Another Twitter Taste Live event is upon us. Tune in right here at 8PM ET TONIGHT to catch the action LIVE.
This time, the topic is near and dear to my heart, as it involves The 89 Project, of which I am a contributing member. We will be tasting, live, selections of wines that have been rated "89 points" - blind. Things should get very interesting during this TTL!
Anyway, the action will be available live right here at this post (a recap. will also be available here after the event)...
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Hope to see you on twitter!
Cheers! (image: twittertastelive.com)
Showing posts with label 89 Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 89 Project. Show all posts
Twitter Taste Live: The 89 Project - TONIGHT 8PM ET!
88 - The Number of The Beast?
Another ditty for The 89 Project has me tasting a devil of a wine that good ol' Wine Enthusiast dubbed a "Best Buy" and gave 88 points (hey, it's not technically an 89, but it's close enough for government work, right?): Concha y Toro's 2007 "Casillero del Diablo" Chardonnay Reserve (Casablanca Valley, Chile).
Speak of the Devil. And just in time for Halloween, too.
You know how for some lower-budget wines, you read the tasting descriptor on the back of the bottle and it sort of, but not really, describes how the wine tastes to you; or worse, seems to be describing a completely different wine than the one that you're drinking?
This is not one of those times. The descriptor on the back of the Casillero del Diablo bottle is frighteningly (get it?) accurate:
"A crisp [editor's note: i.e., it's got decent acidity] Chardonnay [well, duh] packed with tropical fruit flavors [there is definately some grapefruit and melon going down in this puppy] "and subtle hints of vanilla [the oak doesn't skewer your nostrils like a wooden pitchfork]. Medium bodied with good balance [it's not a booze-hound from hell] and a fresh finish [i.e., the finish is short but it's good]."Color me impressed. Especially for a wine this cheap (about $10 USD).
Normally the 89-point range is the Number of the Beast, the veritable wine kiss o' death. But Concha y Toro ought to be very pleased with this rating at this price point. If anything, it's a testament to how well poised Chile is to rule the wine world at some point in the not-too-distant future.Sure, the CdD Reserve is far from complex. But it's got the Fire. It has the Force. It has the power to make it's evil take it's course!
YeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
[Insert trademark Bruce Dickinson awesome butt-kicking heavy metal scream here].
Cheers!
images: (1winedude.com, ironmaidenwallpaper.com)
89 Bottles of Wine on the Wall... (An Update on the "89 Project")
It's been one month since I posted about the 89 Project, the brainchild of 2 Days Per Bottle's David Honig. I figured it was time for a check in to see how the little guy was faring!
You might recall from my previous post (the one that Wine Enthusiast's Steve Heimoff, bless his soul, interpreted so darn incorrectly as a disparagement of the 100 Point wine rating system, which isn't quite what I was goin' for...) that the 89 Project is a collaborative effort involving several bloggers that pokes a bit of good-natured fun at the current state of wine ratings. When you rate wines using a 100 point scale (like the big boy wine reviews in the big boy wine mags), giving a wine a 90 or above is ticket to 30% plus price hikes. Conversely, an 89 or below might get you into the discount bin - and could get overlooked by the general wine buying public, since many retailers don't publicize those wines. A viscous cycle of non-showcasing, non-buying, non-showcasing, non-buying ensues.
Anyway, the 89 Project has wine bloggers from all over wine blog-o-land giving their take on 89-point wines. If you're interested in learning more of the goals and genesis behind the project, check out David's explanation via podcast from his guest appearance on WineBizRadio.com.
I'm pleased to report that the 89 Project is not only still alive, it's alive & kicking. Not only was it featured on WineBizRadio.com, it's also got its own discussion group over at the Open Wine Consortium (I love me some OWC!), and it's now up to 30 contributors....
