David Marberger has lived with wine scores for more than two decades as the owner of a fine liquor store in Annapolis, Maryland. And he is more than happy to see the end of their dominance in US wine retailing. But what does he include with his weekly sales e-mail? Scores, of course.
“That’s still the thing that gets people in the store,” says Marberger, who owns the 27-year-old Bay Ridge Wine & Spirits. “I don’t think scores are nearly as important any more, and we’re seeing more and more customers who don’t make decisions based on scores. And I know we don’t buy wines just based on scores any more. So I suppose that makes me a liar when I say we need to put them on the wine of the week sale e-mail.”
Welcome to the conundrum that is wine scores in the US. The 100-point system, popularised by the Wine Advocate’s Robert Parker some 40 years ago, remains the sales and marketing tool that everyone loves to hate, even as they keep using it. Scores have withstood regular waves of critical assault, the disdain of hipster sommeliers, and changing retail conditions that today rely more on margins and volume discounts than on 92 points. Most recently, the New York Times’s Eric Asimov has called for a new approach to wine criticism, including the elimination of scores.
But scores are still with us. “That’s the problem,” says Tim McNally, a New Orleans wine critic, wine judge, and the host of a wine radio show. “Scores are a crutch for retailers and wineries, and asking them to give them up is like asking them to give up their first born. Are scores crappy? Yes. But what’s going to replace them? And how do we know that whatever replaces them won’t be crappy, too?”
History lesson
Robert Parker may not have invented the 100-point scoring system, but some four decades after he started using it, he usually gets the credit – and, as time goes by, much of the blame. At the beginning, scores seemed sensible, a 50- to 100-point range similar to the grading system used in most of the US schools. This made it straightforward and familiar to American wine drinkers. Parker saw scores as more consumer-friendly and devoid of the conflict of interest that he saw in previous criticism.
And scores thrived. Most of the leading wine magazines and critics moved to some form of Parker’s 100-point system, and retailers were quick to follow. Shelf talkers, boasting of 89, 92, or 94 points, became common, helping sell wines that otherwise might have languished. The early 1990s to the mid-2000s were probably the heyday of scores, when a 90-plus rating from Parker or one of the other important wine magazines could sell a wine regardless of who made it, where it was from, or even what it tasted like.
Marberger says his many of his customers, if they didn’t buy strictly by scores, saw scores as a key part of the purchasing decision. And he, like many other retailers, can tell dozens of stories about people walking into the store, waving the latest copy of the Advocate, the Wine Spectator, or the Wine Enthusiast, and demanding the most highly rated wines.
“Scores and the shelf talkers helped us sell wine, certainly,” Marberger says. “We couldn’t wait on every customer who came in the door, so the shelf talker told them what we didn’t have the time or the staff to do.”
Producers appreciated scores just as much – perhaps even more. One winery marketer, on a trip to Norway, was stunned when an Oslo retailer asked him what it had scored. “If you’re competing for a limited number of shelf spaces, a good score could put you over,” says Chris O’Gorman, the director of communications for Rodney Strong Vineyards in Healdsburg, California. “Wines needed the rating to stand out, and that was just the reality. They still need a rating, even though there are other things, like competition medals and good reviews from serious critics, that help.”
This is not to say that everyone always loved scores, because they didn’t. Many critics and even some consumers said scores couldn’t be objective since they were the product of one palate. Hence, one critic’s 94 was often another critic’s 89. In addition, red wines tended to score higher than white, and scores seemed to increase as the wine’s price increased. Both of those could have been true, but there never seemed to be a statistical relationship that proved them to be true.
Some producers saw scores as part of the tyranny of the wine magazines. If a wine didn’t fit a magazine’s niche, it wouldn’t get a good score. Some producers even tried to Parkerise their wines, to make them more like the wines Parker gave high scores – big, ripe and alcoholic.
In fact, every couple of years, scores came under attack – from other critics, some producers, and even a few retailers. But, says Leora Madden, who owns Pearl Wine Co, a wine shop and bar in New Orleans, that was just the wine business, and not necessarily a reflection on scores (though she is quick to add she doesn’t like scores and has never used them). “Wine is about trends,” she says, “like Moscato was a trend and rosé is a trend. And bashing scores was a trend that happened every couple of years. It didn’t mean they were going away.”
Changing times
Today, though, scores may be at a crossroads, and not just because influential critics like Asimov are calling them out. Changes in retailing, including and especially the growth of private label, are working to make scores less relevant. Many critics, retailers and even some producers see scores as an anachronism in the second decade of the 21st century.
“A long time ago, I read my first and only issue of Wine Spectator,” says Joe Roberts, a wine critic who started one of the first wine blogs, ‘One Wine Dude’, and doesn’t use scores. “Going through the back section, where there were scores and little blurbs about each wine, felt like death. It was like reading those old Columbia House catalogues where you got eight albums for a penny, with some little one-sentence write-up that didn’t really tell you anything about the album as a work of creativity.
“So I have hated the use of scores for a long time; but more so I hate the abuse of them – the wine business does little, for example, to curb the comparison of totally unrelated wines based solely on the numbers. Scores also imply a level of precision that I know, after having tasted thousands of wines per year for over a decade, is a fantasy.”
Talk to retailers like Marberger, Madden, and Nick Vorpagel, who runs the wine department at Lake Geneva Country Meats, an upscale grocery and butcher in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and they’ll tell you that retailing is at score overload – too many scores, too many critics offering scores, and too many high scores.
“This year is the year I stopped using scores,” says Vorpagel. “It has gotten to the point where everyone is giving 90 points, and if everyone is giving 90 points, what’s the point? If every wine is going to get a 90, then 90 points becomes meaningless.”
There is also the sense, they say, that scores don’t have as much appeal to younger wine drinkers as they do to the Baby Boomers who fuelled the US wine boom. Marberger says his younger customers are more adventurous, willing to try wines regardless of the score, more concerned with variety and appellation and trying something new. Customers still come in waving a wine magazine, he says, but they’re usually older and there are fewer of them.
“I’m also not making buying decisions based on scores the way I used to,” Marberger says. “I’m looking more at the quality-price ratio. I think it’s more important to be able to bring in a $12.99 Pinot Noir that offers quality at that price than buying based on the score the wine got.”
That approach may offer a clue to the future of scores, says Dan Peabody, who oversees 20 states for Banfi Vintners, the well-known Italian producer. His point? That the largest regional and national retailers, including supermarkets, are less interested in scores than ever. First, their focus is increasingly on selling higher-margin private label wines, and private label wines typically don’t get scores. Second, they want a clean and uncluttered look in the wine department to appeal to younger shoppers, and shelf talkers are clutter.
“In the US, acceptance of scores is declining,” he says. “I can’t speak for smaller retailers and wine shops, but the biggest retailers don’t ask about scores the way they used to, and they’re not as important in the buying decision. What’s more important now are margins: ‘What kind of deal can you give me?’ How much of a discount can I get on the wine?’”
Scores are still used, says Peabody, but only when they don’t look messy – in case stacks, for example. Banfi uses a case shipper where the display has the score. That way, the retailer gets to use the score but doesn’t get the messy look.
Which seems like quite a comedown from the days when scores ruled the US wine business. But wine trends change, and it may be that using scores less is part of the next wine trend.
