In the Viniminutes, the wine reviews are focused on describing the wine primarily in terms of smell and taste by characteristics such as fruit, flowers, herbs, winemaking and other organics. When we judge a wine we aim to attach a score to the qualities of the wine and with higher scores representative of crystal visual clarity, nose and palate complexity, balance and whether or not the wine it telling of its grape variety and origin. There are many scoring scales ranging from the 20-point introduced by University of California, Davis; the 100-point scale as made popular by Wine Spectator; a 5-star scale, commonly seen in publications as Decanter; and there are even 4- and 3-star ratings in other key magazines. To very briefly summarize (and I hope I don’t get my head lopped off for this), no matter the scale used, each one considers the following qualities to some extent. These are the main criteria and how a wine would score highest:

1. Apprearance: Top points go to wines with crystal clarity. They are polished and have no perceivable sediment or flocculations. For still wines, this would also mean absence of bubbles or ‘petillance’.
2. Nose: To score full points here, the wine must be absent of faults (off-putting odors such as cork taint). Regarding the notes that are perceived with smell, the wine should be complex in that one can smell scents representative of multiple families (as listed above).
3. Palate: Palate is often broken down into the two categories of mouthfeel and flavour. Higher scoring wines are those that have a great interplay between acidity, tannin, alcohol, sweetness, and body, with none of these characters being overpowering. Flavour reflects what is described for the nose, and the aim is complexity.
4. Conclusions: A wine should give one the sense of the grape varietals used. The high-scoring wine go even further, giving the taster a sense of origin.

For the VinoVigilance California vs Chile tasting I am having the tasters use my version of a 20-point scale, below. Consider it a modified score that is similar to the UC Davis system but more approachable for a consumer audience.

Wine judging scorecard

As one can see from the criteria the emphasis is not dependent on having the tasters specifically identify each flavour or distinguishing whether or not that wine had a medium versus medium-plus level of acidity. Rather, the tasters are to judge each wine objectively by assigning points based on the descriptions above. One then adds up the points to achieve a final score.

I’m further asking each taster to conclude the orgin of the wine (California or Chile), the grape variety and the approximate retail price. It is important to remember that price should reflect the overall score and not what the taster feels they would want to pay (based on buying habit) or based on where they think the wine hails – just because you think that Cabernet is from Chile doesn’t mean it’s cheap! What does your score tell you about the price?

Putting the scoring system into practice, I offer the following example (keep in mind that it is not necessary to write a full narrative, just a numerical score for each descriptor will suffice):

This particular white wine scored well. A score such as this may even earn a bronze medal in some competitions. Objectively speaking, this wine is of acceptable quality in that it has no faults and nothing about its flavour is way out of balance except for the alcohol (the grapes could have been harvested too late and the sugar content may have been too high, hence the high alcohol). The wine would otherwise be very good if it had more complexity.

One of the most intriguing parts of reading a wine review, and possibly the most followed, is the little rating attached to the end. There are numerical scores out of 20 or 100; three stars, four stars, or five; symbols for value; bottles up, down or tilted somewhere in between; make a list of all the wine ratings and it’s a sight to be seen!

This month’s meeting will make some sense of it all as a five-part series in the Viniminutes. We’ll discuss the basics of judging, put it to practice with blind tasting and finally analyze scores to not only depict a winner but to leverage these scores as they may help you in determining whether or not the bottle you are about to buy is of great value for money.

PART I – Judging wine for sensory quality

PART II – Battle of the Pacific coast: California and Chile

PART III – You be the judge

PART IV – Introductory methods for scoring analysis

PART V – Turning a judgement call into a value call