Ah Touriga...the 'nacional' grape of Portugal. I've most definitely used that line before as a way to remember the grape! You're absolutely right about the crazy good value from this region's wines. You're completely wrong about you being over a century old 😂 ...your writing is far too witty and youthful (in the best way possible!!!) to be considered old. I think you very much still count as a 'youth'.
Your new scoring system looks awesome! It's so interesting how we all value elements a little differently. E.g. I rate complexity more highly than length. Concentration is another one that I'm always in two minds about...subtle can be beautiful too...but I think balance maybe erm balances this? But then again...we all know how I feel about scoring so ignore me 😂!
Yeah, the scoring system is a necessary evil I think. Our goal is to make it as standardized and transparent as possible, but it's hard to find metrics that are clearly definable. Concentration is one of those, but as you said, it doesn't necessary measure up to a superior wine. Anyway, we're still workshopping it, so that may change soon. Appreciate the feedback. Cheers!
Love the new system - well, almost. I'm a bit unsure about "Concentration" deserving of 15 of its own points. Complexity gets its own points but not subtlety? I can think of a number of wines that I would not knock a single point off for their lack of power/concentration. That said, virtually anything with an actual system is better than the "hmm, how do I FEEL about this wine today" approach to giving it a number like there was anything mathematical about the designation.
Yeah definitely a fair point re: concentration, because if we are being completely objective, a cheap manufactured wine like a 4L jug of Carlo Rossi might score the full 15 points. Our thinking was that a well-balanced wine would be "the right amount of concentrated," and that we would be measuring in terms of whether the concentration (or lack thereof) impacts the overall experience negatively, but that really ultimately falls under the umbrella of balance and tips the scales a little more towards subjective measurement. It's tricky to try to standardize, and so hard to minimize subjectivity when it comes to something that is so heavily influenced by personal preference. We've also discussed how we factor in "x-factors," which could be subtlety, or elements of a wine that make a particular wine extremely unique (had a Jura that smelled like ketchup once, and not in a bad way 😂). We clearly have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the 100-point system, and the scale is a work in progress so we definitely appreciate the feedback!
Gutsy move to introduce the new scoring system. I'll be excited to see how it plays out.
You didn't leave yourselves a lot of headroom, especially in balance and flavor, with these first two wines. It would be interesting to "demonstrate" how it works with a wide range of wines that span the gamut in each of the categories used in the ratings. Will it wind up taking advantage more of the potential 100 pt range? Will we see some decent 50-point wines? Will good, inherently "lighter" wines tend to get lower overall scores due to lower "concentration" scores? Stay tuned.... Keep up the good work!
You won’t see any decent 50 point wines because the wine would have to be pretty bad to score that low. We didn’t release the reviews yet, but we have been working on tasting wines as benchmarks for quality. We tasted the 2021 Josh cab, for example, and it scored around 70 points (much lower than when we had tasted it a while back without this new system). The challenge is finding the same vintage of bottles in our separate locations to establish benchmarks that account for the difference in our palates (hence this week featuring 2 vintages of Quinta). That happened with most of the wines we were hoping to use so we made the most of it. As for concentration, yes in theory the concentration score will be lower for lighter wines, but for wines where the balance is right, a slightly less concentrated wine will still score well in that category. But another hope is that with this level of transparency on how we reach the final score, it will be easier to discern whether the wine will be one you will like. 🥂
Ah Touriga...the 'nacional' grape of Portugal. I've most definitely used that line before as a way to remember the grape! You're absolutely right about the crazy good value from this region's wines. You're completely wrong about you being over a century old 😂 ...your writing is far too witty and youthful (in the best way possible!!!) to be considered old. I think you very much still count as a 'youth'.
Your new scoring system looks awesome! It's so interesting how we all value elements a little differently. E.g. I rate complexity more highly than length. Concentration is another one that I'm always in two minds about...subtle can be beautiful too...but I think balance maybe erm balances this? But then again...we all know how I feel about scoring so ignore me 😂!
Yeah, the scoring system is a necessary evil I think. Our goal is to make it as standardized and transparent as possible, but it's hard to find metrics that are clearly definable. Concentration is one of those, but as you said, it doesn't necessary measure up to a superior wine. Anyway, we're still workshopping it, so that may change soon. Appreciate the feedback. Cheers!
Love the new system - well, almost. I'm a bit unsure about "Concentration" deserving of 15 of its own points. Complexity gets its own points but not subtlety? I can think of a number of wines that I would not knock a single point off for their lack of power/concentration. That said, virtually anything with an actual system is better than the "hmm, how do I FEEL about this wine today" approach to giving it a number like there was anything mathematical about the designation.
Yeah definitely a fair point re: concentration, because if we are being completely objective, a cheap manufactured wine like a 4L jug of Carlo Rossi might score the full 15 points. Our thinking was that a well-balanced wine would be "the right amount of concentrated," and that we would be measuring in terms of whether the concentration (or lack thereof) impacts the overall experience negatively, but that really ultimately falls under the umbrella of balance and tips the scales a little more towards subjective measurement. It's tricky to try to standardize, and so hard to minimize subjectivity when it comes to something that is so heavily influenced by personal preference. We've also discussed how we factor in "x-factors," which could be subtlety, or elements of a wine that make a particular wine extremely unique (had a Jura that smelled like ketchup once, and not in a bad way 😂). We clearly have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the 100-point system, and the scale is a work in progress so we definitely appreciate the feedback!
Gutsy move to introduce the new scoring system. I'll be excited to see how it plays out.
You didn't leave yourselves a lot of headroom, especially in balance and flavor, with these first two wines. It would be interesting to "demonstrate" how it works with a wide range of wines that span the gamut in each of the categories used in the ratings. Will it wind up taking advantage more of the potential 100 pt range? Will we see some decent 50-point wines? Will good, inherently "lighter" wines tend to get lower overall scores due to lower "concentration" scores? Stay tuned.... Keep up the good work!
You won’t see any decent 50 point wines because the wine would have to be pretty bad to score that low. We didn’t release the reviews yet, but we have been working on tasting wines as benchmarks for quality. We tasted the 2021 Josh cab, for example, and it scored around 70 points (much lower than when we had tasted it a while back without this new system). The challenge is finding the same vintage of bottles in our separate locations to establish benchmarks that account for the difference in our palates (hence this week featuring 2 vintages of Quinta). That happened with most of the wines we were hoping to use so we made the most of it. As for concentration, yes in theory the concentration score will be lower for lighter wines, but for wines where the balance is right, a slightly less concentrated wine will still score well in that category. But another hope is that with this level of transparency on how we reach the final score, it will be easier to discern whether the wine will be one you will like. 🥂
I "meant" to include more "parentheses" in this comment.
(And we meant to use more quotes)
I'm more of a parenthesis guy.
(I guess)