Nobody ever thinks that the evolution of winemaking and farming science, combined with optimal growing conditions in a vintage or number of vintages, might lead to better wine across the board?
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Beat me to it…a rising tide lifts all boats and as a total % of wine being made, 2-3% “perfect” wines to one taster’s palate doesn’t seem unreasonable.
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plus no 100 pts coming from 2020 (hypothetically) would serve as some balance to these scores to bring some regression to the mean.
are people still IPOB?
Combined with available ‘finishing tweaks’ that are available to winemakers now that weren’t around a decade or two as well . . .
Everyone has their own ideas of ‘perfection’ - but the reality is their have been more 95+ scores, and certainly more 100 point scores, than ever before. So 2-3% doesn’t seem high? Can someone do a bell curve on those 1600 scores to see if it appears ‘normal’ or not?
Cheers.
Unless those 1600 wines are representative of all of the wines produced in Napa in the 2018 vintage, I wouldn’t expect the distribution to resemble a bell curve. I’m assuming that Jeb, and most of the other critics, are tasting a select group of wines - maybe the top third or so of the wines produced in Napa Valley - in any given vintage.
How many wines are produced with a Napa label each year, that never get reviewed by Jeb or Antonio or LPB? Only if those wines were also included could one begin to reasonably expect anything resembling a bell curve.
Talk of bell curves is somewhat purposeful distraction from the point. Since when does anyone agree there should be a perfect distribution of scores starting at 100 every vintage? That curve should be different every vintage and it should most definitely not be lighting the bell at the top every year or it’s not really meaningful anymore(even if I would encourage not relying on scoring anyway).
The point is that by anointing 30 wines from one appellation with perfection and 40 more kissing it, you’re in effect saying that there are seventy bottlings equal to the greatest wines ever. That somehow all these winemakers with blessed were perfection due to the vintage and they all brought it home. Which actually undercuts their work by saying they are all equal and all terroir is equal now. Which is also an argument for prices being absurdly high if just anyone can make the perfect wine given buying the grapes in one valley. But I digress.
Pick wines that people regularly talk about as some of their greatest ever:
'78 La Tache
'89 Haut Brion
'74 Hetiz Martha’s
'91 Monte Bello
etc
Does anyone honestly believe there are 70 wines from Napa in 2018 equivalent to those?
Does 100pts mean it’s the best wine ever or that it has no flaws in the mind of the reviewer?
If it doesn’t, what could it mean? Are the “best” and ‘unflawed’ wines 120pts?
But, you’re not ranking the best wines of all time, with 100 being the all time best wine, you’re giving the wine a score/grade that generally reflects how much you liked it. One inherent imperfection of the 100 point scoring system is that all 100 point wines cannot be created equal, so you necessarily will have some 100 pt wines that are better than others. I don’t think this is a good justification to only give 100 points to the best wine you’ve ever had.
To your point on vintage, I believe Jeb gave out no 100s and only three 99s in his 2017 Napa report.
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Pick wines that people regularly talk about as some of their greatest ever:
'78 La Tache
'89 Haut Brion
'74 Hetiz Martha’s
'91 Monte Bello
etcDoes anyone honestly believe there are 70 wines from Napa in 2018 equivalent to those?
No and what I have never understood is how one can pop and pour a wine and give it 100. All of these wines need a heavy decant and should be consumed blind at least a few times. Tasting 100 of these types of wines in a row is not in my opinion a good way to distinguish any differences between them. After a while wouldn’t they all blend together?
Bummer to hear this as I tend to buy heavily from Howell Mountain.
You’re assuming he popped and poured. You are also assuming he sits down with 100 wines from 30 different wineries and does a speed tasting. I don’t believe that to be the case with high end Napa Cabs and if I were a winemaker and a reviewer came to taste my wines I would be sure they were properly prepared for the tasting.
Antonio at Vinious mentioned smoke taint also at Howell Mtn. He even didn’t rate a wine from Outpost because of it. What’s interesting is that wine is made of grapes from the same wine I usually by, true vineyard. So I passed on that this year. Better safe than sorry.
From what I know about his tasting regiment in the past, some of his tastings are done individually with winemakers, but others are done in larger groups ( he chooses who he gets to taste with).
What would be interesting to see is, of the wines he tasted en masse, how many received 99 other 100 points vs. the ones he tasted with the winemakers (and therefore they had the benefit of ‘preparing’ the wins to their liking, so to speak? Not sure if this info is available.
And this assumes he still does his tastings like this. . .
Cheers.
He said this year he tasted most of the wines in his home office and followed many over the course of several days.
You’re assuming he popped and poured. You are also assuming he sits down with 100 wines from 30 different wineries and does a speed tasting. I don’t believe that to be the case with high end Napa Cabs and if I were a winemaker and a reviewer came to taste my wines I would be sure they were properly prepared for the tasting.
I assume he is not doing a speed tasting but I doubt he is going back a few times to re-taste all these wines. He covers a lot of different regions.
If you look at all the regions this operation is covering I doubt each wine is receiving 5 minutes of time unless it is amazing. Maybe I am wrong but can’t find anything on the website about the reviewing of wines other than the scores and it is done blind.
Maybe someone with a subscription would know how many wines Jeb tastes in a year and if he goes back and re-tastes the wines. If he does re-taste the wines it certainly would be something I would market as it is different than any other service reviewing wines.
A good way to narrow down is to pick the producers you like, that sound like they have tasting notes in line with yours. HAve a budget across the producers. In a year like this I take that budget and buy less of the high end wines ($125 and up) from each producer and more of the lower priced ones ($60-100). Great quality in a vintage, buy across price points but shoot for more total bottles by overweighting the lower priced labels.
So are there any values in there? 100 pts for <$250 say?
IIRC Spottswoode is under $250 and got a 100.