BLIND tasting vs. VINOUS Antonio Galloni – Do we agree on the 100-POINT-wine?
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I use this wine key: Laguiole en Aubrac Wine Key Ebony
I have used this glass in this Video: Gabriel StandArt
I have tasted the following wines in this Video:
2021 E. Guigal Cotes du Rhone Rose, Rhone, France – 11 US $ – 90 Points Vinous
2020 Arnot-Roberts Sanford & Benedict Vineyard Chardonnay, Sta Rita Hills, USA – 61 US $ – 95 Points Vinous
2018 Fontodi Flaccianello della Pieve Colli della Toscana Centrale IGT, Tuscany, Italy – 141 US $- 100 Points Vinous
2022 Ken Forrester Petit Chenin Blanc, Stellenbosch, South Africa – 13 US $ – 85 Points Vinous
The 100 Point Scoring System (from www.robertparker.com):
96-100: An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase and consume.
90 – 95: An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
80 – 89: A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
70 – 79: An average wine with little distinction except that it is soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.
60 – 69: A below-average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.
50 – 59: A wine deemed to be unacceptable.
Vinous was started after Antonio Galloni left Robert Parkers Wine Advocate in 2013. Galloni was a leading wine critic for Parker covering Italy; Champagne and California and he left after Robert Parker sold a share of his publication and announced his retirement.
The departure was a bit messy, and the Wine Advocate sued Galloni for breach of contract and defamation. During this time, it also was reported that Galloni was paid 300,000 US$ per year for his work – which is a handsome salary for a wine critic to say the least.
Anyways, Vinous managed to get some of the most well-known wine writers to join the company and now they have a very good team of critics including a couple of Masters of Wine. They also bought a few tech companies to add to their offering and they publish articles regularly.
They use the 100-point system when scoring wines but on the Vinous scale, 80-84 points are average while on Robert Parker.com wines below 80 are considered average.
On ratings in general Galloni writes: Of course, wine is not an exact science, but I believe there is something definitive and therefore important about deciding whether a wine receives 89 or 90 points. Other broader scales like the various 3 and 5-star systems (and their derivatives) that are out there make it too easy for a critic to avoid taking hard positions.
I looked at the Vinous scores and compared them to Parker and Suckling and first, I have to say that it was a lot more difficult to navigate Vinous for this experiment and they have some wines that have a rating between 1 and 2 stars by one of their critics David Schildknecht which was slightly confusing – but that’s beside the point.
When you look at the results you see that Vinous is between Parker and Suckling when it comes to the score distribution: Wines are less likely to receive low scores compared to Parker – given both publications rate similar and the same wines.
Two-thirds of the wines receive a score between 87 and 92 but it is the publication with the lowest chance to receive 100 points – you are three times more likely to get 100 points from robertparker.com
Interestingly if you are a winemaker and you want to receive a good score below 90 your best bet is with Parker, but Vinous is more likely to score above 90 and below 95 and is very unlikely to score above 95.