Reasons why the same wine might be scored differently (including taster failure)…
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http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/when-same-wine-tastes-different
Great article. I guess you could say wine is analogue, a bit like vinyl. Each record will have its own warps, scratches and other imperfections, and that is why so many people prefer it to digital. For some, uniformity is reliability, for others it is sterility. Analogue gives individuality. I particularly noticed the difference in scores and notes in the Bordeaux 2016 articles. I’m sure many people have said this, and I can’t remember where I first read it, but so many people treat a score almost as a property of the wine itself - “This is a 100 point wine”, or “This is a 20 point wine.” This article reminds us that a score, or a note, is one person’s opinion on a particular bottle of that wine at a particular point in time. While I very much value the opinion of the experienced tasters on this website (and others), articles like this encourage me to trust my own palate as well.
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A lovely article on this fascinating and under-discussed topic. In a way it’s almost a miracle that two bottles can taste the same, especially when drunk half a world away from the country of origin, some years since the bottling date. There will be more causes of variance from cellar/operational steps. But I do think closures as well as temperature and light exposure on the bottle must account for the vast majority of incidents of bottle variation. Temperature-related variation is particularly insidious as it lacks a telltale aroma/flavour signature…
Bottle variation does make scoring more complicated, but I do think scores are still incredibly useful. For one thing, none of these sources of variation cause a wine to improve in quality. A high score for a wine greatly increases its he probability that the next one will be great too. But taken to the ‘nth’ degree, I suppose for any low scoring wine, a lot code could be attached to the review, in case subsequent bottles do improve, or at least ‘vary’…
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