I was shown an article the other day that I simply have to write about. Within the Friday email from the Adelaide-based offices of Fuller PR and the Wine Business Monthly publication, under the heading ‘POSTCARD FROM TYSON STELZER’ (printed in full at the conclusion of this article) was published nothing less than an attempt to redefine the role of the critic.According to Tyson, price is the most important influence on a buyer’s choice of wine, so he says ‘it is crucial for me to assess wine according to its price’.
Let’s consider that for a moment. Tyson is clearly saying here that regardless of their actual, intrinsic quality, two products at different price-points should be evaluated against different scales. So, a wine that looks pretty smart at $15 might rate a score of 93 because it sticks out pretty well from other wines in its price bracket. On the other hand, a good but not great Second Growth Bordeaux from a less than perfect vintage might get rated below par within its price range, so it only gets a 90.While this example is mine and not Tyson’s, the point stands. These scores would lead the reader to believe that our standout $15 red is actually a better wine than a still-quite-handy $150 claret. Had they been marked instead on the same scale, however, it clearly is not.
I seriously question the merit of rating wines on different scales, none of which is ever made clear to the reader. How is each and every individual person, each of whom has a different, personal and entirely unique perspective on the issue of what constitutes value for money, able to distinguish between a reviewer’s scores if they are to some extent affected by that reviewer’s attitude towards its price? And given these circumstances, how can a critic please all readers this way? Great value for me might be outrageously expensive for my neighbour.
Wine-obsessed teachers spend at least 30% of their entire income on expensive wine. Yet the guys who run wine stores in places like Toorak and Potts Point know that most of their customers start by looking in the specials bin before walking out with a Kiwi sauvignon blanc for under $15. Once you start manipulating scores based on price you’re trying to second-guess everybody. The point is that you can’t. These days it’s not uncommon to find a $40 bottle of red discounted to $25 or less in the major chains. Does this mean that the wine’s score must be nudged up or down to reflect this? Does a wine become better or worse depending on who is selling it, at what price?
Critics and reviewers should rate their subject matter – be it cars, music, literature, art or wine – objectively on its quality as they perceive it, nothing else. Has anyone yet won the Archibald Prize because they were prepared to sell their portrait for a discount? Wine is about where it’s made, what it’s made from, what its vintage was like, how it was handled and according to what philosophy. It’s about the pleasure and the passion provided by the sum of these influences. It should be rated for what it is, regardless of what it might cost, which could reflect something entirely different again.
Price should be totally irrelevant. A young, unproven winemaker might initially want $70 per bottle for his or her latest release, but might ultimately have to accept $10 from one of the discount warehouses. The wine remains the same. Its perceived market value or price might have dropped, but it has neither changed its chemistry nor its quality. But some, it would appear, might want to alter its score because its price has fallen.I rate all wine, cheap or expensive, Australian or imported, on the same scale. A glance around the wine media would suggest that I am in a very small minority in this regard, especially with respect to the catalogues written by wine critics for retailers and wine clubs. I’m not about to change, however. Not so long ago I rated a Jacob’s Creek Shiraz Cabernet (2004 vintage) better than a Penfolds Grange (2000 vintage). That’s because it was a better wine, and it remains so today. Tyson had more to offer. In his words: ‘The person who spends $9.99 on a bottle of Hanwood Cabernet is looking for a very different style of wine to the person who spends $99.99 on a bottle of Moss Wood Cabernet.’ Really? Might it not be the case that someone who occasionally splashes out on a Moss Wood might enjoy a medium-weight and varietally correct cabernet like the Hanwood on a daily basis? Or might they not? Who knows? Does it matter? Should it affect a wine’s score?
