More great scores for Tesori - or, are we simply garden-variety hypocrites?
Much to my dismay, I find myself buying into the game of promoting and expectantly awaiting scores in Wine Spectator for our various wineries. I say “to my dismay” because I am not sure how to reconcile using these scores for promotion while at the same time not believing in them.
Let me say to start off: I trust my own palate. I know how good the wines are, and I know that the Spectator will judge some correctly in my opinion and others incorrectly in my opinion. Even if they give a good score to a wine doesn’t mean that I agree with their tasting notes. For example, the most recent issue gives an 89-pt score to our Cantina San Paolo (St. Pauls) Gewurztraminer Exclusiv St. Justina. I think it deserves higher, but, OK, 89 is a pretty good score for a white wine in Spectator. But the tasting notes are like Martian to me. I don’t know anyone who has stuck his nose in this wine and not gotten a glassful of rose petals and lichees. Classic Gewurz descriptors, to be sure, but in this case spot-on. What I love about this wine is that it has the varietal precision and intensity it does (which is what won it a Gold Medal at the San Francisco Intl. Wine Competition this year) and yet it also has a certain lightness and grace that most Alsatian and Alto Adige Gewurz lacks. This is a wine that is not only impressive but also drinkable.
So how does J.S. describe it? “Complex aromas of pineapple skin, peach, and spices follow through to a full-bodied palate, with good acidity and a medium finish.” “Pineapple skins??” How does one go from rose-petals and lichees to pineapple skins? What do pineapple skins even smell like? Is this the same wine? How should I react to an 89-pt score if it sounds like the evaluator has a completely different perception of the wine? This is, of course, our problem with scores. They give a false sense of objectivity and mathematical certainty to something that is quite clearly deeply subjective.
And yet, I also do believe, based on what “insiders” tell me, that the wines really are tasted blind and that although naturally the scores are only a snapshot of what one taster perceives at a given moment in time, in comparison to everything else he tastes at that same moment, and will be influenced by what he has tasted before, what side of the bed he woke up on, etc., there does exist a certain kind of internal integrity to the process. So from that point of view, although one has to recognize all the flaws in the entire concept, if a winery does consistently well, there is actually something to be proud of in a way. In this case, using a complex mathematical evaluation of all the scores for all the different wines of Alto Adige in the November article, Cantina St. Pauls (with 3 separate 90-pt scores and others in the high ’80s) comes out as the “third-highest-scoring” winery in Alto Adige, and so somewhat justifies the comment in the tasting notes on the 90-pt Pinot Bianco “Passion” that “This is a cooperative on the rise.”
Hey, if we can’t sell the wine, we can’t bring it in, and then you don’t get the opportunity to taste it. So if the Spectator scores can convince people to take the wine seriously and taste it, then they are useful and we can’t honestly ignore them or pooh-pooh them. We wish people would rely on their own palates, and we wish every wine shop would be able to develop a hand-sell relationship with its clientele so these scores would matter less, but in the current reality of the wine business, we are obligated to give these scores some level of importance and prominence…
Fortunately, our wines are continuing to appear more and more on the Spectator’s radar. With 94 for Cascina Adelaide, 90 for St. Pauls, 91 and sometimes higher for Savignola Paolina, it is beginning to be clear to a larger audience the kind of quality we represent. In the end, we have to admit to being gratified by it….
- Steve