For The Love Of Port

On Sunday afternoon, whilst celebrating David Spriggs' 50th birthday a few of us were discussing the merits or lack thereof, re: the 100 point scale. It is not new and certainly has been bandied about on this site before. Maybe it is time to revisit the topic, after reading this:

http://www.winereviewonline.com/Michael ... Scores.cfm

Michael Franz said, “Scoring wines on this scale was new to me five years ago, and it was new to almost all of us who write for WRO.”
Really? What wine publications were they reading in 2004 and earlier?

I've never scored a port 100 points. It would have to be a '31 Noval on Abramovich's yacht to get the 2 extra points out of me.

Yes, wines get 50 points on the 100-point scale simply for being wines. The same is true in classroom situations (which I know a little about, since I’m a professor as well as a wine writer). My students get 50 points for starters, simply because I respect them as human beings.

What? I never got 50 points for free in school. In primary school it was generally a straight percentage of correct out of total. This applied in college in many cases, but not all where writing essays and doing complicated problems made for partial credit. I recall some harsh engineering exams and probably got less than a 50 on at least one.

The 50 points aren't "free". It just means that if you score between 50 and 60, you are (generally) considered to have failed. Scores below 50 are evidence of not even being worth scoring. I would have to say that a tough exam where a significant number of otherwise good students get scores below 50% correct would have to be adjusted in some way to get useful grading results.

Scoring below 50, in the case of wine, means that the wine is undrinkable; not just poor, but undrinkable. Thus the only useful scores are from 50 up. If you can't drink it, it isn't wine (at least in my book).

Like the sign in my wine cellar says: Life is too short to drink bad wine.

Really my only problem with the 100-point scale is score creep. Which is a problem with all scoring systems when you get right down to it.

I think that a word-based scale would be more accurate over time because the meanings of words like "excellent" and "good" don't change as much as an artificial label like "90 points."

Perfect, Magnificent, Outstanding, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Poor is essentially a 10-point scale, but it is one that is easier for beginners to understand. (It also makes the top rating nearly impossible to achieve, which is as it should be.) If that isn't sufficient gradiation, then add a plus or two after the word. There's no reason to limit the number of plusses, either, because the next word up is by definition better.

I always try to start with words, then convert them to the 100-point scale because I feel like I get more accurate ratings that way. Of course that also makes me more susceptible to a bad palate day or a poor showing of a wine, but I'll take the downs with the ups.

I grade recipes on a five-word scale using some of those words Glenn used. While I tend to not like the "50 points for free" part of the 100 point scale, I did think of one argument for it. It removes confusion. If you see a wine score 18, you know it wasn't on the standard 100 point scale.

I like the 100 point system far better than the 20 points. I'd even rather see 1-10 scale than 20 point system.

Last weekend someone mentioned simply using a grade scale instead of a point scale, and that seems reasonable to me too. The only problem being that it's a 15-point scale (A-F, +, -) of which only 13 are ever used even when grading schoolwork (I've never seen an F+ or F-), and realistically you'd probably only see the top 7-8 used for wines/Ports. After all, if a Port can't score at least a C grade then I really don't want to waste my time drinking it.

Which, of course, is the same reason that most 100-point scores are 85 or higher - it's not that 70-point wines/Ports don't exist, it's that no one cares to taste them and give them ratings on a regular basis. When you can get an 88-90 point Port for $35-$40, why bother with an 80-pointer for $30? The occasional "bad" score that you do see is probably when an otherwise consistently good producer makes a small mistake and produces a "merely average" product.

All scoring systems have pros and cons. To say one never scores is a cop out to me; it infers you never rank wines. And I don't know any serious wine lover who hasn't ranked at a tasting. The 100 point system is easy to understand, at least in the US where it correlates to school grades. The ABCDF system was mentioned above. I agree, it's more like a 13 point system. Some people claim to like the 20 point scale, but then use decimals which moves it towards the 100 point scale anyways. I don't like the Michael Broadbent system of 5 points. Is a 5 pointer 5X better than a one? I think as long as you are consistent, don't suffer from score inflation, and can translate your notes and scores so others can understand you, any system is good.

Glenn E. wrote:Perfect, Magnificent, Outstanding, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Poor is essentially a 10-point scale, but it is one that is easier for beginners to understand.

