Wine Scores

A *, 0 and 50. They all seem to be the similar when it comes to wine scores, at least according to the pundits at The World of Fine Wine. To be more specific the folks at The World of Fine Wine “believe that our 20-point scale, calibrated specifically for fine wine, strikes the best balance for our purpose”. Its not entirely clear how this specific calibration was done, although the simple answer seems to be that they have equated 0 (zero) with 50 points in the 100 point system because that is the score that advocates of the 100 point system give to a wine for simply being wine. Further expansion of the 20 point score against the 50-100 range can be deduced from the scale they provide. Below 7 does not seem to count for much, except perhaps for a single star! Other comparisons are more simple to make 9=75, 12=82, 14 is a touch over 85, 17=90, 19=96. Comparison with the five point star system is a little more difficult to discern. But perhaps that is the point. If you use the star system you really are not too sure of a precise score out of 20 or 50. While for the 20 point system you have somewhat more confidence but not quite the infallibility of those who say they score out of 100; of course the fact that they really only use 50 points does raise a small question about exactly how fallible they are. In truth the reviewers at The World of Fine Wine break their scores into half points, so they use a 40 unit scale. I wonder where you sit if you use a 20 point system, but break it down into tenths of a point? That’s a 200 unit scale.