Personally, I've been having me a good time with my 89 Project contributions (you can check out my 89 Project reviews here). First, it's an absolute hoot to go through a wine store looking for points, which I usually avoid like the plague (because, let's face it, nobody talks in points, unless they work for Wine Spectator...). It's even more fun to run through the wine store pushing a cart, taking pictures of the point ratings and getting positively giddy when you are finding wines clearly labeled as being given ratings less than 90 points.
The wine shop employees (especially in my local PLCB stores) think I'm totally insane now. It's great...
So - stayed tuned to the 89 Project. You might find some interesting recommendations that you might otherwise have missed. And if you go looking for some of these wines, you just might, if you're lucky, get yourself one hell of an "interesting" reputation among the wine shop employees in your neck of the woods...
Cheers!
(images: ggpht.com, wikimedia.org)
The Trouble With Wine Ratings: Part 2
I'm glad to see that my post last week on the potential troubles with the 100 point wine rating system has spurred so much interesting dialog in the wine "blogosphere" (man, we really need another word for that...).
Probably the most interesting conversation on this was triggered by Steve Heimoff's response on his excellent Unreserved blog. It's worth reading, and Steve makes some great points about tirades against the 100 point system being a dime a dozen these days.
I thought that Steve's response was very good, but I felt that he might have misinterpreted some of my points. This got me thinking that I might have been unclear in that post, and maybe some 1WineDude.com readers might have misinterpreted it also (uh oh....!).
So I responded in Steve's comment thread, and I've reproduced my response here in the hopes that it will clear up any misunderstanding between us - and by us, I mean you and I, dear reader. Because, you know, we've got a special thing goin' here and I don't want to jeopardize our love-fest...
Here 'tis:
"Man, there is some excellent banter going on in these comments! I really enjoy your writing so I was particularly pleased to see that my post sparked some debate on your blog. I agree with quite a bit of what you say, I think the 100 point system does get abused too often in the wine blogging world.
Having said that, I think you might have misconstrued my post for one of those rants, which might be selling it a bit short (massive subjectivity of that self-appraisal duly noted, of course!).
To justify that, I should probably clear a couple of things up about that post of mine:
1) Steve, your palate would totally *smoke* my palate when it comes to reviewing wines (which is one reason why I typically don't review wines at 1WineDude.com). If our palates shared a prison cell, my palate would be your palate's b*tch, would bring it tea and biscuits every morning, and call it sir! I wasn't railing against the 100 point system in my post. You want to see a rant, pull up any post I've written about the PLCB ( http://1winedude.blogspot.com/search/label/PLCB ) for comparison; now *those* are rants. :-)
My point was that the 100 point system can be confusing to consumers, because it (as you say in your post above) is really a gradient quality scale based on one person's palate. But that's not how most of the wine media treats it, and it's certainly not how the industry of wine sales treats it. So it doesn't really do what it says "on the tin."
2) I wasn't bashing critics or consumers. I am bashing *anyone* who would blindly follow any rating or scoring system without doing any homework whatsoever. The truth is that there are too many people out there who do that, and part of being a wine blogger these days is to help point that out and hopefully add a little entertaining education for those consumers to show them what they might be missing. That doesn't imply that they are stupid, just uninformed.
3) I should also try to clear up a bit about the 89 Project ( http://89project.blogspot.com/ ) - I did not found this but I do plan to contribute to it. If you take a look at the 89 Project home page, you'll find that its charter is to try to bring exposure to the wines that fail to meet a 90 or above score in the 100 point scale - these wines are perennially doomed to lower sales figures, because consumers consider the 1 point difference between a 90 and an 89 score to be substantial (but probably not so for a 93 vs. a 94).
So, this is *not* an alternative rating system - it's simply a review of these wines in our own voices. I don't plan to give any of these wines a review based on a scale - I simply describe what I taste and explain if I think it's good value for money (or not).
