Decanter panel tastes 197 N. American Pinor Noirs

The April 2006 issue of Decanter gives results for a tasting of 197 North American Pinot Noirs. Those of you who follow Decanter likely are well aware that the UK taste and the US taste for N American wines often seems to differ considerably. The panel found 2 outstanding(Decanter award), 13 very good to excellent(highly recommended), 106 good(recommended), 62 fair( and 14 poor wines. One of the two outstanding wines was Argyle Nuthouse Oregon 2003, and they did not have a UK price for this. The other outstanding wine wasWente, Reliz Creek Reserve, Arroyo Seco, Monterey County 2003 ! It sells for

12.99 to 14.25 Pounds in the UK. In contrast, they rated Domaine Drouhin, Laurene 2001 two steps down as only recommended, and it sells for 33 Pounds in the UK. There were 10 tasters on the panel, with 3 being MW.

Good info, CW [I don't know how to address you, by the way, with a signature like that]. Thanks for posting the pointer.

"cwdjrxyz" in news: snipped-for-privacy@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

As a point of historical information, similar coarse but useful categories were the standard of practice of US wine newsletters in the past, but were displaced when the newer, "100-point" scales became popular in the 1980s. (Strangely, 5-grade scales were popular,* 100-point scales were popular, but the 20-point "Davis" scale, intermediate in resolution and heavily marketed in the 1970s, never caught on.)

-- Max

And remain so for other products, as in a longstanding US Dept. of Agriculture meat-grade scale, in existence for decades with small variations, such as Prime/Choice/Good/Utility/Pet.