Risquit on 16/11/2009 at 20:21
Quote Posted by ercles
You can say the same about any critic who is involved with a highly subjective product, it's often best to just choose a critic who highly rates products that you like, and let your choices guide them.
That said, to argue that wine ratings are as valuable as a coin toss is ridiculous, because past all the vague descriptors a fairly precise range of vocabulary has been developed by wine writers to convey wine styles with some level of precision. It's beyond obvious that wine writers are much more qualified to rate wine styles than randoms on an internet forum, their taste buds are much more keenly trained, and their understanding of how to encode their tastes in a way that others can understand is not an easy skill to come by.
As an aside, Robert Parker, along with anyone else who advocates a points/100 scheme of wine writing is a bit of a wanker.
True about trusting a critic you like, I do that with music, movies, books, etc.
But take a moment to read the WSJ piece where they gave the same critics the SAME bottles and got different rankings and tasting notes. (
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703683804574533840282653628.html) Why Wine Ratings Are Badly Flawed
ercles on 16/11/2009 at 22:19
I'll try and do this in some sort of organised fashion.
As far as the physiological ability for people to taste, the number that they quote (3-4 separate characteristics) I understand to apply to each taste of a wine, not to the entire experience of a wine, as they suggest. The people who give you a shopping list of flavours after one sip are either searching for the right word and throwing many around in the process, or are just blowing smoke up their own arse. But many times tasting notes are derived from an extended exxperience of the wine, keeping in mind that the wine evolves in the glass as volatile chemicals are released as the wine "breathes" oxygen.
The discrepancies identified between the two descriptors used on the same wine are greatly exaggerated I feel, as they fit largely into the same categories of code that I mentioned in my previous post. As a wine drinker myself, I'd say that lavender and mint both contribute to the herbaceous aromas identified in the second set of descriptors, and cherries and plums line up well with blackcurrants as they both fall under the common descriptor umbrella of dark fruits flavors. The first descriptor certainly identified much more oak derived flavors, and this is the only real difference between the two.
Wine shows are simply fucked, there are no two ways about it. Don't buy a wine because of how it did at a wine show, they are too inconsistent, and the demands on a judge are far too high. Judges generally will have begun to suffer from palate fatigue before two flights of wine have been completed.
As I stated before, the 100 points system is a flawed one, I think the 20 points system used in wine show judging is more appropriate, along with a 5-star system.
Many many standard wine discrimination tests are used (such as the triangle test where two samples are placed in three glasses and a judge is asked to identify the third) have established that there are limits to the physical ability for a person to be able to differentiate wines. As stated in the article, winetasters are human, and are particularly arrogant ones at times. So when you set out to trick them by placing good wines in cheap bottles, hey presto! it works. But this is obviously holds very little water as a method, and I'd say that the properly controlled blind tastings indicate issues with the system much more than any other.
So obviously there are inconsistencies, as there will always be when using subjective analysis of products, and some wine writers are far more reliable than others. But to draw the conclusion that wine writers are as reliable as a coin toss is pretty insane.
Risquit on 17/11/2009 at 07:06
^
Nice job. Maybe "coin toss" was too strong a phrase.