Tyson does acknowledge that it’s more than likely these wines will be served ‘after different amounts of cellaring, (and) in different settings’, but also (apparently) ‘to people with different expectations and different preferences’. I just can’t agree with this either, and I’ve worked in wine retail for long enough to know. I firmly believe that only a handful of Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon drinkers never drink cheap wine. Tyson continues: ‘The level of residual sugar, tannin impact or oak presence in a wine might make it perfectly suited to the average $34.99 buyer but offensive to a $14.99 shopper’. Again, I find this comment to be completely untrue. Many wine drinkers are aspirational. Some want to be seen drinking expensive labels just because they can. Others enjoy the challenge of discovering the true treasures around for under $20. There is no intellectual validity behind any attempt to define a relationship between the styles of wine people enjoy and what they are prepared to spend on a bottle at any given moment. If you like the Seppelt Victoria Shiraz at $15 per bottle, I’ll wager you’ll love the St Peters at $65. And vice-versa.Tyson then declares that ‘As a critic, it is as crucial for me to know the drinking preferences of my readers as it is to know the wines to recommend to them’. Is Tyson seriously suggesting that he knows the drinking preferences of all his readers?
Closing, Tyson explains that he is ‘consciously looking for particular styles of wine to suit particular preferences’, which he states are ‘dictated, in part, according to price’. If this is to be believed, Tyson does a lot more that simply describing a wine, deciding how good it is and allocating it a score. He is able to look into each wine, figure out who is going to buy it and what sort of wines they also buy, before then determining whether or not it represents good value for money – for each and every individual buyer and whether or not the wine is sold at full price, in a high mark-up restaurant situation, at a discount warehouse or from a specials bin. Wow!It just can’t be done. And the harder Tyson or anyone else tries to do this, the harder it becomes for the entire breadth of the wine buying public – with all its diversity of opinion, taste and budget – to find meaning in their scores.
The role of the critic is actually quite simple: to communicate what a product is like, how good it might be and what it costs. Sure, some critics put their own personal style and spin on their views, which works just fine provided they remain consistent and accountable. Readers then accept or reject the critic’s opinion, often correlating it with their personal relationship with the critic, before studying the price and deciding whether or not to buy, or indeed to aspire. It’s uncomplicated, and it works every time, for every reader. It would appear from his words that Tyson is trying to do much, much more than this. Why?
POSTCARD FROM TYSON STELZER
Thanks for publishing my note on Wine & Faith. Gary Walsh reckons we should crack some bottles and make it a ‘Blind Faith’ session! In response to John Griffith’s comments regarding recommended retail price, it is common understanding among our readers that they will pay more at a restaurant and less when they buy in quantity at a ‘barn’ store. Publishing the RRP provides a level playing field in which the price of one wine can be accurately compared with another. Readers will then draw their own conclusions about what they might expect to pay at different venues.I have had discussions with winemakers who, for reasons that I don’t understand, have been reluctant to provide any indication of recommended price. My suggestion to them is to tell me the LUC instead, and I’ll do the calculation myself. For those of us immersed in the wine industry, it’s easy to forget that for the average wine buyer walking into a bottle shop or flicking through a wine list, price is the first and foremost criterion on their minds. They have a certain amount to spend, and they’ll worry about variety, region and vintage later. That is the first reason why it is crucial for me to assess wine according to its price. The second is less obvious but more important. The person who spends $9.99 on a bottle of Hanwood Cabernet is looking for a very different style of wine to the person who spends $99.99 on a bottle of Moss Wood Cabernet.
As a critic, it is as crucial for me to know the drinking preferences of my readers as it is to know the wines to recommend to them. Most of the time, Hanwood and Moss Wood will tend to be served after different amounts of cellaring, in different settings, to people with different expectations and different preferences. This means that I am consciously looking for particular styles of wine to suit particular preferences, and these will be dictated, in part, according to price. The level of residual sugar, tannin impact or oak presence in a wine might make it perfectly suited to the average $34.99 buyer but offensive to a $14.99 shopper. These are gross simplifications, but this is why I do not publish reviews of wines for which I don’t know the price. As a critic, there’s nothing I enjoy more than discovering exciting new wines that I can shout from the rooftops. This is why I have an open policy of accepting unsolicited samples from far and wide. The only thing I ask for is that they arrive with the price marked on the bottle.
Tyson Stelzer, WINE100 reviewer.The Week That Was, Wine Business Monthly, 1 April 2010.
