The scores awarded by various critics and organizations to different wines and vintages have become hugely important. Prices of wines can shoot up after being awarded favourable scores (especially by Robert Parker). This is especially so for the en primeur market for the so called investment wines. This mini-series deals with some observations on different scoring systems by various critics.
Hugh Johnson was not a particular fan of those Parker scores. He noted that bottle variation, position of a particular wine in the tasting line-up, ambient conditions ... etc all conspire to make the assessment less objectively than a score implies. Another concept he objected to was the implied accuracy when marks are given at the top end of a 100 point scale. One might also add that if the are different bottlings/batches with same or similar labels, then scoring could virtually be an exercise in deception (cf the Wither Hills scandal). Nevertheless score are popular and here to stay.
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