For The Love Of Port

Design the ideal rating system for Port wine.

Go on, take a stab at it ...

I'm not fond of the 100p-scale as well as the 20p-scale.

The 100p-scale is kind of ridiculous - the points from 0-60 are like never used. The points from 70-80 very rarely used. The points from 80-100 is used on a regular basis - so actually it's a 20p-scale. But the "real" 20p-scale has got an identical "problem" - almost no wines gets rated from 0-10. Only the points from 10-20 is actually used - so this is in fact a 10p-scale.

If the scale is "to narrow" - it will be much harder to differentiate the good from the bad wines - and the extremly good wines from the good ones! For example - a 5p-scale is obvious to narrow. The 20p-scale has shown to be extensive.

Well - this kind of narrows it down to a scale with the max-score set to more than 5 but less than 20. What is the optimum? My quess is a 10p-scale. :idea:


Best regards
Henrik

I am happy with the current 100 point scale that aligns with WS and RP.

If I were to change it, I would have a scale based on other vintages of the same house and adjusted to other houses of the same vintage.

In the end, I think my scores would be similar as I look at both the above a factors as well as an absolute “blind” factor in my score.

I think the problem with most rating scales is that they use numbers. Over time the numbers seem to creep higher and higher, resulting in the lower end of the scale no longer being used and the higher end of the scale losing its meaning.

Therefore I suggest a simple descriptive system as a rating scale:

Extraordinary
Outstanding
Excellent
Very Good
Good
Above Average
Average
Below Average
Poor
Dismal

You will presumably notice two things about my scale. 1) It is really just a 10 point scale, and 2) it is biased toward more positive ratings. This is because most people have difficulty using anything in groups larger than about 7 distinct objects (preferably 5), and because most people (Americans in particular) prefer to rate everything positively. So in this scale, an "average" quality wine would be an 8 on a 20 point scale or a 40 on a 100 point scale. I'm allowing more differentiation among the higher ratings because they're the ones more commonly used.

I use words because they are less likely to lose meaning over time. It's easy for wine ratings to slowly creep up from 90 to 93 to 96 over time, but the reality is that you've just slowly increased from Excellent to Outstanding to Extraordinary. When you use numbers it is easy to say "well this wine is slightly better than that wine, so it deserves a higher number" when, in reality, both wines were simply Outstanding. One might have been marginally more Outstanding than the other, but not enough to call it Extraordinary. I believe that if the words were used instead of the numbers that people would be more inclined to realize what was happening and stop doing it.

Interesting idea Glenn. I rate recipes in all my cookbooks using a scale of words, with excellent, very good, good, fair, and poor. A friend rates wines with just a 3 star scale. On occasion she'll give half stars. I guess no stars is also a rating. I think a scale with less gradation really goes with the idea that we each have different tastes.