Wine ratings explained
In the beginning, there were no rating systems to help consumers wade through the thicket of wines claiming quality. One merely said that a wine was “good”, “very good” or “excellent”.
Yes, the 1855 classification of Bordeaux wines for the world fair had identified 61 reds (and 26 sweet whites) as worthy of being categorised into five “growths” — but it’s cast in stone, with only two changes in 160 years.
Today, there are thousands of wine labels and each year’s vintage needs to be rated separately. Three- and five-point ratings don’t address the subject adequately, and wine producers themselves cannot be relied upon to be objective.
The first to tackle this issue was American wine critic Robert Parker, who came up with a 100-point rating system in 1978 which became hugely popular with both consumers and the wine trade as it was something people could easily understand. Within 10 years all popular US wine magazines (principally Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and Wines & Spirits) followed suit.
Essentially the system involves a blind tasting of each wine, and awarding points for colour, aroma, taste and after-taste. 80–84 points denote wines ranging in quality from “average” to “good”; 85–89 points are for wines from “good” to “very good”; 90–94 points indicate wine quality as being “superior” and “excellent”; while 95–100 points are given to wines that are “exceptional” and “outstanding/classic”.
With the exception of Jancis Robinson (who persists with a 20-point rating system), almost all well-known wine critics and experts have embraced the 100-point system. This includes James Suckling, Antonio Galloni, Natalie Maclean, Tim Atkin, Stephen Tanzer, James Halliday and Eric Asimov (to name just a few). Wine-searcher (founded in 1998) has the largest database of wines in the world, and since it summarises ratings from several critics it is probably more objective than any single wine expert. Notably one can search for details and ratings of all available vintages of any given wine label — for example search for “Château Latour” and you can look at vintages going back to 1870!
Vivino, the popular online wine app started in 2010 in Denmark, differs from other apps in being able to use images of wine labels to respond to the users with ratings collected from consumers themselves. Vivino uses a 5-point decimal rating system where 4.0 equates with 90 points of Robert Parker. Easy to use by all those who have a smartphone.
And what of Indian wines? Unfortunately, there is as yet no comparable ratings system in India for domestic wines as the wine market is relatively small and fragmented. There’s only one wine magazine ( Sommelier India), whose tasting panel used to taste wines regularly before Covid19 struck but it has shied away from actually rating the wines. In the absence of a rating system people tend to use price as an indicator of quality — absurd, as then there’s no alternative.
So, in the absence of an objective assessment of Indian wines, perhaps it’s better to stick to imported wines with high ratings from overseas.
An “extraordinary” wine I had recently was the Château de Saint Cosme Gigondas 2017 (95 points from Wine Spectator, ~6,941 in Bengaluru). This Grenache blend from the Southern Rhone required two hours decanting. But once this was done it was simply terrific: complex and almost perfumed, with hints of sandalwood and pepper and a smooth full-bodied taste with a long and persistent finish. No wonder that the 2010 vintage was #2 in the Wine
Spectator Top 100 Wines of 2012!