Our Rating Scale

We have seen other Blogs that rely heavily on wine reviews and while we like them, they are just one person's opinion.  We want to try and balance our love of wine by actually reviewing wine and also generating a discussion.

We have become more and more critical of wines overall in the last year (mainly as an exercise in reviewing wine) and lot of that is reflected in the wine reviews we have done since our launch in November 2011.  We decided in that time that our scale would be based upon a 20 point rating with some sliding scales within each range.  From our perspective, you will rarely see wines in the 90% from us as that level is reserved for only the most special of wines.  Below is our rating scale by range:

 Score: Rating Scale Reasoning
Less than 14/20 (< 70%)Any wine that rates below 14 on our scale is not worth purchase nor consideration.  This should be a very rare occurrence.
14 to 16/20 (70% to 80%)This rating for wine should encompass a broad amount of wine. This would be a typical table wine rating for mass marketed wine. We would consider this wine to be perfectly drinkable and worth a recommendation if the price is reasonable.
More than 16 to 18/20 (> 80% to 90%)This rating range is for exceptional wine of excellent value and quality. This is where the good stuff should wind up. A rating in this range is automatically a Buy recommendation (Gold Star effort wines).
More than 18 to 20/20 (> 90% to 100%)This area is reserved for truly incredible wine....the life transforming stuff. This rating might not keep to the budget concept or if the wine merits it, it could relate to those all too rare Quality - Price - Ratio (QPR) wines. This should be a rare occurrence as well.

Hopefully, this will give you a sense of where our heads are at when we review wines. This is a reflection of not wanting to stick strictly to a 100-point scale (which we kind of do) but also to give a ranges to wines that truly reflect that quality and price make up a huge part of what we like. Back to that old budget concept...

If you think we are out to lunch on some of these ratings or on any individual review, let us know. We love the feedback and a good debate.

Happy tasting!

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