It is based on the simple fact that wines are
not comparable. Various people have made this observation over the years, but
it has always been defused by the marketing needs of producers in search of a
USP, the financial lure of staging competitions and a general acceptance that
if you prefer one wine more than another then surely you can create a rank
order and assign it marks. And we all love lists and ‘top 10’s’. The argument
put forward is that you can’t compare apples with oranges, but do people feel
that wines are as distinctively different as that? To the consumer is not
comparing a Cederberg Merlot to a Karoo Merlot comparing apples with apples?
Most people, of course, don’t score wines,
they rate a wine simply by whether they like it or not. Only wine students,
critics and judges feel the need to give each wine a score.
If you believe, as Robert Parker does, that
wine is just another commodity and that they all have characteristics that can
be quantified and compared then scoring works for you. But consider wine writer
extraordinaire Hugh Johnson’s comment, after more than 40 years of wine
tasting; to whom, ‘the link between the colour of a wine and a number is simply
missing’. Hugh cannot understand why a darker colour should score higher than a
lighter one –or vice versa. Pieter ‘Bubbles’ Ferreira is totally against
awarding wines scores for colour. Also, why should wines with more intensity of
aromatics or fruit score higher? What about elegance and balance?
Then comes a line from Hugh (‘Wine: A Life Uncorked’)
which turns darkness into day; ‘Who would try to rate Manet or Monet, or
Hemmingway and Fitzgerald?’
Imagine the scene; the judge’s tent;
Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’: ‘rather simplistic
and childish’, ‘lacks commercial viability’, overly simple colour choice’,
‘fine detail missing’, ‘naively appealing’, ‘needs time to appreciate’ 4 stars.
Swartland Merlot: ‘lustrous’, ‘complex
aromas’, ‘layers of flavour’, ‘spicy and decadent’, 4 ½ stars.
Ok, apples with oranges, perhaps, but the
point is that we are so used to making judgements that they carry over, thus a
Mont Blanc or a Montrachet become aspirational.
Scoring wine attempts to predict your pleasure
potential from any wine. How can I predict your pleasure potential.
Herein lies a salient point. Yes, they may be both Chenin Blancs, but do we
taste them the same ? And what of when we taste them, where and with whom? What
about the occasion, the memory it evokes, the conversation it warms, the
suggestion of its terroir, the moment it places in our heart? We know that wine
tastes differently depending on lots of factors, including our mood and our
prejudices, so if comparing one to another how can you say that Elvis is better
than Justin Bieber, or Adele better than Katherine Jenkins ? Imagine scoring
Andy Warhol at 88 and Bruegel at 91? How, then, can we rate a Paarl Shiraz
against one from Constantia, or more ridiculously, an Elgin Riesling against a
Californian Zinfandel? It is reducing art, passion, excellence, pride, effort,
history, even, to a mere number.
Hence, wine scoring becomes preposterous. Hugh
again, ‘I look for the virtues proper to each wine and enjoy them for what they
are’.
Nonetheless, score we do, and just to be
awkward, and maybe to initiate another debate, I offer two systems. Neither of
which I use, just to consider.
The first is based on that of Pierre Boisset,
a wine merchant who measured each wine against ‘an ideal profile for that
wine’, thus depth of colour or intensity of aromas was only relevant if it was
a character expected of that wine. Boisset used ten headings and scored each
out of ten, with a score around five of being exactly right. Thus, colour for a
Pinot Noir scored at 5 would mean one absolutely correct, not too dark or
light. ‘5’ is the perfect score indicating an aspect exactly as you would want
and expect and meeting your pleasure expectation. Thus a Cabernet tasting of
layers of blue fruit, cassis, hints of oak, mint, plum etc might be just as you
hoped; it gets ‘5’, but one with simple jammy fruit might get 2, or one with
aggressive dry burnt flavours might get 8. Too much tannin might get 7 under
the ‘flavours’ aspect, a Sauvignon Blanc lacking aromatic intrigue might score
3 under ‘aromas’, one offering multi-layered citrus notes might get ‘5’ and so
on. Using Boisset’s system it might look 5663847649, totalling 58 when 50 is
‘ideal’. A touch confusing.
A shorter variation might use only the aspects
I think important to the consumer (the real arbiter) thus 1) colour 2) aromas
3) flavours 4) quality 5) value for money
I’m not even sure about number 1 and I’m not
going to add ‘pretty label’. It may seem complicated, and probably is, but I
might argue it is a fairer judgement of a wine’s characteristics than allotting
scores where bigger equals better. At least a wine is competing with something
much fairer than somebody’s comparison with another wine, your measure of what
you expect of it. Whatever you use the human element is still not addressed,
though.
A simpler system? How about ignoring a wine’s
colour unless it is faulty in which case you would deduct marks. Then award 0
if it smells dull or flat, 1 if it is pleasant and characterful and 2 if it is
intriguing and multi-faceted. Then up to 4 for flavours (as it is twice as
important as aromas) and up to 2 for quality and 2 for value for money. Total
10. “Value for money as important as quality?” You ask? To the consumer, I
think it might be. I wonder what a pretty label would score?