The world of wine has started to look askance at wine scores and I understand why. How can you truly score something that is subjective? As those who read this blog know, I have come to love old world wines more than some new world ones, that is a subjective point of view. So, if I score a wine B, but it has no flaw other than being very ripe to me, is that truly fair? I have stated already many times, that I was moving this way, and for those who like reds from Israel in particular, they should find some other folks who share their opinions.

With that said, I have been harbouring desires to move to a true point system, and after much thought and discussions with a few people, I have decided to stay the course with letter scores. But, I want to make them far clearer and define the criteria around them. The reason why I wanted to move to a point system was that I was finding the letter scoring limiting and that there are clear differences between a 91 and a 93 point wine. That said, in the grand scheme of things, it really does not matter. I used to score wines A- (and a bit) or A- (plus) or A- (and more), all of these were my attempt to differentiate a 90 (A-) from a 91 or a 92 or a 93. In the end, I either go with a number score or I stick with the letter scores. So, since I have decided on the letter scoring – I will do away with the fine grain attempts I made with letter scoring and stick to the more coarse grain letter scoring overall.

So here is my version of the scoring system (a take on the 100 point scale).

C : Flawed and not recommended at all

B : Light flaws but find something else preferably

B+ : This starts to be a wine I would drink, but I would not go out of my way to find and buy

B+ to A-: I would drink this and if the price was good I may go and buy it as well

A-: These are wines I like and do stock in my home

A- to A: These are top of the line wines to me that are truly special

A: These wines are as close to Classic as I could see

A+: I have had one of these in my life – the 99 Giraud, and that was more an experiential score than a real 100 point score, but these will be far and few between.

In the end, there will be far more A- wines out there, from here on out. Instead of having 91 or 92 or 93 wines out there, there will be lots of just A- wines. To get to A- to A (a 94 or so, that will require a very unique wine indeed.