Michael Fridjhon: Wine scores haven’t failed – we’ve debased them

Christian Eedes’s recent piece on judging, scoring and the role of the critic was a masterly summary of the issues being debated in the admittedly rarefied space where people ponder arcane concerns about wine and wine aesthetics (and which needless to say probably don’t bother most wine drinkers). In what is an unconnected but not unrelated piece on Substack, Lloyd Jusa (chief somm at The Saxon) tilted at the Michelin burgundy ratings (a target larger and comfortably more deserving of the joust than Don Quixote’s windmills).

Eedes’s article fell naturally into two parts – the difficulty with the scoring system and the impossibility of incorporating the complexity of fine wine into a few digits. The first part is easiest to deal with, but no less fruitless. Partly his article was a lament about something many of us have been hammering on about for some time, namely score inflation. The solution however is not recalibration – that horse has long ago bolted and anyway was never ever properly in the paddock.

When a currency devalues (in other words, is the victim of inflation) it can be recalibrated: in 1960 France created the New Franc, worth 100 of the Old Francs. It may have been a shock to the citizens, but they had no choice about using it and quickly discovered that it meant working with fewer noughts at the end of the prices. In the early days of the Trophy Wine Show we had an effective spread of 50 points in our version of the 100 point system. We knew what we were doing – and even the overseas judges swiftly adjusted to it. But consumers were at sea with it. With wine there’s no central bank, no ultimate arbiter of scores, to benchmark values or to force a recalibration of a system which has been abused by critics who promote themselves by nudging the scores ever higher (and by producers whose addiction to inflated scores fuels the debasement of the currency).

Over the years many people have decried the idea that a score can communicate the nuanced complexity of wine. Does the Mona Lisa qualify for 100 and the Guernica 97? How do you rate a Jackson Pollock? Is Hamlet only worth a 93 (too many corpses on the stage at the end of Act Five – in which case what to make of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey?) Hugh Johnson felt that a star rating system was less prescriptive. Michel Bettane, a supremely fine taster (and formerly an academic) used to drive us mad in the early days of the Trophy Wine Show by grading wines with α or β or even β- (in the end he succumbed to the 100 point system because subscribers to Bettane + Desseauve wanted hard numbers).

Parker’s success with the 100 point system was a comforting enhancement for wine drinkers (especially first generation wine drinkers) when it became popular in the 1980s. They understood the American university grading system so it conveyed something meaningful to them, and to an extent it survived score inflation for a time because the American college system was also undergoing the same experience. (My son who graduated from Columbia a year ago regarded an A- as a catastrophe. I’m pretty certain that students in the 1980s would not have reacted in the same way.)

I don’t think that numerical scoring (so probably the 100 point system) is going to vanish anytime soon, even if its usefulness continues to diminish. It will serve to provide a broad guide to quality, an indication that a wine is safe to drink. It won’t induce purchase the way it used to in the days when a 100 point score was so rare that it guaranteed a sellout, or a Platter Five Star was a boast worth making. And it hasn’t become irrelevant because our wines have become better, or because wines all over the world are technically better than they were 40 years ago. It’s become irrelevant for the same reason that the French had to abandon the Old Franc – because it’s worth shit.

The more important question arising from the Winemag editorial remains unanswered: how do we communicate meaningfully about wine in a way which is fair both to the wine and to the consumer seeking to make a purchase? We need to think carefully about the language we use: too many adjectives, mostly linked to primary fruit notes, often unfamiliar to the average reader, are simply not helpful. (Greg Sherwood MW and I have sparred about this a few times). You wouldn’t go to a play on the strength of a review which said “Splendid, awe-inspiring, brilliant, tense, dramatic, breath-taking.” You expect the critic to be less over-the-top, more precise, thoughtful, nuanced. You need to believe that he/she understands theatre – so comments on the direction, the use of the stage, the aesthetics, are as important as insights into the performances.

But we also need to determine which wines deserve this kind of detail. There are fewer and fewer bad wines, a vast number of very good (but not life-changing) wines, and still only a handful worth “worth the trip” (to use the Guide Michelin’s definition of a Three Star dining establishment). I haven’t tasted all of the 15 wines which Eedes said had scored 97 points or more over the course of the last month. However, I’m willing to bet that not all (not even the majority) were life-changing. Scoring – and especially high scores – are a flawed way of summarising a wine review, but they have only become useless because, like the boy who used to “cry wolf” they can no longer be believed.

• Michael Fridjhon has over thirty-five years’ experience in the liquor industry. He is the founder of Winewizard.co.za and holds various positions including Visiting Professor of Wine Business at the University of Cape Town; founder and director of WineX – the largest consumer wine show in the Southern Hemisphere and chairman of The Trophy Wine Show.