Here's Our Wine Rating Format

By Alex Sawit

10 January 2011

 

Happy New Year, Cyrano Friends!

To start the year right, I’m introducing our “In-Store Review” feature in which I’ll be reviewing newly added wines in our inventory. These reviews should be especially welcome to those of you who ask me every once in a while about what wines I personally like and why.

I’ll also be rating these wines to guide you better, although I still feel a little wary about doing this for a wine review. There are just too many wine critics in the world devoted to giving ratings with ultra-precise point scores and I feel that it’s misleading when critics insist on precise numbers to quantify something that is so subjective. I honestly feel that descriptive words can more faithfully communicate the quality of a wine than a numerical score can.

Yet the reality is that consumers prefer scores, which make life easier for anyone who simply wants to buy and enjoy a nice wine. So I’ll harmonize my descriptions and scores together this way (scores are from 1 to 10, allowing increments of 0.5 points):

 

Great = 10

Exceptionally Good = 9

Very Good = 8

Good = 7

Extra Fair = 6

Fair = 5

Poor = 4

Very Poor = 3

Horrifically Poor = 2

Abominable = 1

 

Now my reviews and ratings reflect my preferences, which may or may not agree with your own. So it’s more important to remember that my purpose is merely to help you make better-informed decisions about which wines to choose. At the end of the day, the final proof about whether you like something or not is entirely up to you.

So let’s get ready for the first review.

 

 

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