The Under $20 A Bottle Wine Thread:

[TheRiddick]

Johnny, I really hope that the scores Sam's and Parker give out are based on a 110 point scale. If these wines are rated 91 points, then I sure can taste you and Parker on wines that easily rate MUCH higher, by any palate's preferences.

Quit buying points and buy what YOUR palate likes.

Just to show you how much I "rate" Parker's palate. He and I had a few public exchanges where I exposed his obvious lack of understanding simple wine making principles and techniques. All this while he pretended he didn't "recognize" my name (I posted under a real name) and while he didin't realize that just a month prior one of my distributors tasted Parker on my new releases when as soon as the distributor mentioned my name Parker immediately recognized it, the distributor told me that. As soon as I got into an argument with Parker, other winemakers were making bets to see what kind of scores he will release for my wines. Well, he did rate a number of them in the 90-91 range, but then rated my best wine, almost legendary by now in the Pinot Noir community (winemakers and consumers both), a lowly 87 points with a note that said the wine is already on the downslope and won't last past 2 years, basically getting back at me. The wine is now 4 years old and not even close to hitting on all cylinders.

One of my Syrahs was just rated at 91 points, second year in the row for this wine. Vineyard owner (I buy fruit) does a taste test comparison every year to see how wineries do with his grapes and every year, hands down, my wine is voted the best of the bunch by all the wineries. This year, while mine received 91 points, another Syrah from these same grapes, received a 94 point score from same reviewer. The difference? I am not a "famous" name like the one who made the other wine (he makes upper 90s rated Cabs in Napa).

To make it short, points have meaning to only one person, the one who assigns them. And they are assigned for various reasons. Sam's got a good deal on a wine, meaning they commited to XXX number of cases in order to get a much better price and yes, their marketing guy HAS to give it a high rating to move the wine. They, and others as well, don't do this often in order to keep up their "reputations", but I've seen plenty of swill hyped up and sold by the case to consumers who then proudly put a bottle on a table and proclaim, "This is XX points!" But ask them to describe the wine to you, without a cheat sheet, and they are lost with the only thing they do remember being the point score.

In addition, many wineries "dial in" the flavor profile most wine reviewers like (plenty of oak, some sugar and if you want big Parker points then dial in lots of brett) and receive higher scores. Are they good wines? Maybe, but in most cases I would not and could not have more than a sip while I will happily consume 2-3 bottles worth of something that has balance of all components.

I am an industry insider, thus my take on reviews is very different than that of consumers'. Same for tasting a wine, where I immediately pick out all sorts of faults, only a few consumers I have met so far are able to keep up and only because they drink with us for some time and help out at wineries. Otherwise, I can name famous wine critics, people who pretty much any wine consumer knows name wise, who I tasted with and all I can say is that they don't know much about wine, in general.

Buy that Meridian Pinot Noir I posted on above, let me know what you think. It can be had on sale here in CA, I am sure you can find it in NV. Buy any Bogle product, they are all affordable and tasty. Sebastiani. From France buy some (Kermit Lynch imported) Cote du Rhone blends, they are usually cheap and tasty (mostly Grenache and Syrah blends). Buy German Rieslings and Loire whites (Vouvrays), they are all affordable and VERY tasty, but yes, they all lack high scores. Scores do not have a "taste" they are just an arbitrary number.

And best advice I could give in this thread? Avoid any and all "animals" labels like the one above. Not only are they mostly "chemical experiments" produced mostly in a lab, but they destroyed an industry in the past few years. You don't smoke crappy cigars, why drink crappy wines?