Hoping this clears up some of the confusion about my post. I certainly think that the 100 point system has its merits (after all, no one has offered a more popular replacement yet) and I'm not calling for its demise, just pointing out the gaps. I also am NOT a fan of inexperienced wine critics offering up their reviews as viable alternatives to more experienced tasters - I fully believe that expert criticism has its place.
I should also mention that I'm not hurting for blog material, and it was a conscious choice on my part to write a piece about the possible perils of following the 100 point rating system. I literally have more than enough ideas for material that I could post every day for a year without repeating myself (yes, even if I remove my rants against the PLCB - ok, maybe 9 months then ;-). I'm only pointing that out because I wouldn't want any potential bloggers to read this thread and think that they shouldn't blog from a fear of running out of material. That should be the *last* thing that they worry about when blogging."
Cheers!
(images: affordablehousinginstitute.org)
The Trouble With Wine Ratings (an Introduction to the 89 Project)
Excellence.
You deserve it. You demand it.
It haunts you. It drives you.
It's so Powerful. It makes you. Speak. In Broken. Sentences.
We're obsessed with comparing things when we make purchases, especially in the U.S. Some of us are always out there looking for the best. Even in today's excellence-obsessed status-quo-chasing society, no one can blame you for just honestly wanting to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to buying wine. Especially when the economy is in the financial out house.
This is where you'd think that wine ratings would help you. By rating a wine on a 100 point scale, you can make a quick shopping determination so that you can pick up the best bottle for the money, and feel confident that you got a good deal and will enjoy your purchase without having to learn any of that fancy wine mumbo-jumbo, right?
Not quite.
If I was grading the 100 point wine rating scale (hell, why not, we love to rate stuff, remember?), I'd give it a C-. That's because the 100 point scale has 3 major flaws that prevent it from really telling you what you think it should tell you...
Flaw #1: It's actually a 50-point scale.
Yes, just like those exams you took in grade school, no one actually gets less than a 50. A wine gets a 50 just for showing up and writing its name (on the label). This would lead you to believe that, like those old grade school exams, the 100 point scale grades wines objectively. Which leads us to...
Flaw #2: It gives a false sense of Objectivity.
No one can really score a wine 100% objectively. This is because we all have differences in our palates, and therefore (at least) subtle differences in how we interpret a wine's flavor and quality. If a particular critic gives a wine a very high score, it says nothing about whether or not you might like that wine. So, unless your palate and preferences are similar to that critic, if you blindly buy one wine over another just because it scored a few points higher, you may be passing up a great wine that you would enjoy even more than that flashy 'high-scorer'.
Flaw #3: It implies a "Scale" of Excellence.
Like that old grade school grading method, you'd expect a wine scoring in the 90s to be better than a wine scoring in the 70s (an 'A' vs a 'C') - and for the most part, you'd be right. But is a wine that scores a 95 "better" than a wine that scores a 91? This is much trickier territory. A difference of a few points does not guarantee that one wine is better than another, any more than my scoring a 95 and you scoring a 91 on a wine exam guarantees that I'd be a better sommelier than you.
The trouble is that too many people fall into the trap of following the numbers for their buying decisions - so much so that a wine rated a 90+ will sell for a much higher price than a wine that scored an 89.
In order to help break out of some of the rut caused by this scoring system, a group of wine bloggers has started up a new blog called The 89 Project. The aim of the 89 Project is to highlight the wines that people are missing out on because of the 100 point system. I've signed on as a contributor, so watch that space for an update from me (once I get my dirty little hands on some tasty "89s").
In the explanation of his 100 point rating scale, Robert Parker sounds his own word of caution about blindly following his (or anyone else's) scores:"No scoring system is perfect, but a system that provides for flexibility in scores, if applied by the same taster without prejudice, can quantify different levels of wine quality and provide the reader with one professional's judgment. However, there can never be any substitute for your own palate nor any better education than tasting the wine yourself."
Well said. Don't say we didn't warn ya!
Cheers!
(images: wales.nhs.uk, modmyprofile.com)
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