Modified Davis 20 point system

You hate Opus one and than later say

So is it your opinion or are you only parroting someone elses opinion? How do you know the clerk has even tasted it? This could be even worse. You could be parroting the opinion of someone parroting some ones else' opinion whose never tasted the wine. Maybe we should just nickname you parrot head.

You also said ;

So you find yourself repugnant. Hating yourself is not a good place to be but it does explain the personality you show here.

The worst kind.

I'm not sure. Have you tried many vintages of Opus One which you have expressed an opinion on?

Did I express an opinion on those wines anywhere? BTW, isn't that a mine is bigger than yours type of statement which you claim is one of the problems?

How is this relevent to you being a phony, self hating, wine expert wannabe? If you're not satisfied with yourself or your life, change it.

See you later Parrot,

Andy

True, mostly. But that it's (mostly) true does not argue against precision, it argues against accuracy. They are two different things.

Even a three point (great, good enough, ugh) scale is entirely subjective in that sense. After all, some people like White Zinfandel and Bud Light. But even that isn't quite the analogy, since the object of making a good wine is to make it true to what it's supposed to be.

Given two wines of the same type, is it valid to be able to say one is really good and the other is just awful? Granted that sometimes an awful wine will be better with certain foods, maybe even better enough, but would you agree that one can make mistakes in making wine, and those mistakes can show up in wine qualities which are well described as "awful"?

That's a subjective judgement too.

I maintain that the fact that it's subjective does not make the judgement invalid. Do you agree or disagree?

When you say this wine is "better" than that wine, what exactly do you mean?

Jose

Tell me what you mean by 'precision' and 'accuracy'. Precision usually means falling into a tight distribution (91 ± 2). Accuracy means that

Quite true, but establishing that is somewhat subjective. Some people love wood. I don't. Parker does. Which is 'right' for Barbaresco? Botti or Barrique? Which is right for Dolcetto di Dogliani?

Not necessarily, unless one is simply defective or spoilt. In general, you get what you pay for. I have tatsed a few Morellino di Scansano, and have found quit a difference between the $12 and $20 bottles. I prefer the $20 bottle. Do I assign points, or should I assign points? No. I simply buy with the recognition that the $20 is more complex and satisfying.

Not necessarily, although I have tasted some stuff from Chile that fits that term. Occasionally I have been subjected to what guests have brought to parties from all sorts of places (Chile, Canada, California, Australia) and in only one instance in recent years was I pleasantly surprised. by a Canadian red! Most of these other 'offereings' were just plain dreadful. That is why I continue to buy Italian wines exclusively.

Taste some cheap crap from Chile and you'll know what 'bad wine' is all about.

Take the Taurino wines, for example. The Salice Salintino is quite a good wine for $11. The Notarpanaro offers more concentration and more flavor at $17. The Patrigliano at $40 is even more extracted (it's made from semi-dried grapes) and you can smell it at arm's length. Yet all of these wines express the character of the Negroamaro grape. I have never had a bottle of Taurino wine that was badly made.

No. Precision refers to repeatability, as you said. Accuracy refers to a measurement falling close to the ¬tual= value. If you have something that is exactly 15.6 cm long, and measure it many times, the measure of how close you get to 15.6 is accuracy. The measure of how close you get to all the other measurements (the tightness of the distribution) is precision.

This of course presupposes an "actual" value really exists and is meaningful. How big across is a cloud? The question does not have -no- answer, but how you answer it depends on how you define "size".

How big is a cloud?

I will heartily agree with you that one can validly disagree with somebody's score. I disagree that that fact makes the score meaningless, no matter what its precision is. If you find a judge whose ratings tend to agree with yours, then, for you, that judge is "right". The closer his opinions are to yours, the more meaningful to you is his precision.

What does it mean for a wine to be "defective", and how does that differ from being "of poor quality"?

You did assign points. You are using a "penny a point" scale. IF the $12 bottle sold for $20, would you buy it? Would you buy it at $13.50?

