Wine scores: a score whore's view

When I excitedly tell my wife, my friends, my co-workers and even my co-workers who are not my friends the score of a given bottle, they nod politely and then turn away and resume their conversation with the person who is not me. I can tolerate this injustice most of the time. But there is a limit, and the worst is when I exclaim, "WS gave this 93 points", and the "listener" blithely resumes their life a fraction of a second later.

Why is this so exasperating? Because you don't understand how hard it is to get 93 points.

Ninety three points is high enough that if you don't know wines reviews, but still enjoy wine occasionally, you might never drink a wine that scores this high your entire life.

Ninety three points would have been the highest rated wine I would own in my first 6 years of collecting. Granted I wasn't spending much, but you just can't get a 93 pointer when you only spend $20. Even in 1990 dollars. (Well this wasn't quite true. In the 2005 vintage, there were a grand total of 5 wines scoring 93 costing less than $20 in WS. Three were obscure German Rieslings; the other two were Sauvignon Blancs).

Ninety three points is higher than ninety two points, which is my current threshold for really, really well reviewed wines. At 92 points, the reviewer loves the wine. Anything higher is just frosting, usually due to enduring length, crazy complexity or super intensity.

Ninety three points is so high that if you averaged drinking wine this good every time, you might be the person drinking the best wine in the world. On average. But in the whole world.

Ninety three points is high enough that if you walk into a decent sized grocery store with 500+ different bottles, it's possible no wine will score that high. (Here in Northern Calif, the large super market chains have half to a full store-length aisle devoted to wine, which is my reference.)

Ninety three points is high enough that in a non-stellar vintage, an entire region might not have a single wine score this highly.

Still not getting this? Here's a different tact. Math.

It's a simplification, but think of each additional point as reducing the playing field to a third, once you get above 89, which is good wine indeed to start with. So if 91 points is rare, then 93 points is about one in ten of those.

Now perhaps all this ... still hasn't convinced you. Then let's get down to business. Price.

From 85-89 points, it doesn't make sense to talk about price because wines of all price ranges can fall into this bucket. $6 wines. $16 wines. And even $56 bottles. And the thing to realize is that at 88 to 89 points, the wine can be absolutely the perfect wine for many occasions. As in just what you wanted. (Reading WS reviewers blog about what they drank in real life situations makes this clear).

Once you hit 90 and above, prices start to settle out a bit more with the minimum prices starting to become a bit more predictable. (Keep in mind price and wine aren't really strongly related.) To get 90 points, you typically need to spend $16, even if know what you're doing. And with patience, you can find it for $12 or even $10. So let's say that 90 points a $10/16 low end limit.

And now for the tricky part. I think each 2 points is a doubling of prices. So that means for 92 points, expect to spend $32 given that you are aware of wine scores and you will be hard pressed to find a 92 pointer for less than $20. Of course there are exceptions but you have to be lucky to break $20.

At 93 points, we're now talking $44 a bottle as a reasonable lower limit on the price, assuming you follow the reviews and know what to look for. The "average" price of a 93 pointer is probably a lot higher, say $100-120. And in a restaurant this means a 93 pointer is going to put a dent in your wallet. So I hope you have a bit of respect for 93 pointers.

But if you really really want to annoy me, turn away after I say, "Now, this got 94 points".