Here is a copy of an article published in Seattle Times (02/21/2007).

Because we are a winery, I will not make any comment about this article except that this is very well written.

What's the point of those all-important numbers?

By Paul Gregutt

Special to the Seattle Times

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If you buy wine on a regular basis, you cannot avoid being hammered with numbers. Never mind the brix, the pH, the total acidity, the residual sugar — I'm talking about the BIG numbers.

The 100-point-scale numbers. At times, it seems that no wine in the world can be bought or sold without a number attached to it.

Here's a classic anecdote, recently told by a wine salesman who swore it was true: A customer went into his favorite wine shop, and the owner, knowing this person liked a certain producer's wine, alerted him to the new vintage, which had just been released. "Has it been rated?" the customer asked. "No," came the reply, "but the last vintage got a very good score."

The customer somewhat reluctantly ordered six bottles and took them home. He was back the next day, with five bottles to return. "Tried it last night. Didn't like it," he told the shop owner. The owner took the bottles back, no questions asked, knowing there was nothing wrong with the wine but wanting to please the customer. A week or so later, the reviews came out. The wine got a big number, up in the mid-90s. And sure enough, the wine flew off the shelf. And no sooner had it all disappeared than the original customer showed up, demanding his five bottles back!

How has it come to be, I wonder, that so many people have so little faith in their own palates that they need a number to decide whether a wine is any good? It is customary to point a finger at the press. The man credited with inventing the 100-point scale is Robert Parker, and he is often singled out as the man to blame for the current situation. Along with Parker, publications such as the Wine Spectator and the Wine Enthusiast, for which I am a contributor, have done their utmost to promote the 100-point scoring system, running pages of reviews in every issue with "The Number" prominently displayed.

So yes, the press plays a part. But I think it is the wineries themselves, and the wine sellers — particularly importers and distributors — who have done the most to convince consumers that "The Number" is all-powerful. The following letter, which I received from a prominent importer and marketer of wines, is typical:

Pick of the Week

Snoqualmie Vineyards 2003 Whistle Stop Red; $8. This blend of 70 percent cabernet and 30 percent merlot is much more than a basic burger wine. It's got muscle and depth behind the ripe, solid fruit flavors of pie cherry and black currant. It's on sale this month for under $8 a bottle (Distributed by Young's-Columbia).

"Dear Paul: This year ... we learned, after lengthy research, that the Paterno portfolio received more 90+ ratings over the past two years than any company of its kind in the world! This demonstrates how we seek out the finest wine producers in the world ... "

Now, I am not criticizing Paterno, an excellent company, for promoting its high-scoring wines. I'm simply pointing out that this addiction to selling the score, rather than the wine, is standard practice throughout the industry.

You may wonder what the problem is. In brief, there are many problems with the 100-point system. The 100-point scale may sound generous, seeming to allow room for a lot of subtlety in the grading curve (that is how it was designed to function, and how it is still ballyhooed by major critics today), but in practical terms, it's not a 100-point scale at all, nor even close.

It began, at least in theory, as a 50-point 100-point scale. Any bottle got 50 points automatically, no matter how wretched the contents. From the beginning, nothing meaningful happened below 70 points, so it was a 30-point 100-point scale.

You can see where this is heading. Over time, the effective rating range has shrunk to little more than a 10-point spread. Most publications won't even bother to publish a rating lower than 80. But it gets worse. Read the reviews, and you will see that a wine with a score lower than 85 never sounds very good. At the high end, wines that earn a rating of 95 and higher are extremely rare and expensive. So what's left? Eighty-five- to 94-point wines. A 10-point 100-point scale! And even within that truncated range, anything scoring below 90 had better be priced under $15 or it won't sell.

Even more disturbing is another trend — the frenzied filtering of hundreds or thousands of reviews to winnow out a handful of wines that score over 90 and cost under $20. Are these usually good wines? Sure they are. But they are rarely wines that challenge the palate; that take your taste buds to some new place; or that trade power for elegance, oak for stone, alcohol for acid.

At the annual meeting of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers a few weeks ago, a full afternoon's panel discussion was devoted to the topic "The Quest For The Holy Grail: 100-Point Wines." I was on the panel, along with Andy Perdue (Wine Press Northwest), vintners Rob Griffin (Barnard Griffin) and Bob Bertheau (Ste. Michelle Wine Estates), and growers Paul Champoux and Dick Boushey.

I have to say it was probably the most lively and entertaining panel discussion I have ever been a part of. We all came at the question from different sides, but I think there was a general consensus that many winemakers, grape growers and critics are going to keep chasing that Holy Grail. And yet, as Perdue pointed out, when magazines publish long lists of wine names, prices and scores — with nothing else — something has gone terribly sideways (pun intended).

On the other hand, if the quest for that "Holy Grail" 100-point wine encourages growers and winemakers to do everything in their power to improve quality, then it is clearly a force for good. But I urge consumers to consider whether the industry's relentless hyping of high-scoring wines is really doing you a favor.

Most scores don't mean much unless you understand who awarded them and how. Were the wines rated by a tasting panel or an individual? Tasting-panel scores reflect a consensus average, which means that radically different wines can receive a similar score. Tasting panels often wind up scoring most wines in the mid- to upper-80s, with very little variation.

Scores from a single reviewer are much easier to evaluate, simply by comparing that person's impressions of a specific wine with your own. Over time, you can arrive at a pretty clear understanding of what she or he likes or dislikes. If you find a reviewer whose palate preferences mirror your own, you can use her numbers with confidence.

Remember: Price counts. So before passing up those 86- and 87-point wines, take a moment to read the descriptions and check the cost. This is where the best values can often be found. I also like to look for wines whose styles don't fit the high-scoring wine profile. Wines made in more elegant, subtle styles are rarely assertive enough to compete with the oaky fruit bombs that get the 90s. And yet these lighter wines may have more interesting aromas and more complex textures, as well as being lower in alcohol, hence more food-friendly.

By all means, use ratings as one way of sifting through the sheer number of choices. But don't use them as a crutch or as a replacement for honing your own judgment skills. Try rating the next few wines you pour — before checking to see what the critics said. You'll find that your own personal 100-point scale is the one that really counts.

Paul Gregutt's column appears weekly

in the Wine section. He can be reached

by e-mail at wine@seattletimes.com.