Is a 100-point Wine Bullshit?

Perfection is unattainable...and...no one knows what it means anyway.

I’m a whore, let’s get that out at the beginning.

I have to sell wine; the wine is very good wine, but it has to be exchanged for real money. And any tool I can use - including a 100-point score - is fodder for making an impression on a potential customer and giving her a reason to reach for one of my bottles instead of one of the thousands of other choices.

I wish this mediation weren’t necessary, that there was a more organic way for wine and wine lover to come together - without pretense, without fanfare - to see if the wine in the glass spoke truthfully and emotionally to that lover of wine.

As a means of authentic communication, Word-of-mouth is longed for; we want friends reaching out to their friends to tell them about the great wines that can be had at Steven Kent. This is purest way for wine to be shared. And it takes too long. Wine is sufficiently complicated and Time so abundantly short, that most people prefer a seasoned guide to lead them through a populous thicket of alternatives to the one or two that will give them what they need.

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I wish this mediation weren’t necessary, that there was a more organic way for wine and wine lover to come together - without pretense, without fanfare - to see if the wine in the glass spoke truthfully and emotionally to that lover of wine.

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Faced with the abundance of choice, we turn to third parties that we gauge our palates against…and by extension, trust.

There are many more “experts” in the wine world today than there used to be. Bloggers and influencers have taken advantage of the nearly non-existent barrier to entry and are fashioning critical fiefdoms of their own. In an environment in which every producer can find a supportive “critic,” the accolades are less meaningful in terms of driving business.

When Robert Parker evolved wine criticism from longer-form writing that focused more deeply on producers and regions to the two-line tasting note appended to a SCORE in the 1980s, he heralded the advent of a shorthand for describing, if not defining, Quality. Over the course of 30 years or so, he was the most influential wine critic (some say, the most important critic of any sort), making (and un-making) brands, moving markets, and creating styles. The Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, Connoisseur’s Guide, and a few others all eventually adopted the 100-point scoring system to rate wines.

The genius of the 100-pt score is that it communicates clearly on a level we all know from our years in school. If you get 100, you are perfect; if you got anything else, you were - by definition - less so. But the utility of the numerical score is brought into question by its faux objectivity and reductiveness. Every wine drinker is a world unto herself. She has her own set of expectations and experiences; she brings to each glass of wine her own desires and needs. There is no way for one scale to take into account these infinite number of demands, let alone successfully encompass a product that - by its very nature and to its profound benefit - is constantly changing.

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It is human nature to seek the finest and the rarest thing (when the basic needs have long been satisfied). The “finest” thing is only so in comparison to something that is less fine. The moment there are at least two things being compared some scale must be devised to show which one is greater.

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