Comments on: Do Scores Here Really Matter?

By: Proposal for a Standardized Wine Rating System | Winecast

Proposal for a Standardized Wine Rating System | Winecast — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 02:41:03 +0000

[...] response to Blake Gray’s piece in the San Francisco Chronicle last week. I’ve blogged quite a bit about this in the past, so I’m not opening up the question of continuing with the 100-point system or not. What I do [...]

By: Ratings, Scores, Context and Sneezing | Garrick Van Buren .com

Ratings, Scores, Context and Sneezing | Garrick Van Buren .com — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 14:02:03 +0000

[...] Tim’s rethinking his wine rating system – maybe something more detailed albeit less glance-able. [...]

By: Winecast - A wine blog and podcast

Winecast - A wine blog and podcast — Wed, 30 May 2007 00:46:41 +0000

[...] I’ve blogged here in the past, I am a reluctant practitioner of numerical ratings. I’ve been using them for long enough to [...]

By: Winecast - A wine blog and podcast

Winecast - A wine blog and podcast — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:09:04 +0000

[...] know, we have discussed this subject before here but, without beating a dead horse, would it really matter too much if I just left those scores out [...]

By: Working Pathways » Ratings, Scores, Context and Sneezing

Working Pathways » Ratings, Scores, Context and Sneezing — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:25:02 +0000

[...] Tim’s rethinking his wine rating system – maybe something more detailed albeit less glance-able. [...]

By: arthur mcbeth

arthur mcbeth — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:22:35 +0000

Hence it does matter because its all about to taste wine in order to find its tendency.

By: WineTagger Blog » “Tags are the perfect way to describe wines.”

WineTagger Blog » “Tags are the perfect way to describe wines.” — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:09:15 +0000

[...] I am, by far, not the first to struggle with this issue. My alma mater published the UC Davis 20 point system decades ago. Recently, Tim Elliott has commented in a number of his blog entries how he struggles with how to present wine reviews. Most recently he compared a couple of prose reviews here, and earlier he wondered if he should even include ratings in his wine reviews. [...]

By: DrBob

DrBob — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:55:39 +0000

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Drink Up!
Dr. Bob

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 23:00:13 +0000

I’m not a fan of the assembly line approach to wine tasting, Dave, so I think the additional context will be a regular part of future reviews both here and on the podcast.

By: DancingDavidE

DancingDavidE — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 18:20:07 +0000

I also enjoy a bit of context if there is any.

Tasting wine in some sort of Henry Ford assembly line maybe goes along with the bare bones approach, but when you’ve tasted a wine and enjoyed it with food, then I think we like to hear the story and the background info.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:21:36 +0000

I understand where you are coming from Gary and agree that a score is an important element to a wine rating. So I guess I am coming to the conclusion that a more verbose review with a rating is the best course of action. I’m not sure if that means I convert to the 100 point scale or not.

Thanks for your thoughts on the issue.

By: GW

GW — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 11:33:35 +0000

So much wine. So little time. When you skim read reviews..blah blah blah..blackberry…blah blah…tannins…blah blah…loved the wine….blah blah. Then no score does not cut it for me. It is not about assigning a coarse numeric value to a wine really or reducing that particular wine to a number. It is just about how much you like the wine relative to other wines. I read reviews from many writers with no scores…and so help me I just get a bit lost. Maybe I am simple but I like a simple score. Do you like it or not..and if so how much. Easy. The meat is in the note but the score talks.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 23:41:56 +0000

Great points, Lisa. Also thanks for pointing out the fine points of vinorati. I’m looking forward to seeing this in action. Best of luck.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:44:14 +0000

The second review is definitely more of a pleasure to read, as well as being more motivating to the buyer. It’s a great example of a literary review style. If I were getting information about one wine I would definitely prefer to get it in this format. If, however, I was trying to look at more than 10 different wines this would be completely unwieldy. For example my own private tasting notes tend to be very succint and definitely include a numerical rating. I think the best review style depends on the intended usage of the review.

Thanks for coming to have a look at our “vinorati” planning blog. I wanted to clarify on the source of the wine tags. We are planning to launch the site with a pre-loaded database of wine to allow users to tag these wines if they want, but also to add new wines. Users would have a “tasting journal” on the site which consists of the wines they had tagged. Users could add a link (say on their blog) to their tasting journal if they wanted. I really like your idea of continuously adding tags to wines based on reviews available on the internet. Tag clougs aren’t really all that interesting until you’ve collected a decent number of tags. (sorry for going a little off-topic!)

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:10:05 +0000

Thanks for the encouragement; it will be difficult to leave out scores, but certainly the back story is the more compelling than just a cold number. Let’s see what others have to say on this before I make any decisions/changes.

By: GollyG

GollyG — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:56:07 +0000

I really prefer the second review. Wine isn’t an engineering project, it’s about stories and places and people, not just numbers. Go with the affectionate style!

By: Dr. Vino

Dr. Vino — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 19:29:48 +0000

Excellent, Tim! I think you’re about to fall off the wine-by-the-numbers bandwagon.