Wine rating scales: Assessing their utility for producers, consumers, and oenologic researchers

Domenic V Cicchetti¹, Arnold F Cicchetti²

¹Yale Home Office, North Branford, CT, USA; ²Consulting Specialist of Wine, Director of National Accounts, Wine Warehouse, San Anselmo, CA, USA

Abstract: The authors studied seven wine rating scales judged to be useful for the wine producer, consumer, or oenologic researcher: (1) My Wine Rating scale; (2) the Amerine and Roessler (1983) wine rating system; (3) the redwinebuzz.com rating system; (4) Robert Parker’s wine rating scale; (5) the Wine Spectator scale; (6) the Stephen Tanzer scale; and (7) the Chebnikowski Winespider evaluation system. Statistics were applied to answer three hypothetical oenologic questions: (1) Does a particular wine meet criterion for everyday consumption? (2) How well do tasters agree on both the level of wine aroma and bouquet? And (3) How well do tasters agree on the overall quality of a wine, both currently, and after it has been appropriately cellared for 10 years? The implications of this study were discussed in terms of their heuristic value for further oenologic research. One fundamental issue that has received little or no attention in oenologic research is a determination of measurable taster variability that can be expected to occur when the same wine is blind tasted again, either by the same taster or by other tasters blindly evaluating the same wine.

Keywords: wine, rating scales, taster consistency