Let’s start with a reality check: Medals in wine don’t matter much in the 21st century, save for the wineries who win them. It wasn’t always this way. {Insert old geezer voice here…} Back in the 1980s, wine competitions were actual news—press releases were issued (and picked up); stickers from various competitions adorned bottles on retail shelves; gold medals got displayed in tasting rooms, received respect, and medal-winning wines frequently experienced a bump in the marketplace.
Competitions tended to be based regionally (San Francisco, San Diego, Orange County, L.A., Dallas, Atlanta, Buffalo are cities that pop to mind), sometimes connected to specific fairs, groups or publications, and the entrants were predominantly American. Indeed, success at these competitions helped raise the quality profile of California wines in particular. And why not? Winning wines—awarded GOLD, SILVER or BRONZE medals—played right into the American mindset of fair, Olympic-style competition. Hundreds upon hundreds of wines were judged blind at these affairs, by panels, with wines assessed in peer groups. The cream rose to the top, right?
But the tide shifted in the 1990s. Scores ascended, driven in part by Wine Spectator courting retailers to use their scores, and Robert Parker offering no objection when they clipped his as well. Plus, copycats joined the 100-point fray, meaning there were simly more numbers being bandied about. At the same time, medals seemed to hit a saturation point, symbolized by the publication of an annual paperback guide that aggregated medal-winning wines. The guide helped draw attention to the fact that there were simply more of these competitions than most consumers even imagined…and .
Gold, silver and bronze came to be seen as less precise—and therefore less valuable—than numbers, and the mixed panels assembled for marathon-like competitions were considered less accurate and reliable than the individual critics devoting themselves full-time to the task of gauging wine quality. {For an interesting take on the nature of competition wine-judging, check this post at www.rebeccachapa.com.} Proliferation of medals—from diverse sources—compounded the perception of competition judges being softer than the numbers-wielding critics. There was also the lingering question of judging standards. What did silver or bronze mean anyway; and was one competition’s gold on par with another’s silver?
We are no closer today to standardizing definitions of gold, silver or bronze than we were 10 or 20 years ago. But the question came to my mind recently when I participated in the Hudson Valley competition {see post here, complete with “10 things not to say aloud at a judging”}. I was pleasantly surprised with the overall quality of the wines I tried, but except for the “best of” winners that were revealed to judges that day after a taste-off of previous-round winners, I had no idea of how our group’s judgments translated into the medal hardware.
When the final results were announced, I reacted with a shrug and a sigh. A total of 80 wines had been entered and judged; 57 had earned medals. That’s a whopping 71%. Ah well, I thought, perhaps this is the Hudson Valley’s way of boosting its own stock in the big, bad wine universe. This thought stayed tucked away harmlessly until I received, a few weeks later, a press release about the inaugural edition of the Sonoma Valley Wine Competition. Guess how many wines had been entered… 131. Guess how many took home medals… 103. That’s an even whoppinger 79%.
That’s when I started to ask myself: is this a case of grade inflation, or are the wines really that good? And how does the grading curve for medals compare with those of current major wine magazines.
So, I checked a Wine Spectator (May 31, 2009). Alas, 54% of the 490 wines reviewed in this issue were rated 90 points or higher, 37% were rated 85-89, meaning: in all, 91% of the wines published in the issue are deemed “very good; a wine with special qualities.”
Wine Enthusiast, curiously, demarcates 87-89 as “very good” and 83-86 as “good;” yet, like WS, the Enthusiast draws an effective cutoff at 85 points {one difference: Spectator actually publishes wines scoring 80-84, and puts those below 80 online; WE puts all sub-85 wines in the proverbial online attic, and never goes below 80}. Given this commitment to keeping the printed page essentially a pure, 84-or-below-point-free zone, the percentage of published scores rating 85 or higher in the February 2009 issue was a perfect 100% (354 wines in all). Digging online, I discovered that a total of 923 wines had actually been tasted and reviewed for that issue of Wine Enthusiast, and 709, or 77%, were rated 85 points or higher.
I can hear the argument now: So what? All this really shows is that the magazines dish out a lot of praise for middling wines that no one cares about, just like competitions dish out lots of bronze medals that no one cares about. In response, I would say that we are missing the ultimate irony here: merely talking about the abundance of bronze-medal and/or 85-point wines suggests that we are truly living in the Golden Age of Wine. Strip away both the “points” and the “metals” alike; now what is the message? Let me put it a few ways…
- If you coaxed a bull from the china shop next door into your average wine emporium, he’d be able to pick out a smashing nice mixed case, within which 9 out of twelve wines had been “awarded.”
