On Tuesday, May 2, wine and spirits professionals gathered at the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Alumni Event, part of the first WSET Week USA, to discuss the hot topic of the power of scores for wine and spirit brands.
Led by WSET’s International Development Manager, David Wrigley DipWSET, MW, the panel discussion featured Lisa Perrotti-Brown DipWSET, MW, Editor-in-Chief of Wine Advocate, Allen Katz of Director of Spirits Education and Mixology for Southern-Glazers Wine & Spirits and head distiller/co-founder of New York Distilling Company, and Maggie Campbell DipWSET, a member of WSET’s Alumni Board and head distiller at Privateer Rum. More than 50 wine and spirit industry professionals, all WSET Diploma graduates or students, joined the conversation to assess the value that the scoring system brings to the wine and spirits selection process. We want to share with you the substance of the discussion.
In Perrotti-Brown’s overview of the scoring system, which began long before Robert Parker developed the 100-point system employed by Wine Advocate, she assessed the reason for the development of a scoring system, which has taken the form of stars and points dating back to the 1980s when Michael Broadbent introduced the star system in his book, The Great Vintage Wine Book. Despite Wine Advocate’s formidable role in the scoring ecosystem, Perrotti-Brown conceded: “Scores aren’t everything. They only tell you where a wine sits qualitatively amongst a group of its peers, but they tell you nothing about the style of the wine.” For that, she emphasized the importance of reliable and rigorous tasting notes and reviews and valued tools such as WSET’s Systematic Approach to Tasting.
Nevertheless, according to Perrotti-Brown, the creation of the 100-point system has kick-started “a whole new way of viewing wine as a commodity – as something you can purchase and make money from,” which has in turn had a substantial influence on consumer buying decisions.
On the spirits front, the rating system is younger in its development, according to Katz, who stated that spirits evaluation is a problem. “In many ways, I look up to the wine and beer industry because the evaluation process is wholly honest. While spirits evaluators have the skill set, these qualified experts are, by and large, also paid consultants, many for brands.” In Katz’s opinion the spirits evaluation bodies need some transparency and disclosure, but feels this will only happen if the industry itself demands it.
In the panel discussion, Perrotti-Brown responded to questions about the rise of crowd-sourced rating entities such as Cellar Tracker and Wine Searcher, and apps like Vivino. “The challenge is that you don’t know who is doing the rating, what qualifications they have or what their agenda might be.” Perrotti-Brown also flagged a concern about score overkill, which might dilute the value of scoring, and score inflation, which risks their reputation and damages consumer trust.
Ultimately, the WSET panelists all agreed that critics should have non-branded accreditation to ensure trustworthy evaluations. “It’s an immense challenge to avoid brand influence,” said Katz regarding spirits criticism. WSET prides itself on brand-neutral education in wine, spirits and sake to ensure no conflicts of interest and to guarantee a full breadth of education.
Do points mean prizes for wine?
Medals, awards, points and gongs – good or bad – confusing or clarifying? There are arguments both ways.
Many consumers make buying decisions on ‘whether it has a medal or not’ and therefore provide an important guidance for some consumers.
However some medals, as one importer pointed out to me the other day, seem to be awarded to the same wineries and participant’s year in year out, so what value do these really have?
Some awards point to individual markets – is the International Wine Challenge becoming the wine awards for the supermarkets? Is the International Wine and Spirit Competition the wine industry’s awards? And so on.
In regards to points awarded they do become incredibly focused on the individual awarding them and so is the market left with the perception that this is just a big self promotion exercise for the journalist involved?
Two things are undeniable truths
- The awards do collectively make a noise which forms on the whole good PR for the industry, how valid a measure they are is a different question, which they will all have their own claims to.
- Taste is unique to the individual – as described in this column recently, is made up of lots of different aspects, not just the liquid in the bowl of the glass. It is environment, who you are with, what you are eating or not, circumstance, mood. Who is going to award on that basis?
Alistair Morrell
Hospitality & Catering News, Wine & Drinks Editor