The Top 100 Wines of the Year

[Coop]

For me, if I want legit. wine ratings and tasting notes I read Parker. When I want entertainment I get Wine Spectator. This doesn't make it a bad magazine in my opinion, just more like Vogue or GQ or Maxim. Not a place to find the kind of knowledge I seek when buying wine.

Few magazines can balance thier add revenues with fair editorial. The only one that comes to mind in any genre is Road and Track or maybe Rolling Stone.

[jddoyle]

jddoyle, nobody accused anyone of fraud.  The Spectator stands accused only of placing its own pecuniary interests above any serious attempt at objectivity respecting the world's finest wines.  An independent study a couple of years ago bore this out.  However, at this point, I think that you have to pay a couple of hundred dollars to buy the study, which was ostensibly done for the benefit of wineries that wanted to know how to get high ratings from the Wine Spectator.  To my knowledge, nobody has found a reason to conduct a similar study on the ratings of Parker or Tanzer.  I rest my case.

From law.freeadvice.com:

Fraud is defined to be "an intentional perversion of truth" or a "false misrepresentation of a matter of fact" which induces another person to "part with some valuable thing belonging to him or to surrender a legal right".

My point is only that those who say that the Wine Spectator intentionally gives out better scores to those who provide funds by way of advertising dollars are essentially saying that the Wine Spectator "intentionally perverts the truth" of their statement that they taste wines blind when determining the scores of those wines in order to convince their readers to "part with some valuable thing" [the reader's money] to purchase those wines.

Now I'm no lawyer but it seems to fit to me.

As to the statements about Tanzer and Parker, well I don't read much of Tanzer other than any reviews that a website may attribute to him for a wine I am researching, I know that Parker does not taste blind and to me that allows for too much personal feeling associated with the wine under test to come into play in the review. But that is just me.

I'm not saying that I agree with the reviews all the time, I don't. I personally prefer Clive Coates, my taste seems to coincide with his.

My final decision of a wines quality rests in my mouth and nose alone. But I do feel that any review can be a helpful tool in determining whether or not to spend my few dollars on a wine, at least I know what someone said about it, whether in be Coates, Parker or the WS staff.

As for why a study wasn't done for Tanzer or Parker, I assume that because WS is available at most newsstands while Parker or Tanzer's aren't, those commissioning the study decided that the best bang for the buck would be to study the possibility of improving scores in WS. If it costs hundreds of dollars just to purchase, you can assume that it was quite expensive to commission!

I wasn't trying to start a fight, I was just stating that if you were going to accuse a publication of fraudulent practices, you should have proof backing it up. If one study that no one can read or quote is good enough for you than great! It isn't enough for me.

Jay Doyle

[Bill Klapp]

Jay, I hear you, but I am a lawyer, as it turns out, and WS is not going to be found guilty of intentionally perverting truth or fact, for the simple reason that the truth or fact at issue is a totally subjective impression of the quality of a given wine. I will offer this tidbit as well--I am certain that WS undertakes a sufficient number of ratings each year to enable them to refute any argument you might want to make about skewed ratings. If I say that they give the highest ratings to simple wines that drink well young, WS can no doubt point to a closed, tannic wine or two that received "96s" from them. The same is true of their ability to point to some highly rated wines whose producers have never advertised in the WS. Those exceptions, however, could never swallow the rule for me, the rule being that WS is there to serve its advertisers and its neophyte, relatively unsophisticated readership, not widely read, experienced wine drinkers. Although my latter point sounds rather effete, my personal experience also bears that out, in that the WS is usually the first wine publication encountered by wine newcomers, as well as the first to be disregarded by those who go on to become serious students of wine, rather than casual drinkers. I could bury the hatchet altogether with the WS if the banner on its cover read "Wine Spectator: The Magazine for Newcomers to the World of Wine" or words to that effect, or if they changed the name to "Wine Travel and Leisure"...

[jddoyle]

Bill,

I had a feeling when writing that you were going to be a lawyer and I was going to eat it with my comment

I understand your points. And I do agree with you that WS is a "intro" magazine that looks good on a coffee table and therefore sells well. But I don't think that they deliberately skew there scores to those that pay for advertising.

Thanks for the discussion.

Jay

[sara]

Has anyone had the Mulderbosch Sav.Blanc from that list? It's on the list of a restaurant I'm going to--for $45/bottle.

[KatieLoeb]

Has anyone had the Mulderbosch Sav.Blanc from that list? It's on the list of a restaurant I'm going to--for $45/bottle.

Sara:

Used to have this on the list at Striped Bass. It's quite tasty. I think you'd probably like it and at $45 is not a bad price. I had some at a tasting about a month ago and it was delicious. Curiously, Mulderbosch also makes a Cabernet Sauvignon Rose (something I'd never seen before) that was probably the most interesting thing I tried that day.

Mulderbosch is one of the more recognized South African wineries and are fairly consistent with their products. The Sauvignon Blanc is probably their flagship wine and is a lovely combination of French "eau-de-litter-box" grassy and minerally with the New Zealand tropical fruit forward style that many like better. Think gooseberries and grassiness and that's pretty much where this lies on the spectrum.