- If all of the award-winning or well-rated wines in a shop were to be illuminated with a light bulb, you’d be covering at your eyes in about 15 seconds.
- A monkey could pick up a wine magazine and more than three out of every four wines he points to will have been professionally critiqued as being a fine example of its type.
- If you assembled a tasting panel of ocelots, and served them 50 wines, almost 40 of them would qualify for some grade of metal.
Ratings are reaching a saturation point. Just as people, intuitively, grew skeptical and weary of the proliferation of medals, so too are they feeling about ratings. And they are also realizing that the idea of precision in ratings is fool’s gold; give one wine to five critics and you may well wind up with five different scores, just like giving the same wines to different panels may result in completely different medals awarded.
Here, 30+ years into the wine-grading era, the pertinent question is no longer whether the grades are inflated or the wines are that good. The question now is: When will Americans come to accept the truth that this thing called wine is immune to finite analysis and—more important—darned well-made? I think the answer is sooner than most cynics think. Indeed, arriving at that truth is as simple as approaching wine with style and personal taste and context in mind, not medals or points.
15 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 26, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Jim Caudill
I think it’s the darn well-made insight that is really what we often overlook. Even average to middling wines are better made/more pleasing that they were some 20 years ago. The magazine strategies are fairly straightforward; they announced to their advertisers long ago that they would be migrating a lot of scores to the online sites (as the sites got bigger, better and bolder) with new ways to advertise online. The mags then supposedly serve their readers better by providing insights only into wines that meet some threshold, giving advertisers a bit of wiggle room to plan their advertising knowing they won’t be knocked badly no matter what.
The competitions, like many auctions, often benefit charities or are part of old fashioned county & state fairs where local agricultural prowess is celebrated, so they have a role above and beyond the winery marketing staff creating another necker. Any one medal doesn’t mean much, but when a particular wine consistently wins gold across the wide array of the top competitions, I’d wager it’s a pointer to something pretty good.
Those percentages you cite are common across all competitions. Bronze is generally defined as a well-made, competent wine, nothing more. It’s hard not to win one. But having judged at several competitions, I can honestly say it amazes me how hard it can be to win a gold, so multi-gold winners still get a second look from me.
May 27, 2009 at 3:58 am
fine wine
Unfortunately ratings and awards got a little out of hand in the nineties, as highlighted in your article. In reality all of these are just guides, no two people will like exactly the same wines and rate every wine they drink the same. When used as a guide I think there is little harm, go out there and get a taste for what you like and every now and then get adventurous!
May 27, 2009 at 9:23 am
Jeff Siegel
Medals still matter, Tish. In Dallas, after The Morning News competition winners are announced, you can go into stores and watch shoppers, results in hand, scarfing up the gold medal winners. And the retailers don’t take any chances, with endcaps made up of medal winning wines. I haven’t seen it myself, but I’m also told this happens in San Antonio.
May 27, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Jim Caudill
To Curmudgeon’s point, happens here in California too, regularly. Some chains (Cost Plus, Raleys) even sponsor sections of medal winners. Whatever shorthand the retailers can get to lure consumers, they want, especially when it’s easy to understand, i.e. Gold means good.
May 28, 2009 at 1:06 am
Charlie Olken
There are two reasons not to publish reviews of poorly regarded wines. The first is that print real estate is very expensive given the likelihood that some readers do not want to read an endless string of lowly rated wines.
The second, however, is more bothersome than the first even though I personally think that readers ought to be told of everything tasted so they can know what the reviewer did not like as well as what he or she liked. But, this second reason: not offending advertisers is a good reason to worry about reviews that appear in magazines that accept advertising from the very wineries they are reviewing.
So far so good, but here is where I have a different opinion from Tish. It is right that folks should use notions of style, personal taste and context to judge which wine to choose for a given event. The problem for consumers who do not treat wine as a commodity is that the range of choices can be overwhelming. That is the reason why critics taste thousands of wines and write descriptions of those wines. It allows the average wine aficianado to have the information to choose the right one using the very fine standards that you espouse.
My neighbors think they don’t live in the world of medals and scores. They go to the Safeway or BevMo and choose wines based on shelf talkers. And what are those shelf talkers doing? They are providing information about scores and medals. Organized information still sells wine,.
