Just sayin’.

Best,

LL

Yes, taking into consideration how the wine will age is a part of Parker’s scoring method.

“the overall quality level or potential for further evolution and improvement—aging—merits up to 10 points.”

http://www.erobertparker.com/info/legend.asp

This brings us to the shocking score (85 points) of Haut-Brion. Sure, it was closed that evening, and it was wedged in the unfortunate position of being between Pavie and Pape Clement. But it was clear to me that it was a great wine.

Parker ss renowned for his forecasting ability. Indeed, on his bulletin board, he later posted that in 10 years the HB will be “awesome.” Could he not detect the quality that evening? Or since he apparently did, why did he rate it 85 points?

Like it or not (b) is the probably the most important “skill” of the professional taster, at least in my book. Guessing a wine blind is a fine parlor trick, but having the experience to know, at least to some reasonable degree of professional certainty, how the wine will age, is the real skill set. No one is perfect at it of course, but vintners and blenders and others in the industry have practiced this for probably thousands of years now. I have to believe that this would weigh into those scores. He may well think that the Le Gay will show better for some time but that ultimately the others at apogee will be better. (for what its worth I’m not a TWA subscriber, just thought that there could be some quite logical reasons for these discrepancies)

Loved it
Liked it
Did not care for it
Hated it

with an extra category for: Loved it at that price point.

On the flipside, Biodynamic believers say there’s a huge difference in sensory perception depending on the phase of the moon: the same wine can taste great on a “fruit day” and crap on a “leaf day” or “root day”. Some major UK wine buyers are even only conducting tastings on “fruit days”.

Perhaps RP was tasting on a “leaf day”?

I’d disagree. If you’re in a shitty mood or having a horrible day, then you’re not going to take the same pleasure in a wine as if you’re happy as all and surrounded by your favorite people, etc..

We seem intent on making it into something else, but wine is still something that is incredibly personal. How could something as important as you and your situations not effect the pleasure you take. If anything, your point should be reversed. If your mood or your life can alter how you see the wine, how could you possibly justify ascribing numerical ratings.

Re having four categories for wine. Along those lines, we did a blind tasting earlier this year with Chinese wine consumers and wine professionals and for each wine they had to pick one of the following four categories:

I loved it
I liked it
I disliked it
I hated it

We wanted to elicit preferences and see which wines they would actually buy – all the wines cost less than USD15, so we decided against a category such as “i found it ok”, in order to keep people from simply sticking most of the wines there.

We found it good fun and that it created a lot of discussion when we later revealed the wines.

Details on the event, which we aim to do again, next time with a larger number of consumers, are at the top right on grapewallofchina.com…

cheers, boyce