Ok, let's play a game. Those three bottles are in front of you, but the price tags fell off. They are at auction, and you want all three of them. The bidding starts. For each of them, when do you decide to stop bidding?

Is that not a rating system?

If you did this many times, you may stop at different places each time (a measurement of precision). Would the =range= of where you stopped be useful to indicate just how precise (or coarse) your rating system really is underneath it all?

Jose

That's just the point! There is no 'actual' value!

I disagree with scoring in principle. It's like trying to measure poetry.

Scoring is to wine as rust is to astronomy.

Badly stored, oxidized, corked, etc.

No, I did not. I simply bought the more expensive one because the price spread was so small.

Sorry, I don't follow you eher. WHICH three bottles?

Do they put points on artwork because some sells for millions and some doesn't?

Is a Picasso 99 points?

These three, from your example:

It was almost a factor of two (between 12 and 20)

No, a Picasso is 99 million points (a penny a point). I don't think it's worth it though.

This comes out in the flavor, no? What about errors in production?

Jose

Could I tell them apart? Of course! Each has a specific character, andybody can tell them apart. Patrigliano is sooooooooooooooooo good!

It's not that much in absolute terms ($8). $20 for a bottle of this wine is quite reasonable. $12 for a merely fair one is not.

No, my point stands. It's entirely subjective.

There are sloppy producers and cheap producers and those who are more fastidious. You get what you pay for. Gaja's vintards are probably the most carefully kept fields on Earth.

That's not what I asked. The excercise is the auction. You want to buy each of them. The price keeps going up. At what point to you let any given wine go?

You've just graded them. "This wine" is worth 2000 points, at least. "a merely fair" one is worth less than 1200 points.

And the more fastidious ones produce better wines, overall. How much better? Well, that's what the points are about.

Jose

I'm not sure what you mean. I know the wines and what they usually sell for. I don't understand your point here. How much will I pay for Patrigliano? It sells for $40 or so. Is it 'worth it'? Yes. Is every $40 wine 'worth it'? I doubt that very much.

This is simply my judgement. I can buy other Sangiovese wines for $12 that I would prefer. These particular bottles ($12) of Morellino were more than adequate, but for $8 more I could get one I liked more. Others may have liked the $12 just fine, so I cannot speak for them.

Not necessarily. They produce more consistent wines, is what I would say.

There's too much room to assign points. It imoplies precision that does not exist. It's like rating poetry in points. Pointless.

This is Parker's doing:

"Somewhere along the line, a few wine writers and demanding importers decided that thick, muscle-bound wines were what consumers wanted. The growers, wanting to expand their markets, acceded to these wishes. But truly experienced palates have always delighted in the difference that soil, regional grapes, and a structure that matches the local cuisine makes. Who wants rich all the time? As with foie gras, the pleasure is in occasional richness. Who wants goose liver every day? I'm so tired of retailers, wholesalers or "in the know" promoters insisting that these heavy-handed, tannic wines taste great right now, while the customer scratches her head and thinks, "I don't like it and I don't want to drink it. Is there something wrong with me? Even if there is, I'm not going to suffer this." The day of reckoning is today. You can only pull people's chain for so long--and I think we're down to the last flush."

Let's say you can't get Patrigliano, at any price. You can get other wines, of course, but everyone is "out" of Patrigliano. Now you are offered a bottle at auction. Bidding starts: $10.00 $11.50 $15.50.... it gets up around $40 and you're still in the bidding, but so are others. It gets to $45... $55... $78.50, and finally sells for $523.00 (but not to you, probably). You dropped out of the bidding when you thought the price was getting too high.

What price was that?

Jose

It depends on my mood. Probably $60. A premium of 50% over retail is about as much as I would go, I should think. There are lots of good wines. Have you ever had Patrigliano?

