Wine Enthusiast Magazine
SubscribeThe 100 Point Scale Delivers Positive Direction
by Adam Strum
During my school days when I brought home high test scores from elementary, middle and even high school I received a big kiss on my cheek and warm accolades from both mom and dad. More often than not I’m proud to say my scores were in the 90s and once in a while I even nailed a 100-point perfect score and a delicious bowl of ice cream was my reward.
This similar experience had been embedded into the psyches of tens of millions of Baby Boomers like me and certainly subsequent generations of Americans had a similar encounter with this “100-point” rating system.
It’s quite apparent to me that if millions of consumers can relate to this type of numerical rating from childhood then it must be a valuable way to communicate. The way wine ratings on the 100 point scale impact the sale of wine is a testimony to the truth. To me, communication and what works for the majority of people is what’s primarily important.
While I agree this is not a perfect way to communicate quality to consumers it may be the best way considering the limited time people have today. This is why we also accompany all of our ratings with prose to further communicate the flavors our readers may find in these wines. The goal of the 100-point rating scale is simply to give consumers some direction based on our taster’s professional opinion. I’m certain that even our tasters would agree that this is a subjective art. The consumer should follow their own taste and preferences as well.
For years the 100-point scale has directed millions of consumers to make intelligent buying decisions and this is not something that is going to change in the foreseeable future. When retail wine shops have ratings displayed on every shelf and wineries and retailers tout scores every advertisement.
Given the thousands of wine released every year do you think the 100-point system provides positive direction for the vast majority of wine consumers?
Adam Strum is the Founder and Chairman of Wine Enthusiast Companies and Editor and Publisher of Wine Enthusiast Magazine.
Filed under: Wine Ratings
10 Comments
10 Responses to “The 100 Point Scale Delivers Positive Direction”
Please Wait
August 6th, 2009 at 2:56:02 PM
the 100pt scale meant something when wine was actually bad from time to time. Today the amount of “bad” wine in the market is close to 0, meaning oxidized, tainted, or rotten. There are tons of wines that are “too oaked for me” or “too sweet for me” but a score does nothing to relate this. Today the 100pt scale does nothing as far as educating the consumer or promoting the diversity of wine. Instead the 100pt scale makes wine a commodity, and regulates it to the same class of substances as car parts and refridgerators.
When a publication as yourself realizes this and changes because of it, the wine world will be better for it. Consumers need information, points are for stocks and auctions, but in reality 99.9999% of wine is meant to drink with dinner tonight and so we should talk about what goes with dinner not what a wine is worth at auction.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:20:41 PM
Dear Ryan,
Great meeting you at the recent blogger’s event in NYC and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I find it difficult to understand how “the wine world will be better for it” if there were no wines rated and reviewed on the 100 point scale. Millions of readers use this method to help them make purchasing decisions every day. Since wine is an esoteric product they rely on knowledgable authorities to provide direction. Wine Enthusiast’s IPhone app is now the #1 Lifestyle app on the IPhone and in a very short period of time we already have 50,000 purchasers of our app! Our magazine readership is more than 600,000 readers and the most popular section of the magazine is our buying guide. The most visited area of our winemag.com website is our ratings and reviews.
Seems like there are millions of wine consumers who are happy with the 100 point scale which to me is a testiment to its effectiveness.
Ryan, so why do you percieve this as a negative?
Adam
August 10th, 2009 at 9:09:17 PM
Well now. I hate to get in between you two fellows, but I would probably side with Mr. Strum in that a wine publication needs some base for evaluation. 100 point seems pretty ingrained into the American psyche, but wouldn’t it be fun to do a 10 point scale like the Olympics. Oh my, that unoaked Chard I had the other night. It’s got to be an 8.75 – maybe more from the California judge!
As a side note and a nod to Ryan, I might mention that I do a wine journaling with nearly every bottle that I consume. I award no points. My survey’s read more like, “Last summer, I brought a bottle of this Elk Cove Pinot Noir to uncle Bill and aunt Barb’s house in Maine. This Saturday night, we had some other Mainers to share this wine with. Ed is the Tiger Scout troop leader – and when they mentioned they had lived in the Willamette Valley for 4 years, I thought this bottle would be a nice remembrance for them. It was for me, especially paired with some grilled pork and both green beans and potatos put in aluminium foil on the grill. I really enjoyed this Pinot last year, and this year was no different. What struck me most is the smooth, long, and velvety finish. Really nice balance! Dark fruits like plum. No earthy, no bacon. Amy brought some homemade chocolate chip cookies and why not another glass to finish the bottle. We exercised off our robust meal with a bowling match on the Wii. Ed scored the highest with 215. Not bad for a guy with a broken leg!”
p.s. Has anyone asked Jean-Charles Boisset why he is inclined to pose as un homme de mystere for the photographs in your magazine?
August 11th, 2009 at 3:26:02 PM
My perception is that the 100 point scale is useful as a “first glance tool” to wine quality, but what is often unclear is the basis of the system – objective evaluation of a wine true to type, or subjective enjoyment of the wine. Because of this, I find the scores themselves just an initial pointer to quality and the tasting notes that accompany them much more useful. One thing that does concern me with the 100 point system is my perception of a bias towards certain categories of wine. I hardly ever seen a dry rosé, for example, break 90 points. It seems that if a wine is true to grape variety and well made, it should not hit an artificial glass ceiling.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:57:05 PM
@Marc Ferland
Hi Marc,
Thanks for your comments. I suppose an 8.75 is an 87 or 88 point wine on our 100 point scale. Really enjoyed your prose regarding your Pinot Noir tasting but I’m not sure how safe it is at the bowling alley after drinking with a broken leg? Unless you have a hollow leg?
