Rating wines – pleasure over points

Reviewing and rating wines is very controversial, and even more so than the wines reviewed.

A lot of these discussions are, in my view, a result of inflated and inconsistent ratings for a lot of big non terroir driven wines.

Wine is crafted in the vineyard

As Henri Jayer apparantly said .. I was not there at the time .. and he probably said it in french!

“A great wine is crafted in the vineyard; not in the cellar”.

This is exactly my view on wine, the the terroir, thus the grapes from the vineyard, really defines the maximum potential of a wine.

The task of the winemaker is to translate the potential to wine. Quality is not made in the cellar, the work done in the cellar can only realize the potential found in the grapes.

Terroir is the foundation for a good wine

The terroir sets the upper level for the rating a wine can receive. A legendary, extraordinary or even an outstanding wine can not come from an average terroir.

A wine can be big and heavy, but without the framework of the best terroir, it’s like a house without a foundation – you really don’t wan’t to buy it, but perhaps it could be ok for a short vacation!

Even the best producers can’t lift a village terroir up to an outstanding merrit. But a village wine can give you immense pleasure, as pleasure not always is a matter of only greatness.

Scoring or reviewing wines

There are currently a rather fierce discussion about scoring wines on the 100 point system, used by a lot of the wine critics in the world.

I use a 100 point scoring system, but must say I can relate to a lot of the critisism of the system for being subjective, inacurate … this is also why I revised the system slightly.

In my view a score without a a decription has no value, as the point tells you absolutely nothing about the actual experience you will get from drinking the bottle.

Pleasure or greatness

The main purpose of drinking wine is pleasure – I hope!

Pleasure is to some extent a matter of taste, as you could have different preferences for some of the qualities in the wine, thus prefering one terrior or vintage to others with the same quality.

This is also why the description following the rating is crusial, this is were you can see if the wine reviewed will bring pleasure to your.

I have a preference for frehsness and a destinct terrior expression in the wines, and I tend to prefer producers, vineyards and vintages with a transparancy and a clear and unmasked expression of the grape flavors and the terrior. Big wines from hot years with high alcohol does not give me pleasure.

I rather drink a 90 point village wine with freshness, where the producer has used all the potential of the terroir, than a big and rather heavy 91 point grand cru, where a lot of the potential has been lost in the cellar. Yes the grand cru wine is better and bigger served head to head, but the village wine could be the one giving you most pleasure.

Go for pleasure – Enjoy!