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    Tasting Notes Explained

QPR Winner: In 1999, I started using this tag after certain wines that demonstrate an excellent quality to price ratio. They are sometimes more expensive than the wines featured in my Best Buys section (which is cut off at $20), so while every Best Buy is also a QPR Winner,  not every QPR winner is an official Best Buy.  "QPR winners" are simply wines that are great values for a reasonable price.

Point scores: I started using point scores in Februrary, 1997. Why? In my articles section online, I have a 1996 article "Scoring Wines" that many thought was well taken. SO, they said, why aren't you scoring? Well, scoring is harder. It requires more thought. I shuddered and blinked. But, to quote myself, it also adds an exclamation point that quickly and easily clarifies the reviewer's real opinion of the wine. "Lush and velvety" can be a descriptor for a variety of wines, but a score for one of 97 and another at 85 tends to put that in a useful context, in my humble opinion. So, scores are here. But remember: the system that works best is the combo of scores and tasting notes. That's when you understand the ultimate opinion on quality, as well as style. Neither alone is as effective.

What do they mean? I adopt the common convention that the points relate to grades. 90 = A-, 91-94=A, 95 and up, A+, 80= B-, etc. Differences in grade categories (like going from an 88 to a 90) are thus more significant to me than minor differences within categories, like a 91 versus a 93. Within grade categories and sub categories, like 91 to 94, I'm merely indicating a direction the wine is going, and if it was drunk in a context, how it fared in that context. My scores are relative regionally. A 92 for a Tavel Rosé doesn't mean I necessarily think it's as good as a Pichon Lalande that got a 92. I see no point to comparing a Vouvray with a Sauternes. I don't mean for any of this to be too compulsive--the scores are just a useful guide and most meaningful in conjunction with the notes. Sometimes, the notes are more revealing. Sometimes, the scores really make my point.  It works best when you have both--that's my view, anyway.  

As you might guess, for me, a wine of 90-94 points has to be special in some respect, distinctive and with something extra. Moreover,  95 points and above is a potential legend--a wine that folks will talk about when creating standards for its type. Below 80 is a wine with significant defects that detracts from its overall impression so much that I am not likely to bother drinking it.  I do think there has been a trend to compressing point scores of late, leading to scores like 82 and 84 being considered "don't buy" recommendations, but that is an issue for another day.

Wine philosophy:  I watch in amazement sometimes as people complain about wines with fruit and flavor, or laud those that are showing evidence of decay and decrepitude. My first rule on wine is that the fruit matters. It's a fruit based product. This would seem to make sense, don't you think? Winemakers expend great effort (or, at least the ones who care do) to get the best, most intense fruit. Then, someone comes along and says "too fruity," and someone else comes along and says (like Baron Philippe de Rothschild, late owner of Mouton) that he likes ancient Sauternes chilled way down with all the sweetness gone. At a certain point, when, for example, the Sauternes is no longer sweet, the Champagne has no bubbles and the wines have decayed so much that you can't tell a Burgundy from a Bordeaux in a blind tasting, we are, personal eccentricities aside, missing something. The wine should retain some semblance of what it was supposed to be, and the first requirement in that regard is fruit.  

No, I am not oblivious to the concept of balance.  Quite the contrary.  There are certainly other things than fruit.  But wine starts with good fruit and flavor; that's the threshold for a good wine to me. To those who say, "well, I like it 20 years past prime" or "I like wines with no discernible flavor"  (although such people rarely put it so bluntly), "and the only important thing is whether I like it," I would say two things. First, by all means; drink what you like. There's no point torturing yourself drinking what others like. Second, merely because someone likes something doesn't mean it is good, certainly not for anyone but them. I sometimes like wine coolers in the summer, but no one sensible would say that the wine in them is of particularly high quality. If you like vanilla better than chocolate, you'll like the cheap vanilla better than prestige chocolate every time, even if you intellectually recognize that the chocolate is better made in an objective sense. But there IS an objective sense, at least up to a point, granting that we all have a subjective slush fund for things that are really important to us.  In reviewing wines, therefore, I try not to praise the eccentric, at least not without pointing out the eccentricities, and I am more likely to favor wines with good fruit and flavor, rather than things others might call subtle and I might call thin. I am not opposed to either elegance or finesse, but not at the expense of fruit, depth and concentration. I can enjoy wines that are not massive bruisers. I can appreciate wines with great finishes and velvety texture even if they are not dense and thick.    "Elegance" can't be a euphemism for a wine that's simply lacking depth, intensity and fruit, however.

email: mark@marksquires.com

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