What are you referring to regarding Jean Charles Boisset? Did you notice that we were the first to break the news on his aquisition of Raymond Vineyards? I’m very proud of our team of journalists!
@wineywhites
Hi Winey,
I totally agree with you that the 100 point scale provides a “first glance tool” for the time challenged Wine Buyer. As you know we augment all of our ratings with written reviews so for those that want prose they usually read the reviews as well before making their purchasing decision.</p><br />
I also agree with your “glass ceiling” remarks however this is again an esoteric “science” and dry Rose may not inspire our tasters as much as Pinot Noir or Cabernet does.
What is the methodology that you would employ to avoid bias as it relates to varietal preferences?
August 19th, 2009 at 10:54:54 PM
Dear Adam:
Would your parents have expected the same level of school work from you when you were in 10th grade, vs when you were in 5th grade? I think not. When you were in 5th grade, you were graded on 5th grade expectations. If you turned in 10th grade work at that age, wow, you would get fantastic grades, and if you turned in 5th grade work when you were in 10th, you got terrible grades, because the expectations for you were higher.
What’s always bugged me about the 100 point scale is the passing glance to wine prices. It would be much more illustrative if the cost of the wine were considered as a part of the score. We expect more from $50 wines than $20 wines. If the $50 wine delivers only $20 quality, in your panel’s opinion, then that should somehow be taken into account. So maybe that wine is only worth 85 points for a $45-$55 wine, but if it was $20, maybe it would score 90 for its value.
Conversely, say you have a $12 wine that knocks it out of the park. You could rate it 95 points for a $12-$15 range. Work out some price categories and a shorthand way of presenting this beyond whatever “Value” categories you’re already doing. “95/$12-$15,” maybe.
This could bring some expensive wine’s scores back down to earth and raise the scores of well made, lower priced wines. And I think it might bring some sanity to the wine score world and be helpful to your readers.
Back to work. Thanks
August 20th, 2009 at 1:48:51 PM
Adam, great to meet you too, and I hope we can meet up on this side of the pond sometime…as to your question:
I perceive it as a negative because it’s continuing to provide the drug to the addict. The points benefit no one, and if your subscription numbers are that high then you have the great opportunity to help change something. Imagine stepping forward and recommending wines, and giving suggestions to great wines for “summer, winter” that go with “steak, chicken…” without the points. Giving people information instead of tasteless numbers.
If you have no other choice but to see numbers beside the reviews/recommendations you will use them. But if they are not there, people won’t necessarily miss them either. They exists, but as you say people want wine knowledge from experts, numbers aren’t knowledge. They are shortcut tags(cliff notes) so that you don’t have to delve deeper. The easy way out.
Points need to go away, and I hope magazines and websites like this one day realize they could help influence this. Tell us stories, recommend wines, but don’t presume to tell us that one wine is 1pt better than another. I dare anyone to succinctly tell me what one wine has over another wine whose scores a point less. It’s impossible and thereby shows the inherent flaws with the system. You can tell me though without a doubt what you think of the wine, how you would enjoy drinking and what you think others might. You can also do this with an icon, dot, color or otherwise to give a quick reference to “wines not to miss”!
In the end points are for the lazy, and they probably won’t go away, but I long ago learned that I don’t want to read wine writing that is lazy! :)
Cheers,
r
August 21st, 2009 at 11:50:09 AM
Dear Brad,
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
As you probably know value is a relative term. To one person $50 might be a spurge to another it might be what he expects (and can afford) to pay for a good wine. Of course if a $50 wine received a score of 84 than most people would say this is very poor value.
What we do is provide our scores and of course accompanied by the tasters reflection on the flavors you might find in the wine with his review and let the reader judge (since he has the price) if the wine is good value or not. BTW our tasters do not know the price of the wines they are tasting generally all they know is ther country and the varietal. They taste everything blind in flights of five.
August 21st, 2009 at 12:01:43 PM
Hi Ryan,
Yes you are correct that points alone would be lazy that is why we accompany all of our rating with reviews and recommendations.
Whether we like it or not people have less time and are distracted today by massive doses of information and have shorter attention spans. Essentially more and more we are asked to “get to the point” and that point in this case is points! While not perfect, they do work to provide a critic’s quick take on wine quality. For those like you who want to delve deeper into the nuances of a wine’s quality and flavor we provide more information in the form of reviews. Ryan I don’t mean to “beat this up” but this is what people want and as an intelligent businessman we need to give them what they want otherwise they won’t read us.
Adam
August 28th, 2009 at 11:28:47 PM
I’m late back to the game, but wanted to respond. I read recently that many tasters divide the 100 points and give the last 10 to the ability of the wine to improve over time. I find that a different definition than I think most people expect of the 100 point scale. When I buy a wine, I’d like to know how well it compares to its own type, not something else altogether. When I buy a dry rose, I don’t buy it to age. I know it generally tastes best young, and I don’t think of that as a negative quality. Giving it less points just because it is not something else to me means that I can’t trust the scale, because it tries to make these wines something they are not intended to be. It also makes it difficult as a consumer, because I can’t tell what the “top” of the scale is for any particular wine variety. I have to know, as a consumer, that a particular wine usually gets a score in a certain range, and then know what the top is, to determine if a particular wine is good. With that perspective, it’s not clear to me how much the 100 point scale simplifies wine buying.