That wasn’t a criticism of HRH Jancis by the way, I subscribe to her site and she and her team influence my buying decisions.
You teach 6th grade math. I’m sure you have no problem converting the scores
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Lolled out loud
I have to say though, I think she’s the most inconsistent critic that I’m aware of in en primeur. I’ve not run the stats, but typically most critics will end up in the high side of their ranges they provided EP, I find very poor consistency between barrel and bottle scores from JR (and website in general).
I appreciate it wasnt her who did Bdx2020 EP tastings, but her correlation with other critics scores is pretty much the lowest of anyone.
That being said, I’ve just tried to find some examples of bottle scores quickly on Farr and I cant find many wines that have both an EP and in bottle score from JR… So it may well be imagined.
She is indeed a fantastic writer, the articles and books are very inisghtful. The ratings and especially wine descriptions over the past years, however, are some of the weakest of all critics out there. Mostly (roughly 90% of the reviews) just one or two senteces without much information on the wines combined with a highly uninformative scoring regime (not much difference, more scoring how the wine showes today instead of peak drinking potential assessments).
Agreed.
I like a 10 point scale…A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D. Reminds me of school days.
I also kinda like Jasper Morris’ system where he adds to his numerical rating of Burgundies the 1-5 stars (* - *****) indicating how the wine performed in light of its classification or level. A 90 point village wine may merit 4 stars, perhaps punching above its grade, while a 92 point Chambertin may merit 2 stars as disappointing for its level.
And there is the 2 point system of Bill Nanson, at least for older wines…Buy again / Don’t rebuy.
I don’t like numerical scoring, but I guess scoring of some type expresses how much one likes or dislikes a particularly wine, particularly relative to other similar wines tasted at that time. It is just too bad that it became the main way wine is marketed.
By the way, I really can’t stand reading tasting notes that go on and on about the 15 different aroma and 23 different flavor descriptors the writer perceives. (Maybe I am just challenged in recognizing them and peeved as a result!) But it just seems useless to me. I want to know about body, concentration, ripeness (and particularly over ripeness or roasted notes), acidity, balance, finish, sense of place, etc. A summary comment is always enjoyable to read.
I am just curious…were wine critics’ notes always stuffed full of such descriptors, and if not, when did this come into vogue?
Was it a Robert Parker thing?
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for me the biggest problem with numerical scoring systems is the inconsistency.
Are you rating it on potential or current performance? Are you rating it relative to the price, or in an absolute quality sense?
And for those dimensions, are all critics using the same scoring range using the same criteria? Absolutely not.
If price were no object, I think a 93 point Mouton would beat a 94 point no name Chateauneuf (one of my favourite regions) every day of the week, even if it’s numerically a slightly lower score.
Perosnally I like the flavour and aroma descriptors, helpful to work out if I’m likely to enjoy the wine or not
Same, same. Nobody needs the fruit salad (unless it’s something so singular and defining in a particular wine, think mint/menthol notes for Heitz Martha’s Vyd) but all information you said (body, concentration, ripeness (and particularly over ripeness or roasted notes), acidity, balance, finish, sense of place). In addition it is uber-helpful to get a sense how the wine compares to other wines in the vintage, other vintages of the wine (especially the latter one helps the consumer to judge new releases). Jancis gives you almost nothing…
I don’t normally score wines but when I do it’s when I’m at a large tasting and trying to get a quick read, and I use something like this. Basically a 10 point scale with increments of .5, and they generally correspond roughly to the above. Maybe some very quick notes.
At these sort of tastings I’m just trying to figure out whether or not I like a wine enough to seek it out again. In my scale C would equate to something like a 4, and would be a simple wine I’d drink if offered, but would only seek out if it was a good QPR. The advantage of this is method is it leaves me a bit more room at the top end.
You ultimately imply that there is infinite bandwidth, which is not true.
Also your take in Briords is at odd with both the reality of a consistently excellent wine, and the scoring process.
