Having just released the 1999 issue of The OnWine Australian Wine Annual, a publication simply crammed from cover to cover with my ratings of wines, I’ve been doing a little thinking about the never-ending issue of whether or not wine critics should present their points in print. Since I am one of the chief perpetrators of this deed, you might be right in thinking that I might be one of those who believes a writer should publish and be damned. For that’s what you have to be prepared to accept. Whenever a critic allocates a score to a subject of criticism anyone can tell at a glance not only whether or not the subject has met with approval, but exactly by how much, or indeed by how far short. And once it’s in print, it’s there forever. Those who prefer not to publish their scores will never be damned because nobody can tell what they really think. What, precisely, is meant by comments like: ‘It’s a very fair wine from a difficult year’, ‘It’s a wine full of its maker’s personality’, or ‘Very good, but a shade too woody’. Exactly how much too woody? Does that mean you like it or you don’t? A simple score at the end of the comment would resolve any doubt and put into context all the hyperbola and description. All so easy. Yet so many critics avoid giving scores to avoid giving the opinions their readers deserve. Yes, you do make mistakes. Yes, you sometimes cringe at a score you gave to a wine. Yes to all of that. You might have tried a wine too young, it might have been marginally affected by cork, it might have been stored or transported badly. But it’s not the end of the world if you get something wrong. As James Halliday recently wrote in Wine Magazine, ‘the reservations most critics have about using points stem from their knowledge of their own fallibility’. There has never been and there never will be an infallible wine writer. My phone has already been hot with book readers wanting to know why, after a gap of just twelve months, scores for one or two high-profile wines have been not just trimmed, but slashed. In one case I have learned that negligent treatment prior to bottling caused a flaw which has simply grown out of all proportion, in another the once-alluring attractions of primary fruit have been replaced by little else as the wine has matured. Should I have better predicted the way these wines have developed? Possibly. But nobody else did, either. At the end of the day, while I’d rather see both description and score presented together in every publication, if I could choose but one, it would be the score and a knowledge of who gave it.
