….to the 100 point scoring system have been greatly exaggerated.

I gotta say folks, I’m tickled pink at how many of you e-mailed to point out the inaccuracy of the story in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday which mentioned Vinography as one of the major wine blogs that utilized the 100 point scoring system.

Not to worry, I haven’t changed my system, and I’d like to use this opportunity to remind new readers how and why I use my 10 point scoring system.

When I started to review wines, I decided that I really had no idea what the difference between a 92 point wine and a 93 point wine was. I still don’t. That level of granularity of score makes no sense to me, and I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to most people. I certainly think that 99% of even the most sophisticated wine drinkers couldn’t correctly pick a set of 92 point wines out of a group of 93 point wines if they were tasted side by side.

So I decided I wanted a coarser scale of measure. I also wanted something simple.

At first I thought about using the US letter grading system (A+, A, A-, B+, B, etc.) but I quickly ruled that out as not universally understood. When I tried to recall the most universal scoring system I could think of, I eventually settled on a 10 point scale that roughly corresponds to that very same letter grading system:

A+ = 10
A = about 9.5
A- = about 9
B+ = between 8.5 and 9
B = about 8.5
B-= about 8
C+= between 7.5 and 8
C = about 7.5
D = about 6
F = 5 and below

Those words “about” and “between” are pretty important to me, as I want to emphasize the approximate nature of such evaluations. Applying a numerical score to a wine is such a strange (but ultimately useful, in my opinion) thing to do, that it seems utterly ridiculous to quibble over increments at the level of hundredths (though since most 100 point scoring systems don’t end up rating many wines below 85, one might argue that we’re talking about increments of ‘twentieths’).

There’s lots to be discussed about whether there should even be scores for wine in the first place, which is the subject of the slightly mis-informed Chronicle article, and we have discussed that topic at length here on Vinography, so there’s no need to rehash old ground.

But in case you were worried (yeah, right). I’m sticking with my clunky little 10 point scale until I see a really good reason not to. Thanks for your support!