Isn’t a 20 point scale really a 5 point scale?
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Repeatability is a subject for inspection equipment and machining centers. Bashing on any scoring method because someone might score a wine slightly differently at different times makes zero sense. We change as humans from day to day. Wines evolve/change over time. It’s not like a piece of metal being measured twice for length. Yes temperature variation can change the metal, causing it to shrink or expand, but at a very minute level.
We see a finished score, 92 or 16.5, and criticize the reviewer or the system for being so precise. It’s the end result of an assessment. My blind tasting group has been scoring wines out of 20 for years. Points are assigned based on various elements (e.g. color, aroma, acidity), with a final allowance of 3 of 20 points for “general quality.” We have scored wines under 12 many times, and even under 10 for some mass-market wines inserted in a tasting as a lark. If we reallocated the points to be out of 100 we would likely end up scoring some wines in the 60s.
There’s a subset of folks who focus on scores, and there’s a subset who don’t. Of those who focus on scores, there’s a further subset that claims they don’t but uses them as some sort of stand-in for critics - conveniently ignoring the written word, and getting all bothered about a number they claim to not pay any attention to. It’s rather funny.
Anyway - having morning coffee, and the repeatability issue stuck in my craw, mostly because of my prior life as a manufacturing Quality professional.
She is a much better writer that a scorer. A pillar of wine criticism and teaching and she deserves tremendous respect. Let’s not forget she was doing videos and wine broadcasts when most critics were still in diapers (especially William Kelley, not sure he was even born when she was already an MW). That being said, her scores for me seem to be the most inconsistent and scattered of any of the major critics. Maybe palate fatigue after all these years is setting in. The last major scoring dust up was in the '03 Pavie when she got into a true smackdown with Robert Parker over the wine. I tended to side with Jancis on that one. The Pavie was just an oversexed fruit bomb with little future. Of course RP loved it but I think her 12/20 rating was the real truth. For her to joust with Parker at that time (he was the friggin pope of wine in that era) took some testicular fortitude.
I enjoy the articles, just ignore the scores for the most part.
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If something is not close to repeatable (nobody is perfect and tasting conditions are never exactly the same), it’s not reliable. If you rate a wine 96/100 today and 88/100 tomorrow, your scores are simply not reliable — how do I know the 96 that I read about in your magazine wouldn’t have been an 88 if you tasted it the next day after having oatmeal for breakfast?
Taken to more of an extreme, a 1-5 scale should be even more (almost 100%) repeatable, but I’d argue there’s not enough granularity in a 1-5 scale to make it particularly useful…
So IMO the best balance between “repeatable enough to trust” with enough granularity to discern that a reviewer intends to say that one wine is better than the next is the 20 point scale.
Yes, a 20 points scale is a 5 point scale – or a ten point scale because we see a lot of XX,5. The 100 points scale is not different. Actually we talk about a 10 point scale. Ok – here and there a 88. But that is the exception nowadays and not the rule.
All this scoring has one major problem. Would you like to drink a 20/100 point wine every day? I like a 16/90 point wine as much when the situation is right. On a hot summer night a glas of refreshing Pinot Blanc is more fun than a Montrachet. At least this is my opinion and experience.
You have evidence of the 96 today and 88 tomorrow with professional critics or is that just a hypothetical to create a case that isn’t there.
Back to the critic, she’s British and has the eccentricities that any British wine writer will have. She writes in a fluid, garden-party sort of way that makes you feel as if you are in the room tasting with her and sharing in the knowledge.
It’s ridiulous to argue over 20 vs 100 when in reality both systems have around 15-20 different levels for rating fine wine (80-100 points, 10-20 points with half point steps). There is NO difference between the two systems, both are 20 points scales. Both of them.
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Yes, Jancis is great in all of these ways, and might literally have forgotten more about wine than most of us will ever know. Even some of the older, slightly crotchety MWs revere her.
That said, her notes tend to be so brief that I don’t always find them helpful.
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