This is similar to how wines (and vintages) were rated 100 years+ ago and I agree with Glenn that it is a far easier scale to get your head around. It is certainly much easier for consumers to understand. All I would say is that I'm not convinced 10 categories are required, especially when 7 of the 10 ar above "Average"

Glenn, just for fun, could you please put a range of Parker points against each of your 10 categories? e.g. Perfect=100, Magnificent=98-99 etc

Derek

Derek T. wrote:especially when 7 of the 10 ar above "Average"

That's deliberate. People only rarely rate things lower than average, and when they do the rating tends to be fairly non-specific. Average still means average, but I've provided more descriptors above that rating because that's where people prefer to have them.

Derek T. wrote: Glenn, just for fun, could you please put a range of Parker points against each of your 10 categories? e.g. Perfect=100, Magnificent=98-99 etc

Perfect = 100
Magnificent = 97-99
Outstanding = 94-96
Excellent = 90-93
Very Good = 85-89
Good = 80-84
Above Average = 75-79
Average = 70-74
Below Average = 65-69
Poor = below 65

That's very close to Wine Spectator's scale, the most significant difference being the extra words I use above Very Good. They use Outstanding for 90-94 and Classic for 95-100 but I think more granularity is needed in that range.

I like those definitions and the ranges you have assigned. If I compare them with the scores I awarded to the 2008s I am happy that the words describe my opinion on each of the wines.

Thanks!

But why is OUTSTANDING better than EXCELLENT?

Roy Hersh wrote:But why is OUTSTANDING better than EXCELLENT?

Because they score up to 3 points more

Roy Hersh wrote:But why is OUTSTANDING better than EXCELLENT?

Because his first grade teacher said so

Oh, and where is the "100*"?

Andy Velebil wrote:...Oh, and where is the "100*"?

I have argued here before that a scale that isn't open-ended is basically flawed. It implies that the scaler knows, in advance, that he(she) will never find a better example. This can result in some strange behavior.

A friend spent many years learning to shoot skeet. He shot five to ten lines a day for years, bought better and better guns. Then, one summer, he found himself shooting perfect scores all summer. He sold all his skeet guns, and so far as I know, has never shot another line of skeet since. Skeet has very specific rules about the flight of the targets, distances, and so forth. There is no reason that he couldn't have altered the conditions (faster targets, greater distances) for his own personal challenge, but by limiting himself to a closed-end scale (25 hits for 25 targets under exact conditions) he spoiled a sport that he had otherwise enjoyed as long as there was a possibility of improvement.

My own mother, as a small child, came upon her older brothers shooting a .22 at a small stone sitting on top of a fence-post. When she was told what they were doing, she asked to try. When she said that she couldn't even see the stone, she was taken down range to see it. Her brothers explained how to make a sight picture, how to take a breath and gently release it, how to squeeze the trigger so slowly that it would be a surprise when the gun went off, and then was given the rifle. She did exactly as she was told, knocked the stone off the fence-post, and never handled another firearm to the day she died.

Having nothing to "shoot" for is a horrible thing. I understand the reasons for limiting a scale to a certain range, but it goes against everything I believe in.

(BTW, if you don't see those two tales as heart-wrenchingly sad, you won't see my point at all. BTW2, I don't think that either Bob Martin or my mother felt particularly sad about those events.)

Peter W. Meek wrote:

Andy Velebil wrote:...Oh, and where is the "100*"?

I have argued here before that a scale that isn't open-ended is basically flawed.

As noted, when using my scale simply add plusses after the word.

Magnificent is the last word in my scale, but you can add as many plusses to it as you like. So my scale is effectively open ended even if the translation to the fixed 100-point scale is not.

Roy Hersh wrote:But why is OUTSTANDING better than EXCELLENT?

One definition of outstanding is "standing out among others of its kind in excellence" which implies to me that it is better than excellent because the others of its kind are excellent and yet it still stands out among them.

But really, I choose to place outstanding over excellent because the word is less often used and therefore seems superior to me.

Glenn,

I wouldn't touch that logic whatsoever. If it works for you then the scale must be just.


Peter wrote:

There is no reason that he couldn't have altered the conditions (faster targets, greater distances) for his own personal challenge, but by limiting himself to a closed-end scale (25 hits for 25 targets under exact conditions) he spoiled a sport that he had otherwise enjoyed as long as there was a possibility of improvement.

That's exactly why I have never had to consider giving up olaying chess against the computer. Even when I have wound up at a level where I win 50% of the time or more, I can always progress to the next level which makes blind guessing the producer of Vintage Ports seem like good odds ... at least for a time.