Vine art of seeing stars and scoring points while sipping
BLIND tasting is a dispassionate discipline, but a useful approach, especially for young wine. It offers an unmediated engagement between the palate and the contents of the glass, free of the marketing message that comes with every product bearing a label. True, it is afflicted by the inconsistent performance of the human senses, as well as the subjectivity with which the sensorial information is interpreted. It is also affected by the variability of the wine itself. (This is something no one can fully explain. It’s convenient to blame closure — some corks are more permeable than others — but screwcap-sealed bottles should, in theory, be identical, but often aren’t).
If measurement is both subjective and variable, is there any point in pretending to accuracy? The answer here is that professional tasters seem to manage a degree of consistency, despite the potential for things to go wrong. Speaking for myself, over several tests and retests (the same wine offered the same day, or several weeks later) I average within 5% of my original score.
I believe that’s good enough as a guideline — and a guideline is clearly what the punters expect, to judge from the proliferation of rating sites, some allocating stars and others points. Common to most of them, however, is the devaluation of the currency over time: if you wish to please a producer (and get him to recirculate your rating), it should be at least 90 points.
Decanter Magazine in the UK has just released a new set of scoring guidelines for its annual competition, the World Wine Awards. In something of a seismic shift, it has moved from the slightly old-fashioned UK 20-point system to the more widely recognised 100-point table, with a calibration that regards 83 points as the lowest acceptable score (“commended” is what they call it) and 100 as “superlative”.
I work with my own 100-point system, which has the widest spread of any system I know, although it rarely falls below 50. However, it does offer meaningful distinctions in a range that covers everything from the early 60s to the high 90s. Scores lower than that indicate that a wine is either faulty or extremely unattractive.
From the 70s upwards, the wine is medal quality and in the 90s, it is world-class. The calibration is somewhat idiosyncratic: with the exception of the newly released Decanter system, almost all of the 100-point systems have a working range of about 10 points, from the high 80s (junk) to the high 90s (unobtainable or unaffordable.)
In the past few months, I have scored 200 to 300 wines for the Wine Wizard website. Excluding auction releases, there have only been two in the 90+ bracket — the Vilafonte Series C 2012 and the Morgenster white 2013.
The JC Le Roux Scintilla 2009 garnered a creditable 85, the Uitkyk Chenin Blanc 2013, 84, while the Morgenhof Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 picked up 83, alongside the Vilafonte Series M 2012 and the Babylonstoren Chenin Blanc 2015.
Of the dozen or so wines sitting below 83 but still in the 80s, there was an intense 2015 pinot grigio from Welmoed, a delicious 2014 tempranillo from Baleia, a pretty 2013 pinot noir from Altydgedacht and far and away the best South African chardonnay-pinot noir (blanc de noir) blend I’ve tasted, the 2015 Krone.
Is there any point in mentioning the top Cape Winemakers Guild Auction wines, given pricing at which even President Jacob Zuma might baulk? If you win the lotto, look for the Paul Cluver Wagon Trail Chardonnay 2014 and the Boekenhoutskloof Syrah 2013 (both 93). Frans Smit’s Auction blend and Adi Badenhorst’s Graniet-Berg 2013 were both on 91, while Etienne Le Riche’s 2011 Auction Cabernet came in at 90.
All of these are more fun than owning your own jet — and at least they improve with age.
Professional tasters seem to manage a degree of consistency