I agree with you that Syrah has the potential to provide a more consistent high-quality consumer experience than many other varieties. The breadth of environments where it can be planted and ripen properly is far greater than Pinot and Merlot, and perhaps even than Zinfandel. It may be equal to Chardonnay and nearly equal to Cabernet Sauvignon in its aptitudes. Two things to avoid when growing the variety: quality is very sensitive to over-cropping, and Syrah vines should never be run out of water before harvest.

We don’t distribute in NH, nor anywhere else at this time. My latest Syrah bottling—the 2007 Estate—comprised under 190 cases. Westwood wines are available online and through the Wine Club.

Best of luck in your exploration of what the variety has to offer!

My blog: thegrumpynortonian (almost all about the Norton wine)

Blake talks about “score-haters” and reading some comments I have no doubt that there is a lot of hate out there over scores. I’m not a score hater. I do wish that people who think scores are the be-all and end-all would wake the hell up.

Yesterday Tom Wark and I had a brief exchange on Twitter where I threw out the idea that “scores are emoticons.” Follows up the last couple paragraphs in my original post—as in “This wine is awesome! I’m 98 points on it #winefuckyeah” Hmmm… I suppose scores could be viewed as equivalent to Tumblr tags too.

Tom took it up a notch and suggested that the idea of scores as emoticons invoked Hume and Kant. I’m not all that well-read in philosophy; my understanding of Hume and Kant is superficial at best. As I have understood Hume, he rejected Cartesian rationality and embraced passion as the motivation of behavior. Viewed in that light, perhaps scores are reflections of our passion for wine. Emoticons indeed. Kant I’m not so sure of, unless the connection is the idea that scores reflect our innate need to impose rationality on subjective experience.

This discussion needs to be taken down many notches. Josh Hermsmeyer (@pinotblogger) put up a little graphic that I saw as a corollary to wine scoring:

…which led me to recall reports about a phone app that allows you to geo-tag, and rate, your sexual activity, and share the info with your friends. Talk about human desire motivating our rationality. Coming soon (so to speak)—”Rate Your O”!!! Imagine how this would put a proper perspective on the “wisdom of crowds.”

Why do we invariably assign a rating system to our tangibles? Because we crave it—we’ve become accustomed to be told that this is the way it should be—it’s easy and most folks like easy, especially in our fast-paced, “difficult” lives. But what happens when we “lead” folks in a direction that allows them to think, instead of react.

For me, this is the next level, a higher level. Where each person makes his/her own decisions based on many factors, hopefully on the experience itself, not just a #.

“I think we are about to zero in on the fact it is time to 86 the idea that wine scores imply an objective standard.” Priceless.

Thanks for this exquisitely-written piece.

But heck this is hardly the first time a number has been verbed – I think we are about to zero in on the fact it is time to 86 the idea that wine scores imply an objective standard.

The article you cited said something to the point that doing a “research-grade” tasting of just 18 wines could take 5 weeks. In my experience that is the time scale required for a panel to do a thorough quantitative evaluation of a group of wines. And yet people throw brickbats at reviewers for not pursuing their trade at that level of rigor.

I’m glad you got to participate on the Pinot Shootout panel. It is great for the usual suspects to get a grower’s perspective—I hope you also got something out of seeing that aspect of the end user world.

Increasingly, music and movies ARE being graded on the 100-point scale, mainly by aggregator sites, which apply a 100-point-scale equivalent to ratings from various critics. This is particularly difficult for New York Times ratings, which use no scale whatsoever, but I have seen them translated.

In the music fandom world, these aggregator sites with 100-point-ratings seem to be increasingly influential.

I often argue that critics’ ratings matter little for Hollywood movies, but that’s tangential: in fact, imdb.com, which for many (including me) is the first stop for movie information, gives an aggregate rating from 0.0 to 10.0 — the 100-point scale, with a different decimal point.