Then you have given that wine 6000 points, and when you can buy it for

Yep, there are. Now, aside from the fact that the error bars are much bigger than the resolution of a (100 point) scale, consider what might happen if the scale were reduced to three (bad, okay, great). A wine that's borderline bad but not awful is probably going to be rated as okay. A wine that's borderline excellent, but not quite great, on this scale would also be rated okay. Two wines with the identical ratings, but one is much more satisfying (you would pay more for it) than the other. Of course they also taste very different.

On the 100 point scale, one might rate a 76 and the other a 92. Now I will admit (with gusto) that the difference between a 16 point difference and a 17 point difference is not much. But a 16 point difference may well signal that, sight unseen, I am likely to prefer the higher rated one. I will also grant that given a one point difference, I am =not= likely to prefer the higher rated one.

No. Most of my experience is with California wines, since I travel to California often and don't get to Italy all that much. Therefore I have had the opportunity to taste more California wines, and it is easier for me to get the more obscure ones.

Jose

"Michael Scarpitti" wrote .....

With the greatest respect Michael, how would you know?

You only drink Italian wines, and since Italy only accounts for about 18% of the worlds total production, that means you have no experience with 82%.

On this basis alone, perhaps 82% of everything you write is expressed out of ignorance.

Ah yes, I remember - you read books - and based your buying decisions on other peoples opinions - and since you constantly remind us, that tasting is a complete waste of time, you are no doubt suggesting that the authors of these authorative manuals never actually tasted the wines of which they write, but opened the bottles, and poured a glassful, and stuck the cork straight back in the bottle - to preserve their unopened flavours (quoting your absurd ramblings circa Dec, 2004) - and drank the wines with meals (good lord, they must all be the size of houses - oops, I mean Tuscan villas!), without taking tasting notes of any kind, and without apportioning any sort of grading system (20pt or 100pt or stars etc).

Hold the horse, of course, these authors are "professionals" and we, the great unwashed, are mere amateurs!!!!!

Move from Ohio to Hollywood, Michael.

And take up script writing - for South Park or some other noted docucartoon channel.

This would be amusing if it wasn't so pathetic.

My willingness to pay 'X' is in no way to be considered a numerical rating of the wine. These are two distinct things.

Two wines that have different prices can have similar overall appeal. Barbera and Dolcetto, for instance, are usually less expensive than Barolo and Barbaresco, because Barbera and Dolcetto grapes ripen earlier and are generally easier to make into good wine. But the appeal of Barolo and Barbaresco is quite a bit different as well. They are generally more complex wines that are somewhat more appropriate with certain types of courses. Thus, they command higher prices. Scoring Barolo and Barbaresco against Barbera and Dolcetto is silly. Each has its own style. A 95-point Barbera or Dolcetto is not at all comparable to a 95-point Barolo or Barbaresco.

You should try some Patrigliano. It is for me the quintessential Italian wine

Even just among Italian wines, there are lots of good wines.

Italy makes more types of wine and more wine than any other nation. Getting to be familiar with only a small portion of them is a real challenge.

See previous comment. Life is not long enough to explore even just Italy!

Exactly. They KNOW how to 'taste'.

Hollywood? I'd rather die first...

My tuppence on ratings... The problem with Parker, Wine Expectorator, et al, is that the ratings usually reflect one person's opinion ONLY. That IS rather pointless. What happens when you go to a restaurant with friends? Does everybody order the same entree, same beverage, same dessert...generally not! People's tastes in wine will differ, just like in food. I happen to like ketchup, mustard and sauerkraut on my hot dogs, while others will prefer chili and jalapeno cheese sauce. You get the picture. If the magazines want to gain some credibility, they will assign MULTIPLE tasters to try out each wine, not just one.

Dan-O (found this thread quite entertaining in a perverse way)

Dan, this is true.

Why are so many morons buying wine based on what that s*it-head thinks?

Dan The Man wrote:

"You should try some Patrigliano. It is for me the quintessential Italian wine "

The Taurino wine? It's Patriglione. So the quintessential Italian wine is aged in 100% French barrique? Interesting..................