The way that folks get that informaton is changing, however, and some day we may see the diminution of the influence of the major and minor critics. But, I doubt that we will see the end of ratings as an important informant in wine purchase decisions.
May 28, 2009 at 8:35 am
wrtish
THanks for the comments, folks.
Jim, I totally agree about the utility of recognizing multiple Gold awards across different competitions. I also think that a “double gold” or “best of category” designation for a single comp can be reliable.
Jeff, I think it’s great that the Dallas Morning News competitoin generates local interest in winners. Are you involved in that judging? Others?…
Charlie, your points are all well taken. I don’t think anyone would argue that descriptions are actually more useful than points alone. Unfortunately in many contexts (point of sale shelf talkers, retailer advertisements, retail websites) it is ratings alone that consumers see. That has, regreattably, become standard operating procedure — along with the common practice of retailers displying only the 90+ scores.
May 28, 2009 at 10:22 am
JD in Napa
As I opined in my response to the rebeccachapa post noted above, medals give the “average wine aficionado” (I like that, Charlie) very little to go on, due to lack of context. One could contend that scores don’t either, except for one thing. The Average Wine Aficionado (AVA) likely reads the various wine mags and online offerings in which context, by way of a description, is given to the score. If the person is an AAWA (Above-Average), they’ll know that certain critics have certain beats, and they’ll have an idea if the critic’s palate tends to align with theirs. It’s a lot of work, but it helps at Costco if you see a new Chianti Classico with a Spectator score, and you like Suckling’s approach. The bummer is that one rarely sees Connoisseur’s Guide scores, as Charlie has the best concise descriptions. Regardless, a medal, regardless of the color, tells the AAVA zippo.
Meanwhile, the normal consumer sees a 90+ or gold medal, buys the wine, and enjoys it based on a preconceived notion of the wine’s status. No harm there (to the consumer).
May 28, 2009 at 10:26 am
wrtish
I just subscribed to Charlie’s Connosseur’s Guide this morning. The only sure way to se his impressions and feed my knowledge as an “AAWA”
May 28, 2009 at 11:14 am
wrtish
As Alfonso C noted, in a comment on the Zyrah post, Dan Berger has written eloquently and effectively on the medals vs. scores topic. Links here:
http://bit.ly/tQnT9
http://bit.ly/lrU82
May 28, 2009 at 4:53 pm
JD in Napa
I like Dan Berger’s newsletter, and am amused at his continuing shots at the critics (vs. medals). Given that he runs Riverside International, which, I presume, awards medals, he could be seen as having a bit of a bias….
May 28, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Alfonso C
thanks, Tish, I Luddited-out on you.
May 28, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Charlie Olken
Who is this “JD in Napa”? He was doing fine until he said that he likes Dan Berger’s newsletter. In the next couple of months, I will redo my website, and if I can pull it off, I will add additional commentary in the free portion of the website where I can quote Tish (but only when he is funny).
As for Berger, I have been contemplating a periodic column called “My Running Argument With Dan Berger” because of all the debatable points he makes. It is time for someone to take him on, and I am the guy to do it. If any of you remember Jerry Mead, and I hope you do, Jerry and I were able to do a mean imitation of the Odd Couple of vinosity. That is sort of my relationship with Dan. I love the guy, but he drives me crazy, and he probably likes me even though I drive him crazy.
So JD, I guess its OK if you like Dan after all. So do I.
May 29, 2009 at 9:52 am
JD in Napa
Thanks for the vote of approval, Charlie. Just because I like Dan’s newsletter doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says. Afterall, I subscribed to CGCW way before Vintage Experiences. :o) If you get this debate with Berger going on your site, I just might have to do a big extension of my CGCW subscription; it’d be worth it (even if the debate is on the free portion of the site!).
June 26, 2009 at 4:41 am
rebeccachapa
You guys are hilarious, and great. Kudos for Tish to getting the big guns out and commenting, I am honored to even be mentioned. I cannot wait to see the great Berger Olken debates. Perhaps Tish we can rent Madison Square Garden for that.
June 28, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Charlie Olken
Rebecca–
Perhaps you would like to serve as referee.
Dan and I have been slugging it out verbally for years now, mostly at tastings where we inevitably sit together because we enjoy each other’s company–most of the time.
Those of us who know Dan realize that he has many opinions–many, many opinions, and we also realize that he is occasionally right. Occasionally being the operative word. Dan, for his part, would riposte, “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Stay tuned.