It’s not as simple as it should be
We often choose the wines we review and buy the samples. We also receive samples from friends, distributors, major retailers, minor merchants and some wineries. We try to limit these samples to relevant wines that fit our model, both in terms of price and quality. We’re about finding the best value wines for you under $25 – we don’t intend to drown you in bulk reviews of everything out there. We’re looking for wines with a great quality to price ratio: a 90 point wine for $10, a 95 point wine for $20 and so on.
Homework
We know most of the wines that are good value by now, and we know most of the labels that produce really ordinary fare. Of course we keep an eye on the wine industry so we don’t miss a significant change, such as a change of owner or winemaker. And we do some homework to help us find suitable wines for review, mostly by checking other review sites such as these:
James Halliday’s Wine Companion (print and online versions)
The Winefront – Mrs Mattinson, Bennie and Walsh
The Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine crew – Peter Bourne et al
Huon Hooke
We also check the reviews of others from time to time, such as Chris Shanahan, Nick Stock, Jeremy Oliver and Tony Jordan.
We also pay some attention to wine show results or those of wine competitions or challenges. However, we take the results with a grain of salt since our wine judging system has been broken for a long time, and there’s no will to change it.
Our Scoring system
We use the same 100 point system as everybody else, for the sake of consistency, even though I argued here that 10 points were more than enough. Sadly, consistency turns out to be an empty term: Robert Parker’s 100 point system is different from James Halliday’s. Since JH is the kingpin down under, we’ll stick with his system (more or less). We push it a little harder, though, while James likes to be generous to everyone.
| Halliday’s Scoring System | Our Scoring System |
| 94–100 – Outstanding | 95 – 100 – outstanding |
| 90–93 – Highly recommended | 91 – 94 – pretty damn good |
| 87–89 – Recommended | 87 – 90 – OK to good |
| 84–86 – Fair to good | 86 & under – ordinary, dull or worse |
| 80–83 – An everyday wine |
We stop where we do because scores much lower than 90 don’t excite consumers or wine writers. Huon Hooke is the exception, at times listing bargains of the week with points scores as low as 85.
An essential adjunct to the number scores are the prices of wines, at least for us consumers. A $10 wine that scores 91 is a serious bargain, while a $50 wine that scores 91 would not get a BUY recommendation from us. In the context of our website, the relationship between score and price is crucial.
Kim
