Are Ratings Overrated?

By Leticia Borges.

I’ll admit it. I was sucked into the wine numbers game. It took me years to realize that pretending to know about wine by repeating other people’s “tasting notes” (even if they were gurus) wasn’t helping me learn about my own personal wine preferences. Yes, I drank plenty of 90+ wines but I knew nothing about what I liked or disliked about them.

In my defense, I believed anyone working in the wine industry had to know more than me. The experts had spoken and I, obediently, took the back seat.

One day the consultant in me woke up. Wait a minute! Who came up with the rating scale? What do we know about them? Why do we only hear about the 90+ wines? Do wines ever get a 57? If so, why can’t we use that lower scale to make sure we’re not buying the truly shitty wine either?

Wine Is A Business

I’ve been a business consultant for over 25 years. My clients were multinational organizations trying to improve their business results by leveraging their talent. A big part of my success as a consultant rode on my ability to understand my clients’ business model. I can assure you that the wine you’re drinking had a lifecycle very similar to any other product or service around you. Wineries have public relations agencies and invest in their brands as much as any other industry does. Some wineries invest more in those efforts because they have a lot more money. The wine industry targets ordinary people to buy into the illusion that connoisseurs are the experts and, as such, they know what they’re talking about. That logic leads us to believe there’s a perfectly valid reason to trust a complete stranger when they say that one wine is better than the other. Ranking and rating is a logical way to deliver a simple message. High must be good. Low must be bad. These so-called “experts” help perpetuate the notion that disagreeing with a wine rating probably means that you can’t tell the difference between a good wine and the mediocre one. Sadly, the wine industry is constantly betting on our need to impress our friends. Because of this, we end up buying the overpriced wine that Robert Parker has blessed with a 95+ to fill our “Insta-brag” quota of the day.

What If You Hate The 95+ Wine In Your Glass?

There is always one question that comes to mind when I hear the conversation about wine ratings. If a few wine experts think that the 95+ wine in your glass is a “rare gem” and you think it tastes like piss, does that make you ignorant? The short answer is no. However, if you buy a particular wine just because someone you don’t know rated it a 95+, then you’re not ignorant but you are lazy. You haven’t asked for my advice, but I’ll give it to you anyway (an old habit from the consulting world). Don’t fall for it. As Admiral Ackbar would say “it’s a trap!”

My curiosity led me to conduct an interesting experiment. In one of my trips to Total Wine I explained to one of their employees that I was conducting my own wine tasting experiment and needed some recommendations. I left the store with the three bottles that he selected for me. One bottle had been rated a 95 by Wine Spectator and the others were not rated at all. I had no idea which one was the rated wine. The deal was that I would look up the wines only after I had selected my favorite. It was too interesting of an experiment to go solo –plus who drinks three bottles of wine alone!– so I asked a few friends to come over for an impromptu wine tasting experiment.

I didn’t want to put anyone on the spot or embarrass myself by choosing the worst wine so I came up with a pretty simple methodology. I wrote a number 1, 2, or 3 on each bottle and asked my friends to taste each wine, write the number of their favorite wine on a piece of paper and drop the piece of paper into a bowl. When we had all selected our favorite wine, I tallied the results. Bottle number one had won unanimously. We then did our research online. Surprisingly, the rated wine was our least favorite.

Drink The Wine That You Like

That very simple experience changed the tone of things for me. It made me realize that buying wine by its rating was a lazy way of solving a pretty simple problem. Wine is about what’s in your glass and whether you like it or not. It’s that simple.

If the goal is to find a wine that you like, then why not try a few until you land on one that suits your own taste? In other words, who cares about Robert Parker’s list of must buy wines? Some issues need an expert, others do not. If my car breaks down, I need a mechanic. If a battery dies in my remote control, I don’t need an expert. I just need to replace the dead battery. We drink to create a memory, celebrate a moment or get drunk. In my world, expert advice isn’t required to accomplish any of those things. Besides, we generally don’t drink side-by-side to compare. We drink one bottle and when that bottle is over, we open the next one. So why have we complicated the matter with a rating system that doesn’t align with the way in which normal people drink?

Wine is about what you’re experiencing around you when you take a sip. How the inside of your glass allows you to enjoy your surroundings. People don’t stop to think whether the host is serving a wine rated 60 or 100. They don’t think about all the 90+ rated wines they’ll drink at the party or pass on an invitation because the wine will be under 80. People are generally looking forward to the experience, to the opportunity to share with other people, maybe even meet someone new.

Wine, like music and food, is just another conduit to create a memory and being consumed by wine status makes wine complicated for no reason. If the goal of everyday gatherings is to create a moment, do you really care if the wine you’re drinking was approved by the wine gods or if it made the “employees’ wine of the month” list?
Drink the wine that you like. If you don’t like the wine a complete stranger rated 100, spit it out and move on the next bottle. No over-engineering required.