Not arguing pro scale or anti scale here today. Just pointing out that wine isn’t uniquely 97′d (ooooooooh, I made a number into a verb! Take that Steve!)

As a Pinot Noir Grower, I was thrilled to have been invited by Barbara Drady, organizer of the Pinot Noir Shootout, to judge the final round of Pinots in December for the 2012 contest. She asked that judges take copious notes, support their ultimate score, and suggested a variety of point systems and scales utilized by Wine Spectator and the like.

I sipped through 32 or 34 Pinots and chose to assign a numerical value based on 70, 80, 90 standing firm on my belief that NO ONE consumer, expert, winemaker or otherwise can truly differentiate between a 92 and a 93 point wine.

By number 27 or so, I found it difficult to concentrate or articulate on paper or even decide upon a number.

Nonetheless, it was a wonderful experience. I believe more Growers should be included as tasters/judges to add diversity and expertise to often narrowly focused panels; the scoring system should in some way be streamlined or one approach adopted by the various “point scoring machines” and that wine critics (and bloggers) should probably find something better to spend their time criticizing.

Thanks for the scientific post John. Good to see your winemaking self back online again. Let’s hear it for the 2012 growing season!

I deplore the expectation of some consumers that wine evaluation by critics is somehow different from other forms of criticism. We can read Foucault and Heidegger and find something of value in each, without ever bestowing on either the mantle of infallibility and absolute truth. On a more quotidian level, we can read Consumer Reports for vacuum cleaner reviews and find they give a poor rating to a unit we have used happily for years without experiencing cognitive dissonance. But for some reason, wine is different?

“Restaurants, theater, movies, music, literature, cars, cell phone customer service? Are any of these reviewed on a 100-point scale?”

Indeed, they are not. But in most cases, people who review those products/arts have some form of grounding in the manufacture, production, and or performance of the products/arts (maybe restaurant critics are the exception, but many that I’ve encountered are trained cooks–and some are interior designers ).

With wine, it is exceedingly rare that top critics have such grounding in the product that they evaluate.

It matters not to me, because I eschew aesthetic criticism in general, deciding to make my own evaluations concerning the things in life that excite me. But as a wine professional, I find the critic/review process deplorable.

I agree with Thomas: “better solution would be for the wine industry and reviewing industry agree on and establish evaluation parameters (standards) and that–maybe–professional reviewers undergo sensory and organoleptic training, not to talk like scientists but to have grounding in the composition of the product that they are evaluating.”

Too bad the egoes and non-scientific backgrounds of most wine reviewers do not allow them to recognize that they could actually be *wrong* in the things they say about wine…

As to who should care – well, who should care about any other kind of review? Restaurants, theater, movies, music, literature, cars, cell phone customer service? Are any of these reviewed on a 100-point scale? Not that I can think of.

I do not believe professional wine reviewers taste in a “haphazard, amateuristic manner.” However, to expect infallibility of even our best tasters is cruel. Even Harry Waugh could confuse Burgundy with Bordeaux in a blind tasting—once in a while, perhaps over lunch. As far as I am concerned, the only right the consumer has in this area is to take responsibility for the willful suspension of their own disbelief.

I’m sure you know that I could not agree more with your post, and Mr. DeLorenzo, too (as well as Sue, with whom I’ve discussed this matter earlier on other blogs).

The problem, however, is that there is no incentive for reviewers to drop the pretense of objectivity. The idea that they do their work for the good of the consumer is what gives them currency, and if they reduce their work to merely subjective opining, who should care?

To me, the better solution would be for the wine industry and reviewing industry agree on and establish evaluation parameters (standards) and that–maybe–professional reviewers undergo sensory and organoleptic training, not to talk like scientists but to have grounding in the composition of the product that they are evaluating.

I believe that this is the kind of thing Maynard Amerine had in mind a long time ago.

Of course, this is my opinion and I also know that there’s a fat chance something like it will ever happen, not as long as opinions are confused with facts the way “reality” TV is confused with reality.