A 99 pointer and a 97 pointer

WINE TALK
1

The RP 99 pointer:

Very lush and young fruit with strong, yet refined, gritty tannins with an interesting peppery streak highlighting dark rasberry/cherry flavors. My score… 96 points. The wine… 2001 Foley Claret. This wine will go easily another 10 years and probably improve from where it presently is. [winner.gif] [cheers.gif]


The RP 97 pointer:

Tannins that taste like varnish enriched pine wood that obscure the quality fruit hidden underneath. Opened up with air so that the involuntary wretching ceased. My score… 82 points. The wine… 2007 Togni. [oops.gif] [scratch.gif]

2

82 point vomit? Nice!

96-100:
An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase, and consume.
90 - 95:
An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
80 - 89:
A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
70 - 79:
An average wine with little distinction except that it is a soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.
60 - 69:
A below average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor, or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.
50 - 59:
A wine deemed to be unacceptable.

Most vomit Ive tried has been in the low 50s :wink:

3

This is exactly why TN’s from some people are worthless!

4

So you´ve got to change the topic to
A 96 pointer and a 82 pointer !

neener

(Interesting that people nowadays are drinking “pointers” … ) [wink.gif]

5

I wonder how many 80 point wines Parker has in cellar? Yet he finds nothing really wrong with them.

6

I scored the Togni an 82 because it did seem to have a core of quality fruit and, although it was largely obscured by the offesive tannins, there is a chance that in 20-30 years this could be a more drinkable wine. So when taking into consideration future potential, 82 seemed about right. I decided to make my note less sensational, but equally as accurate.

Watch out Otto. I’ll buy that Mouton out from under you just for spite. neener
Oh, and thanks for all those Keever recommendations. [thumbs-up.gif]

7

I always like to contrast my score with Parkers score. It helps me align my palate so that I know which of his future recommendations are likly to correlate with my preferences. Many times I drink the wine blind (the Togni in this case).

As such, I try to think of myself as a educated point chaser…

8

Is that not an oxymoron???

9

+1

See sig.

10

we are all “point” chasers – we chase our OWN points. And if you don’t score wines, well, you’re still chasing wines that you like, which is the same thing, no?

11

OK, I’m going to rise to the bait just this once and then sink down to the depths to answer questions about the great state of Washington.

NO, no and no again to the idea that “chasing wines we like” is at all even remotely related to scoring them. Think for a moment: I enjoy this painting. It stirs emotions in me, makes me contemplate relations of space and color in ways I’ve never done before.

As opposed to: I score this painting 99 points with maybe a “+”, 'cause maybe in a couple hundred years time it could get even better.

The two acts are completely unrelated. Enjoyment can and does happen without the slightest thought given to a number. Determining/assigning a numerical value to an object is not the same as enjoyment. Period.

12

Imo, It is equally bad, if not worse to be a label chaser. At least people who go by ratings are doing some amount of reading, as opposed to those who love Lafite because it’s Lafite.

13

So are you saying that buying wines that you actually like is really deep down just the same thing as buying wines that someone tells you to like? Really?

14

Thanks so much for allowing this thread to devolve into a self-flagellating discussion on the merits, or de-merits, of point chasing. As someone who never tires of beating a dead horse, this topic is right smack in the middle of my sweet spot.

Excepting all those in present company who know everything about every wine and every producer, and who therefore know a priori that which they will like and not like, the mere mortals among the rest of us (e.g., me) sometimes need help in expanding our horizons.

Sometimes Parker likes a wine that I like. Sometimes our palates differ. Through trial and error I have come to know more and more when to trust his palate, and when to ignore it.

Giving a score to a wine is an exercise in constructing a relative hierarchy. For those unfamiliar with the basic building blocks of sentience, being able to construct a hierarchy of preferences is among the most fundamental and critical building blocks required to achieve what we would all consider “intelligence”. When deciding how much to pay for a wine, we need to have some way of judging its worth relative to our finite resources. There are many ways one can construct such a hierarchy, and points is merely one artificial construct that accomplishes this task, but one way or another we all need to utilize some type of hierarchical preference algorhythm in order to rationally allocate our personal resources.

Even if you choose (foolishly IMO) to scoff at the concept of points, unless you are either insane or a billionaire I guarantee you utilize the concept of hierarchy when choosing which wines to buy. A rose by any other name and all that… blahblah

15

Im not sure I could tell if you if I like Prum, Donnhoff or Willi Sheafer better but I know I enjoy all three and they produce wine at prices I can afford so I buy them. So really its just a matter of taste preference and cost for me when deciding what to buy. Yet I still scoff at points. I used to try to score wines but I realized that it reduces my pleasure of them. Its such and artificial and reductionistic excercise. As long as something is in my taste preference threshold, I really like to appreciate each wine as a wonderous individial snowflake. Sometimes the snowflake isnt unique enough for the price, so it gets taken off the list.

16

Good for you! You just created a hierarchy algorithm. You categorize wines as “buy”, “not buy”. You are way smarter than a Neanderthal. When that third synapse finally kicks in who knows what you’ll accomplish! deadhorse

For us neophytes who use points it is often an afterthought. You open the wine, you drink the wine, you enjoy the wine (or not enjoy it if it happens to be Togni), and then, afterwards, when you decide to tell others what you think of the wine relative to your own preferences and expectations, you decide upon a score. The score is not why you drink the wine. It is a brief summation of your relative valuation of the wine. By itself the score is difficult to use. One needs to know something of the person providing the score, their palate preferences, and your own. Hence the concept of palate calibration.

Don’t hate points. Like snowflakes they are merely a concrete way of representing the abstract concept of preference.

17

I rate you 59 points for having to resort to an ad homin attack.

Read up on Straw man Arguments, btw

18

Ad hominem? No, I was not attacking your argument because of how I judge you. Nor, in the straw man vein, was I misinterpreting your argument. I would submit that you are the one who has misjudged my argument.

The dead horse .gif I added was to re-emphasize my point that even those who decry the use of points still rely on some type of hierarchal algorithm when choosing which wines to buy (the crux of my argument). That is why I also added the “a rose by any other name” comment.

If you took the neanderthal comment personally, don’t. I don’t actually think you are one, not pure-bred, anyway. According to a recent genetic study just about anyone not in the African race has some Neanderthal in them.

But perhaps without realizing it your scoffing implied that those of us who use points lack the ability to appreciate wine on the higher plane that you do. Just because using points causes you to enjoy wine less, don’t presume it causes others to do so, too.

19

Once again the mere mention of points in a topic turns into a " points suck and you suck for liking points".

20

Zach, Pete and I enjoyed a '92 Togni a couple of weeks ago that was stellar. I believe this '07 will be equally enjoyable when given its proper cellaring time.