Wine Ratings and U

With WineAlign in the midst of announcing the winners of its 2023 National Wine Awards of Canada, I was reminded about the sometimes confusing aspects of wine ratings. The WineAlign Awards have been around since 2001 and they bring attention to Canadian wines, which is important. However, it’s also important to note that the award recipients represent a snapshot of an ever-growing wine industry. For this year’s awards, 255 Canadian wineries registered to participate (there are qualifications to entry and a cost), which represents about 32% of Canada’s 800 wineries. And while the awards highlight many great wineries such as L'acadie, Lightfoot & Wolfville, Stratus, Leaning Post, Lighthall, and Plot, to name a few, it can be helpful to understand the context behind wine awards and scoring systems. The 2023 WineAlign Awards took place in Penticton, B.C. on June 28, with a total of 22 judges who tasted 1,930 entries. The winners are announced by category, with the Winery of the Year to be announced on July 28.

When Wine Scores May Be Misleading

In The LUCA MARONI System: HIGH Scores for BAD Wine?, Master of Wine Konstantin Baum talks about how one wine critic has hijacked the 100-point wine rating system.

Wine scores are everywhere and they're supposed to help consumers make more educated decisions. They're easy to understand and they grab the consumers attention on the shelf or on websites. I am pro scores in combination with a meaningful tasting note, but they can also be misleading, like in the case of one of Italy's leading wine critics, Luca Maroni.

Luca Maroni is an Italian wine critic who scores wine using The Logisma of the Fruit-Grade of Wine. In Baum’s 10 minute video, he talks about the modern 100-point wine rating system, saying that he “never heard anyone make credible accusations about Robert Parker being biased when reviewing wines, and his publication, the Wine Advocate, never accepted money from producers.” But his focus is on Maroni and how his weird formula and scores are not realistic. At the time of the video, Baum went through Maroni’s last 1,000 reviewed wines and saw that one-third scored 95 points or higher, while 28 wines, or less than 3% of all the wines, received a score below 90 points. He goes on to explain that producers can buy a diploma with Maroni’s score for 50-122 Euros.

I believe that Maroni scores have become a sales tool for producers and retailers rather than a way of communicating quality to the end consumer . . . I think this is misleading the consumer . . . and that's not just bad for you, but really for the reputation of wine scores or the wine business in general.

Baum ends his video saying he thinks it’s important to share this type of information so consumers can be better informed, and while he doesn’t think that what Maroni is doing is illegal, he finds it wrong. And the 300+ comments on Baum’s video seem to agree:

Maroni duped me a few times before I figured him out. Here in Canada, they translate his notes, and they are also egregiously misleading. It is common for him to say “one of the best wines of the year” for poor quality wines. He should be ashamed of himself, and any retailer that publishes his scores should also be ashamed for misleading consumers.

Should You Trust Wine Ratings?

In the The Unspoken Truth About Wine Ratings, an older article from a website that sells specialty refrigeration equipment, Jeff Flowers provides some background on the world of wine ratings, started by Robert Parker in the 1970s, and followed by other publications such as Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, and James Suckling, to name a few. When it comes to trusting wine ratings, Flowers says there is no simple answer:

Until you find a critic that you completely trust, take all wine ratings with a grain of salt and continue to taste the wines you believe are worthy of a chance.

There is no doubt about it, wine can be intimidating, making a numeric point system an attractive way to make a decision. And while I have made wine buying decisions based on ratings in the past, I have come to rely more on recommendations from trusted sources including wine writers, sommeliers, and importers (“importers are to wine as Anna Wintour is to next season's styles: They find the gems”), while also learning more about different wine varieties and regions.

Rethinking Wine Ratings

In It’s Time to Rethink Wine Criticism, the New York Times wine columnist, Eric Asimov, writes that “the most valuable thing wine writers can do is to help consumers develop confidence… [and] gain enough knowledge to make their own buying decisions without the crutch of the bottle review.” Asimov believes that wine writers have more to offer by introducing consumers to unfamiliar regions, grapes, and producers.

Perhaps a better way of making useful recommendations to consumers is to evaluate producers rather than particular bottles. Producers can be assessed for their styles of wine, their methods of production and farming, how they think about wine and so on.

Asimov ends his article explaining that “the biggest gift wine writers can give to their readers is inspiration, arousing in them the sort of excitement that motivates learning.”