The wine rating system is flawed, because it doesn’t take into account the human factor.
The growing cast of wine consumers obsessed with scores – seemingly an inherent process for choosing super-premium wines these days – troubles me. It is not just the credulous trust in scores that is a concern, but the dependence of wine merchants and marketers on critics to sell wine through the blatant exploitation of ratings.
I encountered a ratings-obsessed individual not long ago when emceeing an options tasting, the entertaining – albeit masochistic – sport of identifying masked wines guided by multi-choice questions.