Saturday, January 6th, 2007
1995 Dom Perignon Champagne, Moet and Chandon
A gift from some very kind friends!
Appearance: medium green-gold.
Nose: Showing some development, Chardonnay-driven (seemingly) with some pleasant autolytic (i.e. toasty/yeasty) notes.
Palate: Complex on palate, with pleasant fruit, fine acidity and great length.
Conclusion: No doubt could be aged longer, but still very fun to drink right now. However, we’re much more Pol Roger/Bollinger/Krug kind of people and prefer the 1995 and 1996 Pol Roger Cuvée Winston Churchill wines to this. But it’s obviously a lovely Champagne – and we can’t afford Krug anyway!
Rating: 18.5/20
Friday, January 5th, 2007
2001 Chablis 1er Cru Montmains, Louis Etienne et Fils
Appearance: medium green.
Nose: Classic developed Chablis on the nose with mellow green apple fruit, minerality and even slight nuttiness here from the relative age.
Palate: more mellow apple fruit although with slightly sour acidity. Okay length.
Conclusion: This bottle was possible slightly tired, but was pretty good though. Made in a traditional style.
Rating: 16.5/20
Monday, January 1st, 2007
Tasting Notes: Organization
The full name and vintage of each wine is listed followed by detailed notes divided up into the following categories: ‘Appearance’, ‘Nose’ and ‘Palate’, followed by a ‘Conclusion’ and ‘Rating’ out of 20 (see Rating System below for an explanation of how to interpret our scores).
Where possible we have also noted an approximate retail price, particularly for wines available in the Beijing or wider China markets.
These prices are accurate only at the time of writing and we recommend that global wine prices are compared on Wine Searcher (we have not carried over pricing to Edward’s notes on Adegga).
All entries are also categorized by grape variety, type/style (red, white, sparkling etc.) and other relevant information.
Rating System
There are many rating and scoring systems used by wine critics and enthusiasts around the world. None is perfect, but wine would not be what it is – an evolving organic product, full of surprises – if it could be described exactly or in any sense finally.
However, although individual wines are always changing – and although perceptions of taste are necessarily personal and subjective – wine critics have a duty to be open, transparent and consistent about how they rate wines.
We follow a 20-point system because this seems to give us enough flexibility to assess a range of wines without having numerically baffling scores (the 100-point system seems unwieldy, although we recognize it works for other tasters and have experience using it ourselves on blind-tasting panels).
The 20-point scale is also what we’ve grown used to adopting in professional wine challenges where large numbers of wines from vastly different categories are assessed.
Here are what our scores mean (an explanatory note on how this system is relative to the type or category of wine scored follows):
18.5-20 A ‘Gold Medal’ winner: a very good to outstanding wine. Within the top of its class and a great example of its category. Of very high quality indeed.
17-18.4 A ‘Silver Medal’ winner. Very good quality wine. At an impressive quality-level, but not in the top of its class and not the highest quality example of its category.
15.5-16.9 A ‘Bronze Medal’ winner. Good quality wine. A good expression of its category, but not necessarily inspiring. Reliable drinking.
14-15.4 ‘Commercial’. Drinkable, but not good quality, not exciting and usually not a particularly good example of its category. Average quality, but without wine-making faults.
12.5-13.9 ‘Faulty’. Displays one or more wine-making faults. May still be drinkable, but is not recommended.
Below 12.5 Usually ‘undrinkable’: i.e. very unpleasant to taste, combining multiple wine-making problems and possibly other faults caused by poor storage.
Note:
These scores should be compared only with other wines in the same category. For example, a basic Burgundy – a Bourgogne Blanc or Rouge – that has attained 17/20 can only usefully be compared with other wines in the same category rather than other 17/20 wines in general.
Practically, it makes no sense to compare totally different wines in terms of their scores. Ours is a relative system that also often incorporates several notes for the same wine ‘over time’: i.e. as it is tasted on different occasions.
Like all other systems, ours is not absolute and only reflects our own tastes and overall tasting experience. At the end of the day, perception of wine is both personal and context-driven.
But we hope our notes will be useful for other wine lovers, enthusiasts and collectors.
Happy reading (and tasting)!
Edward Ragg
& Fongyee Walker
