical system) never sells products it reviews and thus has no financial incentive to promote a product. In contrast, Wine Enthusiast operates an online wine store. Tim Moriarty, the magazine’s managing editor, said that he and other editorial employees “hardly ever have dealings with the sales part of the organization.”

The sales arm employs its own wine critic, Josh Farrell, a professional sommelier. On the Wine Enthusiast Web site last week, no wine that he reviewed scored less than a 90. That, Mr. Farrell says in a note on the site, is because “of our commitment to finding only the best.”

Consumer Reports accepts no advertising — again, to ensure that it steers clear of conflicts of interest. For that same reason, Mr. Parker runs no ads in The Wine Advocate.

The glossy magazines, of course, can make no similar claim; the economic health of publications like the Spectator and the Enthusiast are wholly dependent on the ad space they sell to many of the same wineries whose bottles they review. And Mr. Parker himself does not meet one of the gold standards established by Consumer Reports, whose testers refuse freebies. Like other tasters, Mr. Parker primarily tests sample bottles sent to him at no cost.

“It’d be economically impossible to buy all those wines, especially the ones that are $100 to $300 to $500 a bottle,” said Mr. Shanken, who noted that the Spectator rates a minimum of 12,000 wines a year. All the Spectator’s tastings are blind, Mr. Shanken said, in contrast to those of some rivals.

Tim Moriarty at Wine Enthusiast said his magazine “encourages,” but does not require, his reviewers to perform blind tastings.

Yet no critic working for a print publication seems to wrestle with the conflicts that regularly confront Wilfred Wong of Beverages and More, the retail chain. Mr. Wong allows that working as a wine critic inside a large retail operation can be tricky. At times, he said, his bosses nudge him to lavish a high score on a wine, especially one that has failed to earn a 90+ from Mr. Parker or Mr. Shanken’s crew of critics. His bosses may have secured a good price on a big shipment of wine but that does not necessarily mean, Mr. Wong said, that he treats it to a good score.

“We have fights all the time,” Mr. Wong said. His reputation among the chain’s customers, he said, keeps him honest — a view the founders of Beverages and More say they support.

Still, Michael De Loach, the vice president of the Hook and Ladder winery in Sonoma County, wonders if scoring mania is healthy for the industry. “Wilfred is a bona fide wine guy, but really, think about it, who needs Parker when you can make up your own numbers?” Mr. De Loach said. “If Parker or Spectator don’t give you a high enough score, you can make up your own.”

THE 100-point rating system is imperfect, said James Laube, the Spectator’s chief critic of California wines. But he also sees it as the best safeguard against paying too much for a painfully mediocre product, especially if someone takes the time to read his tasting notes.

“I don’t see how it can be harmful for consumers when you have 4 or 6 or 10 people offer an opinion on a bottle of wine,” Mr. Laube said. “I think it’s a very valuable service to let people know if there are imperfections in a wine.”

Almost any oenophile will tell you that wines have improved in recent years. They cite factors including global warming and advances in the science of viticulture, but also the widespread adoption of the Parker scoring system.

“Over all, it’s been one of the most important things elevating the quality of wines around the world,” said Mr. Fredrikson, the wine consultant. “Producers care about their scores.”

Yet there are grumblings that some wine makers may care too much about them. It is easy to start an argument in the wine industry by positing that many wine makers fashion wines to please the palettes of Mr. Parker, Mr. Laube and other high-profile critics. Mr. Parker and the critics from Wine Spectator tend to save their highest ratings for robust-tasting, more intense wines, and consultants like Enologix, based in Sonoma, Calif., understand that. In its promotional materials, Enologix promises to use chemistry to “assist wine makers” in “boosting average national critics’ scores.”

Some fear that the worldwide influence of Mr. Parker, who has been described as the planet’s most powerful critic, will eventually mean a homogenization of wines. “It is perhaps a shame that the two dominant sources of wine advice in the U.S., the estimable Robert Parker of The Wine Advocate and the diligent team at Wine Spectator, seem to favor approximately the same styles of wine,” Jancis Robinson, author of “The Oxford Companion to Wine,” wrote in an e-mail exchange.

Ms. Robinson, who is based in Britain, uses a 20-point rating system, though she wrote that she is “not enamored” of numerical scoring.

Analysts say that the rating system, at least as deployed in the United States, favors certain varietals. Wines made from so-called noble grapes — cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and chardonnay — tend to dominate the 90+ lists because they tend to be more complex wines with blockbuster potential. Wines using chenin blanc grapes, on the other hand, taste less powerful by comparison. So simpler wines like chenin blancs tend not to generate show-off scores.

“That’s another way numbers are misguiding people,” said Mr. Tisherman, the former Wine Enthusiast editor who now calls himself a “recovering critic” and helps clients sponsor wine-tasting parties. “A 96 is better than an 86, but not if you want a light-bodied wine, and Americans tend to prefer light-bodied wines. Yet those are also the wines least likely to get a good score.”

Mr. Tisherman argues that it is time to drop the 100-point system because it limits the spectrum of wines that sell well. Still, the 100-point scale may have once been a useful bridge, he and others said, helping many Americans attain a more refined, perhaps even European, preference for premium bottles. If current trends continue, the United States will pass Italy in two years as the world’s second-largest consumer of wine, behind France. (But that is only in total volume: America still does not rate in the top 25 countries in per capita consumption.)

In recognition of this growing sophistication, Mr. De Loach says it is time to switch to a three- or four-star rating system because “applying a 100-point scale to wine is dishonest. It makes the consumer think it’s scientific.” He expressed his appreciation for the publications that have established their reputations by using it, but also declared it a “noble experiment whose time is over.”