Scores
-
95
..
100
Sensational Wine
Everything about this wine must be right. Perfect balance, exceptional fruits, tannins and acid, brilliant winemaking skills. A delicate attention to detail should be noticable on the nose and palate. It has a high level of complexity and structure. The wine must have decades of cellaring potential.
(10/10 : ★★★★★↑)
-
92
..
94
Great Wine
These wines must be well balanced in fruit, tannins and acid. They must have something interesting to offer on the nose and palate. Flavours should display good complexity. Finish should be long. Grapes must have been picked at the optimal ripeness. The wine must have a long cellaring potential.
(9/10 : ★★★★★)
-
90
..
91
Very Good Wine
Full of flavours and aromas. The wines should display good workmanship. Only a slight imbalance in fruit, tannins and acid is permitted. Medium to long finish with a distinct mid palate character. Grapes must have been ripe when picked. The wine must have cellaring potential.
(8/10 : ★★★★)
-
88
..
89
Good Wine
Many of my everyday drinking wines should fall into this class. At least two of fruit, acid and tannin must be well represented and reasonably balanced. On the nose it should offer something. Finish should be for the most part at least medium in length. Grapes may be ripe, nearly ripe or slightly overripe when picked. Cellaring potential is preferred.
(7/10 : ★ ★ ★↑)
-
86
..
87
Above Average Wine
The wine should be pleasant, or smooth, or have some kind of characteristic which calls attention to it. Acid and tannin can be underrepresented. Many "Drink Now" quaffers fall into this category. Grapes should be close to ripe when picked. Basically the winemaker must have produced a reasonable wine with a little something that edges it above the norm.
(6/10 : ★ ★ ★)
-
84
..
85
OK Wine
The wine doesn't overly impress me. It has noticable deficiencies in the balance. Often some aspect is missing entirely, or the finish is too short and boring. The wine is still drinkable though, and would be suitable for large quantities at a party.
(5/10 : ★ ★)
-
80
..
83
Below Average Wine
There is something about these wine that annoys me - perhaps it is far too acidic, or too watery. Very noticable deficiencies in balance. Perhaps there are no aromas, too much oak was used, or the grapes were underripe when picked. Wines that come across really sour and thin will be in this category.
(4/10 : ★)
-
70
..
79
Poor Wine
The balance is bad, some kind of obvious defect has entered the wine, in particular microbiological nuances. Often it will have a barnyard smell to it, the grapes were wet when picked, or badly underripe. Basic or hollow in the middle.
(3/10)
-
60
..
69
Awful Wine
Wines with major defects, loveless winemaking and wines with absolutely no trace of character. Often there is way too much oak, alcohol is overwhelming. Body is thin and ugly. The home for cheap, mass produced, watery sludge transported around the world in huge vats and bottled with cute logos like Kangaroos.
(2/10)
-
50
..
59
Terrible or Defective Wine
These wines are quite literally the bottom of the barrel. Major defects are present, in particular in the winemaking process. Also bottle defects that can be attributed to poor workmanship, such as inferior corking. Some judgement needs to be made here as to whether the winemaker carries any blame for the defect. A winemaker has to stuff up in serious style to produce a wine this bad.
(1/10)
-
D
Defective Bottles
Individual bottles of wine that are defective as a result of factors that occurred after bottling. This is to ensure that the winemaker is not unfairly rated poorly as a result of factors outside his control, such as oxidization, over-cellaring and heat damage. Usually I will not rate in detail - referring instead to the defect in question.
Value for Money
-
Great value for Money
Wines that I would buy again at this price and will usually lay down in quantity in my cellar. Note that it has nothing to do with the actual price. A 90 € wine might be great, but overpriced.
-
Good value for Money
Wine where I think the price point is good and would most likely buy again.
-
Average value for Money
Wines where the price is OK for the quality delivered, but is perhaps pushing it just a little too much for me to want to buy it again.
-
Poor value for Money
Wines that I consider to be clearly overpriced. This could be cheap muck that is so bad I'd never buy it again anyway, or really top drops that are just obscenely overpriced.
-
Not yet Rated
Wines that have not yet been rated, online ratings with incompatible scoring systems and wines which I have drunk but not rated.
-
D
No value for Money
Defective wines are never considered worth buying or not worth buying since the defect in the bottle makes judgement impossible.
Why use the 50-100 Rating System
-
I have recently switched to rating wines using the 50 to 100 point system like Parker and Co. In reality I don't believe it is really much more accurate than a 10 point system, but it seems to have won the rating system battle. I have to say that almost all wines that are drinkable are rated above 80 points anyway with a midpoint of around 85 for 'OK'.
More intuitive for me is a 10 point rating system with a psychological midpoint at 5. Everything below 5 is below average and everything above 5 is above average. Since most wines I drink are average or above, I further break down the scores from 5 to 9 into half step increments. This gives a total of 15 possible ratings. Really cosmic wines are rated 10 and not resolved further so the system is no use for rating the worlds best wines.
Below is a table showing the corresponding ratings in the 10 and 50/100 systems.
Score Conversion Table
-
10
95..100
★★★★★↑
-
9½
93..94
★★★★★
-
9
92
★★★★↑
-
8½
91
★★★★↑
-
8
90
★★★★
-
7½
89
★★★↑
-
7
88
★★★
-
6½
87
★★↑
-
6
86
★★
-
5½
85
★↑
-
5
84
★
-
4
80..83
-
3
70..79
↓
-
2
60..69
↓↓
-
1
50..59
↓↓↓