Let me first apologize for my online absence. No excuses, but… There was Yom Kippur, the sabbath and the subsequent not-so-short FLIGHT TO ISRAEL! Yes, I am here in the Holy Land. I arrived yesterday, just a few hours prior to the beginning of the holiday of “Sukkot” – described by holidays.com as “the ‘Feast of Booths’ (or Tabernacles), named for the huts (sukkah) that Moses and the Israelites lived in as they wandered the desert for 40 years before they reached the Promised Land”.
I am here in Israel for the holiday of course but also to spend time with family (my adorable niece…and her parents) and to work on my Israel wine project.
While drinking wine with a wine industry friend this afternoon in his Succah I admitted that my palate was still not where I would like it to be. He surprisingly asked why I felt that way. I explained that I felt I could decipher between an 80 and 85 point wine and an 85 and 90 point wine. BUT, I still feel like I struggle to truly decipher the supposed subtle differences between 90 point wines and 93 point wines. To which he made a face and basically said HOGWASH!
Which of course got me thinking. There is so much talk of scores as they relate to wines. And I have written about scores here before. SO, is there a difference between a wine given a score of 90 and a wine given a score of 93???
The aforementioned friend theorized that much of it has to do with marketing. Many of the wines I have seen that have been given those 2-3 extra points are single vineyard wines. With the idea that the specific site possesses some unique characteristics and should not be blended and subsequently LOSE those distinct characteristics. I have heard this to be true and I do believe it – to a certain extent. This line of thought invoked the expression “terroir”, described by Wikipedia as “a way of describing the unique aspects of a place that influences and shapes the wine made from it”.
This post can go on and on about scores, their purpose, terroir, if it is real, etc. But I don’t want to bore you with this debate. I will sum up for now by saying that I have been thinking a lot about a new way to evaluate wines that will turn the traditional scoring method on its head. It certainly will not replace the existing scoring method for those who use it to collect wines, drink high scoring wines, etc. But I do expect that as I continue to flesh out the concept it will prove useful to casual wine drinkers.
Happy SCORELESS wine tasting (from Israel)!!
WTG
