How Much Do Wine Expert Ratings Matter?

 

Luciano Pavarotti and young fan at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

In the last year, I have been consulting with my local Italian wine shop, primarily making point-of-sale materials (shelf-talkers) for them. It’s been an interesting project and one which doesn’t take up too much of my time, but also allows me to keep a toe in the water of the wine trade, albeit in a passive and almost invisible manner. Just as I like it. But one of the surprises I have found in making these materials is the relative influence of the various wine writers who review and score wines. There are more now than ever, so the field has been diluted. Hence, it takes a little searching on the internet to find those voices and opinions (and scores) which I gather when making the shelf talkers for the store.

Check out the QR code above

I will say, from the outset, that scores are not the only thing I put on the talkers. I also include a graphic, to get the guests’ visual attention, and have a little story about the winery or the wine, along with the reviews and the score. And finally, I have incorporated a QR code into the talker for a deeper dive. It could take one to the winery website, maybe a YouTube or TikTok video, or a snazzy piece dreamt up by the winery to seduce the consumer into buying into their story. It allows them to bring all of us on their journey. And it can be fun.

But what I have found is that ultimately the main influence on the buyer is the score. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s a guarantee that an expert found this wine to be worthy of a 90, a 100 or somewhere in between. Suffice to say, anything under a 90, these days, doesn’t get much attention, even though it might be a really good deal, or a wine with an 88 might be every bit as good as one with a 93. Consumers have been trained in America to go for the best, and 88 feels like a second best. That in itself is a damn shame, but it is the little patch of heaven we are floating in at this time.

That said, who among the giants of wine criticism rule the roost? You might be surprised.

I went about finding information on search engines, both Google and DuckDuckGo. I went to winery websites as well. What I found was that longtime legacy review sites like The Wine Spectator and Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate (which he sold a majority stake in 2012 and subsequently in 2019 Michelin took full control) were not as prevalent as they had once been. It might be because much of their content is behind a paywall. But that is also the case with James Suckling’s site and Antonio Galloni’s Vinous site, along with others.

There are about a dozen wine sites on the internet that review Italian wine, among them are The Wine Enthusiast, Ian D’Agata, Jancis Robinson (who does not use the 100-point rating scale), Decanter, Jeb Dunnuck, Luca Gardini and Luca Maroni. There are others as well. But it became pretty clear who the alpha review team was, and for a simple reason. Because one team regularly and consistently gave high marks. One writer’s 92 is another’s 96. 100 points given out like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at Halloween. And what do American wine consumers like? They like winners!

Any number of thoughtful wine reviewers can give a wine 90 points and load up the review with purple prose. But a short, sweet and succinct review with a 97 point ribbon on the top will seal the deal so much more thoroughly in these here United States.

And that is what I found. Over the last year and more than 300 shelf-talkers that had the 100 scale points listed on the talker, the one reviewer (or review team) that consistently showed up on top of the internet search and the winery website brag pages, was none other than James Suckling.

Now you could think something cynical right now, especially if you aren’t James Suckling. But I’m thinking right now that he was some smart sonofabitch who executed a brilliant strategy. Because of it, he’s made a ton of money, he’s become a super influencer, and he is sitting on top of the dunghill of Italian (and the world) wine review might. He learned, early on, how to juke the stats. No contest!

Full disclosure: Winery friends, Marco and Jacopo Bacci, of Castello di Bossi and Renieri (Brunello) long ago saw the value in forging a relationship with James Suckling. I mocked them for it. Well, their business has only grown by leaps and bounds and they calculated the tipping points magnificently that led to their unprecedented success. My bad!

So, all those other wine writers who post on Instagram all their wonderful pictures of 30 years of Sassicaia and the like, and the untouchable wines of Romanee-Conti, etc., etc., etc., good for them. They are having a wonderful life. But they are also-rans, when it comes to today’s world of algorithms and SEO, which control the spread of information.

And now that we are going headlong into the world of AI, I can only imagine how algorithms and SEO are going to be tossed like a Caesar salad on a Caribbean Carnaval cruise during hurricane season.

Don’t believe me? Go ahead and ask perplexity.ai “Who is going to be the most influential wine critic in 2028?” 

 

N.B. “Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming” - David Bowie

© written and photographed (except for the last image) by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

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