About the Scores

The Wine Report's Rating System

Our Point System
96 to 100 Points: Outstanding Wine
90 to 95 Points: Excellent Wine
85 to 89 Points: Good Wine
80 to 84 Points: Fair Wine
Below 80 Points: Barely Drinkable/Flawed

Price/Value Gauge
Good Value - Wines that offer a good value based on the bottle's quality and price.
Priced Correctly - Wines that deliver quality commensurate with the bottle's price.
Overpriced -Wines that do not deliver sufficient quality to justify the bottle's price.

Natalie Maclean

95-100 means that the wine is extraordinary, spectacular, words fail to capture it, your eyes will get that distant look when you remember it...

90-94 means that the wine gives me pause: it's lovely, rich in character, unique, complex

85-89 means that the wine is delicious with some interesting flavours and texture, something you might break open on the weekends, though of course you can treat yourself any time

80-84 Generally means that I think the wine is good, pleasant, something you'd be happy to bring to a casual get together with friends or to drink on a weeknight

Wine News

Scoring: Tasting notes reflect the panel's collective impressions; scores are averaged and represent the panel's mean. Wines possessing certain criteria will be singled out for special recognition:

Taster's Choice: Wines which display outstanding quality, character and potential

Best Value Wines of exceptional quality which sell at a moderate price.

96-100: Superb
90-95: Outstanding
85-89: Very Good
80-84: Good
70-79: Acceptable
0-69: Not Listed

Methodology

The Wine Report's Rating System

All wines are tasted blind in our Atlanta office by a panel of four to six tasters. Tasters are evaluated and must meet criteria set out by the magazine. The wines are rated on a weighted l00 -point scale in seven categories (percentages represent portion of final score): appearance (5%), aroma (10%), general taste (35%), body (5%), finish (12.5%), food friendliness (7.5%) and price/value (25%). To gauge a wine's food friendliness, panelists taste the wine with roasted chicken for white wines or rare, roast beef for red StoreWines. Once the tasters have completed their sensory evaluation of the wines, they are given the price of the wines so they can give a price/value score. Tasters are not allowed to change their comments or scores once the price has been announced.

Natalie Maclean

- I'm still using a scale of 100 points, although the wines that I'll recommend will all be scores of 80 to 100

- why not include wines under 80? because they're not worth your time... who wants to keep track of all the bad wines when there are thousands of good ones?

- wines scored 80 and above are all worth drinking: it's up to you to decide your own cut-off point and whether a wine at 86 is worth $12, $17 or $25

- I'll still score expensive wines occasionally, generally those in the $35 to $100 range, but since the average purchase is $10, expensive wines are rare birds, plus I find that there are so many fabulous wines at $25 to $35 that you just don't need to spend that much money, it's almost wasteful

- so how much better is a wine scored 86 than one scored 85? that's a tough one to answer since the whole exercise in rating wines isn't scientific... I'm just trying to put a number on a subjective experience mainly because that's what people want: grades are easy-to-understand shorthand that recognize how busy we are these days

- speaking of words, tasting notes are still more important than the scores: I may rate a pinot noir at 95 because it's a fantastic example of its type, but if you don't like silky, medium-bodied wines, then who cares about a high score... you need to check that the style seems to be what you want rather than just drink the numbers

- you'll also notice that I'm not into exotic fruit: I haven't smelled jingleberries, have you? OK perhaps you have, but I try to keep within the everyday realm of fruit and other aromas so that they're easily understood. The flip side is that you'll notice that some fruit are repeated. But I promise never to compare a wine to a gerbil cage.

- Check my web site under the articles section for the articles entitled Delirious Decription and Wine Scores for more thoughts on this

- my scores can be influenced by an off day, a blind spot (how would I know what mine are?), style preferences (yes, I know that they’re not supposed to influence the score, but they do) and general inconsistency

- I don’t list all of the wines I taste simply because there isn’t enough time

- I try when possible to note food matches or the aging potential of wines but this isn’t always possible since I won’t guess if I’m not certain... when I do say that a wine will age for X years, I mean from today’s date not the year in which it was bottled

-finally, there are two types of wine scribes in the world: writers and critics... both provide a valuable service, but most of us lean one way or the other in terms of our first love. I'm definitely in the writer camp: I publish these reviews as a service to those who subscribe to my newsletter. (I realize that you'd like to drink the stuff, not just read about it.)

Wine News

About the BuyLine Panel: More than 100 wines are reviewed in every issue of Wine News. All wines are tasted double-blind and each entry is evaluated and scored based upon individual merit. Wines that score above 70 points are recommended in the BuyLine. Tasting and interpreting wine is a purely subjective exercise; all scores and accompanying tasting notes represent the collective opinions of our panel.

Wine Samples: Send samples for review with retail price affixed to:
Wine News BuyLine Tasting Panel
1501 Venera Avenue, Suite 320
Coral Gables, FL 33146
Telephone: 305.740.7170