Cellar Tracker wine scores

WINE TALK
21

Something like this, the scores follow the heard quite often but the notes can be usefully descriptive. Apart from the drink/keep recommendations.

22

This, along with the actual description of the wine’s nose/palette. As an example i don’t like my red wines fruit notes too developed where other people loves it.

23

The thing that needs to be remembered about CT scores, I think, is the variance over time. I find this useful on older bottles where you can get a take on how a wine has been drinking more recently. At that moment the reviewer bias also tends to fade some. A good number of the wines I check have only or mainly CT reviews, in any case and the effect of scores, when prominent, is no different from the effect of GC or 1st growth or what have you–inflecting drinkers’ expectations. But as others have said, if you read the descriptions–and yes find favorite reviewers (“Nanda” posts here from time to time), though I don’t find that always necessary–then I think CT is the best gauge out there.

24

I think you have it backwards. When you see a wine with a cluster of scores dancing around the same figure, it very often means that’s the score it got in some magazine, and everyone else is following suit because they’re worried that if they differ too much from the “professional” opinion then it means they got something wrong.

Probably true of someone with a bunch of Napa Valley trophy wines on agreeing with the scores but the if their cellar is full of Bordeaux I would see the score matching with the critics less of an issue.

25

interesting. I dont know that ive ever looked at a professional score when filling out my CT note, and that I even know any professional scores for any more than a handful of wines I own. but I would hazard a pretty strong wager that if you compared the average CT score to the average professional score of my cellar (and of most of our cellars) that the CT scores would definitely be lower. likely by at least a couple points.

I agree with the scores on average being a few points lower unless it is Suckling than it is more like 5 points lower! [cheers.gif]

26

Scores: useless
Detailed tasting notes: very useful

What if they have both?

27

And even this can be pot luck. I opened a 2005 Magdelaine last week based on CT notes saying it’s ready to go. I was skeptical but went for it anyway cause I brought a 6-pack. It’s miles from ready, I think the CT posters either don’t understand Magdelaine, which really blossoms with 25+ years, or they just like primary wines. Also had that experience with a good friend on this board telling me the 2005 Lanessan was in a prime window and will not improve. I had it last week as well, and disagree 100%. And guess whose CT note, for my palate, was right on point: Keith Levenberg. Gotta know your CT posers. Wish I had read his note first, as I know his Bordeaux palate aligns with mine - should say that the other way around, really - though it was good to check in and is a tasty wine, just needs 5 more years.

5/2/2020 - KEITH LEVENBERG WROTE:
Does not seem to have aged a minute since release. Searing tannins that are strikingly old-style even relative to everything else I find myself calling old-style, combined with fruit primary enough it could pass for a current release. Perhaps it’s starting to pick up a wee bit more aromatic character than it had way back when. But it still feels at least a decade away from a happy drinking zone.

28

And even this can be pot luck. I opened a 2005 Magdelaine last week based on CT notes saying it’s ready to go. I was skeptical but went for it anyway cause I brought a 6-pack. It’s miles from ready, I think the CT posters either don’t understand Magdelaine, which really blossoms with 25+ years, or they just like primary wines.

I would agree with the 2005 vintage. Probably needs some serious time.

One of my favorite tasters said needs some cellaring which is why that feature is nice on Tracker.

29

I think Cellartracker is massively more useful for making wine purchasing choices than any single commercial critic, even great critics like William Kelley. CT wines with multiple notes have 1) lots of notes from bottle (realize not all CT notes are from bottle but usually all but the first one or two are), 2) are often the result of drinking the wine in “normal” circumstances such as over an extended dinner with friends, instead of a small sip in a tasting setting, and 3) offer multiple notes and perspectives on the wine. Whatever additional skills critics have over civilians in forecasting how a wine will turn out based on a small taste of a wine from barrel I don’t think it makes up for all that.

With that said, obviously there are lots of biases in CT scores that have to be implicitly adjusted for. The written notes are crucial for doing that. Some biases I have noticed are –

  1. a “size” bonus where big fruit bomb wines get higher scores even if people don’t like them as much (I posted on this here – Is there a "size bonus" in wine scores? - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers)

  2. a “price and critical score” bias where people will score expensive wines with high critical scores higher because of expectations

  3. a bias based on what fans of a particular wine region are like – Burgundy drinkers tend to be super-expert and finicky about scores, while a lot of California Cab or Washington State drinkers seems to have more of an “awesome! tastes great!” kind of attitude

  4. a lot of ordinary tasters don’t understand aging, so you have to discount certain notes that are clearly describing shut down wines (very noticeable for Bordeaux between about 5 and 15 years old)

All this means that you can’t just take the raw scores, you have to look at the notes and figure out what people are saying. There are a lot of cases where e.g. white Burgs have a 93 average score and the notes are full of experienced tasters saying “awesome, incredible wine that blew my mind!” while some Washington State syrah might have a 93 score and the notes are more like “cool, this tasted pretty good”, or even finding flaws in it.

My biggest buy indicator from CT are multiple experienced tasters saying it’s a “wow” wine for them over a period of years.

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30

That, and this:

It’s both confusing and entertaining when reading a tasting note saying an 8-yo old-school Barolo says “wow, massively tannic old-school wine, definitely needs more time. drink after 2-3 years.”

If the wine hasn’t budged in 8 years, what good is another 2 years gonna do? Wines like that need another 20-30 years, not 2-3 years.

Same thing with wines that have track record for aging half a century. The recent releases of these wines have tasting notes that read along the lines of “peaking now, most likely won’t develop much or at all from here.” Makes me shudder.

31

I agree that it is hard to rely on drinking windows posted by people I do not know or recognize. I often find a slightly different issue from what you have stated. I have seen a lot of posters state that a wine is over the hill when it is closed and too young.

Frankly, I prefer tasting notes here and in some Facebook groups to CellarTracker notes because I know more who is posting them.

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32

A favorite example I came across was a 2011 Cellartracker note on the 2002 Mouton Rothschild (that is the note was written in 2011), which read “Sampled twice…once with a group of extremely sophisticated collectors. We all agreed that this wine is a disappointment. Thin, lacking body and dimension. Consensus was that a few more years in the bottle would do more harm than good.”.

33

So much right in here you may as well read it twice.

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34

I view CT like I do Yelp— it can be nice to read opinions from the masses, but I really only care about reviews from a trusted few. Everything else is like market research.

If I gave more weight to general scores, my whole cellar would be filled with Sauternes and modern Napa. :sweat_smile:

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35

Yeah, that’s a classic example.

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36

I’m in the ball park that you need to align your palate with the reviewer

I also take into account the number of reviews the person has

37

Yelp makes it super-easy to ID the users who can’t be trusted. Not sure there is a CT equivalent of “My boyfriend took me here for our anniversary…” but I suppose complaining that your 9-year-old Mouton is too tannic comes close.

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38

One of the main problems i see with CT scores is that so many users use their own personal scale. One man’s 89 is a another’s 77.

39

CT does have a ‘block user’ feature if that’s what you mean. I believe it eliminates their scores from an avg you would see but it’s been quite a while since I looked into that.

40

Not interested in blocking anybody. It’s just good to know the shibboleths of wisdom and/or ignorance.

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