The power of a score. It can lead to an Olympic gold or get you lost in the shuffle of Olympics past. We live in a society that needs things to be quantified… we feel the need to put a number to everything. Whether it is our grades in school or the miles per gallon our car gets. This same love affair with numbers parlays into wine shoppers; we feel more comfortable buying a wine that has someone else’s opinion of how good it will be.

This really built a head of steam when Robert Parker came onto the scene. This one man has single handily changed the way we buy wine. His scores can lead a relatively unknown winery to cult like status, or he can destroy year’s worth of hard work. Why is this? Is his palate the all-knowing? Is his opinion that important to the people? I believe it stems from our inner feeling of the need to be accepted and/or envied. We want people to see that we are drinking what is hip and trendy.  Next time you are in a restaurant and you pass a table with a bottle of wine on it, look at what direction the label is facing. Chances are if it’s a highly rated wine the people will face the label out like a status beacon. On the contrary, if the label is faced inwards chances are it’s the least expensive wine on the menu, I call it the house wine turn. 

When we shop for wine, we are all guilty of reading a score and some of us even change what we normally drink due to the arbitrary number that someone else has assigned a wine. We find ourselves looking for the highest score coupled with the lowest price. What a lot of people don’t know is that there are no regulations or restrictions on the reporting of scores, look closely and you may see that the wine was rated by the wine club that is based in the Boca Country Club or some other obscure club that may or may not have been compensated by the winery. There are a few major publications out there that carry more weight than others, such as Wine Spectator or Wine Advocate. But be wary of these as many of the ratings are given to the wines based on some compensation for the magazine. I am not saying every score is paid for, but try some of the wines and you will see that the score given is not in line with the wine. 

As a whole, I recommend using scores as a helper when selecting a wine. You have to remember that at the end of the day you are going to be the one drinking the wine. Also remember that the people scoring theses wines have extremely trained palates and have been drinking and scoring wines for decades. So next time you are out shopping for wine, remember to use all the information that the wine shop presents, even taste some wines to see what you are in the mood for. Your local ABC is a great place to do this, as a large number of the stores have at least eight wines on tap at all times. These wines are changed out regularly and are hand selected by staff, so the wines vary from store to store. 

Mike Love, wine consultant at ABC Fine Wine & Spirits in Ocoee. Follow me on Twitter @abcwinemikel.