I have a large cellar, but have rarely used the wine reviewers services AG JD RP etc. (do still subscribe to Wine Spectator). What are the community’s feelings about these? I realize that you need to find someone who’s profile matches your tastes more closely but I think that there is value in the major reviewers just from a winery, vintage, and year over year comparison by vineyard/vintage. Any thought appreciated.
should probaly add… mostly cally cab and italian drinker.
Vinous is good
Can also find a cellar tracker reviewer - possibly a Berserker - who matches your taste.
Bill,
You seem to be a new member of this board so maybe you don’t know that you can search this topic and find several zillion threads that have covered it to death. Please, give it a try, if you sincerely want answers.
As for myself, following any critic’s advice is akin to using his toothbrush. No thank you.
Best, jim
It really depends on what you’re looking to get out of that subscription service, whether a reviewer matches your taste profile and whose wine writing you enjoy reading. And if you find value in paying for all that.
Most of the paid wine subscriptions offer free trials for a limited time. Maybe sign up for a few and see which ones, if any, are useful to you
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Vinous matches your profile (focus on Italy and California). And, if you use CellarTracker, scores and note are automatically imported, so you can read them all on CT.
The CT compatibility is an important and very helpful feature for me.
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imo professional critics get a somewhat unjustified bad rap by most experienced wine enthusiasts. Most likely because the vast majority of those who are not wine enthusiasts, very heavily overvalue them, while stores aim to use their highest numbers to catch our attention to make money rather than to inform and help the buyer can make an educated decision.
BUT a solid critic is still informative and often provides a much better sense of the wine, than 99.9% of the cellar tracker notes. This is true for 3 reasons;
1 they have much much more experience drinking many thousands of wines,
2 they have more technical knowledge for understanding the wine itself materially,
3 they have a much better ability to verbalize what they are experiencing with the wine.
(there are plenty of flaws with all of those 3 reasons… its worth noting they likely don’t drink as many full bottles as the average consumer and there can be a difference with what you think of a wine, when drinking more as compared to 1 glass or less. It is also worth noting that they can sometimes be blinded by some technical knowledge sometimes overvaluing things such as what they know of the region’s weather that year and lastly, they also often try to hard to be creative and interesting in their writing. These are all flaws that are worth noting, but they don’t entirely detract from the point.)
I drink largely Italian wines, but also lots of Spanish, French, and a bit of American, Argentinian and Portuguese in that order. If I don’t know a wine, or a producer from my own personal experience, I mainly use cellar tracker, but MANY MANY wines that have a great QPR remain without anyone knowing they even exist on CT or with such few and mostly useless notes. So, if you are looking to experiment with wines that are not what you drink regularly and trying to find great QPR. RP’s WA is a great source.
I trust JD, AG, NM, and the reviewers I mainly use on RP are Larner (a bit too generous with her scores), Czerwinski & Gutierrez, but I hear lots of people trust Kelly also.
On the other hand, Wine Enthusiast & James Suckling, imo are simply have used their knowledge of the rating system that was prevailing to hijack the attention of consumers until they became huge names and highly profitable.
In the end and imo, a good pro critic’s tasting notes is like one of the best tasting notes you can find on CT.
One other note, CT is significantly more important on assessing when a wine is at its “peak”, as critics don’t often enough re-review a wine a decade later.
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I agree with you that critics do have an important and useful role but I don’t think any one of the reasons you have above are completely true or accurate.
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Have you looked at how many wines Trackers like Burgundy Al and Ben Christiansen taste just to name 2 of many.
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I can’t count how many times I have read things in magazines, papers and blogs written and edited by people who should know better that are factually inaccurate and if I can see these issues, then others with more inside knowledge the myself, most likely see even more.
3.This is the closest to being true as some can write very well in the article and book format and more importantly have something to say but many are really bad even at this. Very few individual wine reviews are worth reading as they are about a sip taken among maybe a few hundred other sips of other wines taken in that one sitting. Often in the Wine Spectator you can’t tell if the wine is red or white or if you don’t look at the score whether they like it or not.
There are Critics who do a great job and don’t deserve the bad rap, but many reap what they sow.
I totally agree. I thought I actually addressed most of that in my post as well.
Yes, I’ve been on for about a year, but a lurker for 4 or 5. Probably need to do more posting and contributing to the community> I looked for similar questions but maybe didn’t look hard enough, I’ll go back and search again.
Thanks all. I’ve been on cellar tracker for years and honestly use that more than any other site. Great comments and reviews from all on there.
Very well said and some great points. Thanks
Love it!
You always cut right to the chase.
Critics will be most useful to you to the extent your tastes tend to line up with the critic, or at least to the extent the critic’s notes are such that you can often discern from them whether a wine will be of interest to you or not.
But the only way to really know that is to monkey around with them, whether through trial subscriptions, reading their notes when they’re posted elsewhere (e.g. retailer websites), or some other way.
As a shortcut, if you described in this thread what wines you’ve liked and disliked, that might help someone point you in the right direction. For example, name some Napa cabs you’ve liked and disliked, and same for some Tuscan wines.
My strategy is CT + wine cellar insider + wine-searcher where you can almost always find tasting notes on retailer web sites
Christiansen might taste ridiculously lot, but at least to me his notes are totally worthless. I never get anything of real value out of them.
Otto,
I totally agree I was just using his as an example that critics aren’t the only people who taste a crazy amount of wine.
I generally think of a wine reviewer score as a ballpark. They don’t score a wine in the 80s and I think it’s mid 90s. Their scores are usually a few points inflated. If it’s a wine with a score of 95, I will try it, but will not break the bank to get it unless I have some other connection to the wine. I will read the descriptions to see if it matches what I want. They are usually accurate in the descriptions, but there are bottle variations and the wine does change over time. You like what you like and these are just a guide.