Hey Gary: What about a sake episode, for all those folks into sushi?

Oh, and say ‘hi’ to the folks at Yahoo! I mean Yoohoo. DO they grok WLTV?

Oh, and say ‘hi’ to the folks at Yahoo! I mean Yoohoo. DO they grok WLTV?

Gary,

Shook? Unshook? Okay…I will let you slide with that poor use of language in exchange for another solid episode.

Casa Julia…thanks for the tip. Secondly, I’ve had wine from Santa Rita and found them to be decent, but I think you nailed my thoughts on the head. It’s just that…decent.

Ok…that leads me to question. I’m often shaking my head at wine ratings, generally, but let’s focus on yours. If you don’t like a wine…you say “P A Z Z” why give it a mid- to high-80s score? According to Parker:

96-100 points
An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase, and consume.

90-95 points
An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.

80-89 points
A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.

70-79 points
An average wine with little distinction except that it is a soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.

60-69 points
A below average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor, or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.

50-59 points
A wine deemed to be unacceptable.

I have yet to see you give a wine a 79 or lower. Even though, given your comments, it would seem many of the wines you’ve had on the show would merit such a low score. What gives?

Matthew

G- agreed with the Los Vascos. In addition to it meaning The Basques (of which I am one) I loved the older reserves. However, since the 03 vintage the quality has dipped considerably in my opinion. Can you find out what happened. They really need to get their act back together.

Sunnyvale? Because of Snapple? Weeeeeeeeeak!

OK, I give up. How did you know, EmoryP?

Excellent episode, always excited about value wines.

Since there has already been a winner… What next??? Maybe back to the standing QOD (That Gary erupted on me when I suggested…. “What was the last bottle of wine that you drank???”

C~Mon Gary – It’s O.K. I am not stealing your Thunder.. I just like to hear what people are drinking as I find it interesting and it brings me out of my shell of drinking Napa Cabs & Bordeaux.

Last wine I drank was 2000 Meyney…. Little young, very very tight – Started to get something on the nose after about 3 hours. On palate – rich, dark fruit, plummy, little woodsy flavors… This was the first of the 50+ bottles of 2000 in cellar and if any indication – they need more time to mellow out and have excellent potential…

Oh….Sunnyvale…Yahoo Headquarters…still weeeeeeak.
Is EmoryP a Yahoo guy?…must be.

1975 Chateau Latour…there, now I’m not off topic.

B

sunnyvale, CA

Hello Gary V!
Interesting show. Personally though, I would love to see more â??old schoolâ? wines in the line ups.
So hereâ??s my idea of THE PERFECT SHOW: 4 DRY chenin blanc wines! The chenin grape is too often mechanically associated with sweet dessert wines. A great shame!Actually bone-dry chenin blancs can be a very interesting alternative to Riesling. To make things easier, Iâ??ve found the following 4 dry chenins from http://www.winelibrary.com:
1) DRY CREEK CHENIN BLANC (SONOMA COUNTY, USA – On Sale: $9.99 )
2) FOXEN CHENIN BLANC ERNESTO WICKENDEN VINEYARD 2003 (SANTA MARIA VALLEY, USA – On Sale: $15.99 )
3) JOLY SAVENNIERES 2003 (LOIRE, FRANCE – On Sale: $23.99 )
4) BAUMARD SAVENNIERES TRIE ESPECIALE 2003 (LOIRE, FRANCE – On Sale: $28.99 )

Matthew L you’ve raised an interesting point.

I very rarely see a wine rated less than about 85 points — lets say 80 points is the lowest that 99.9% of the published ratings get.

There may be lower scores that don’t get published. However, a quick perusal of the latest (Oct. 15) issue of Wine Spectator indicated that only 7 out of 650 wines were below 80 — and thse were all in the high 70’s. Their system is similar to Parkers. 70 – 79 “a drinkable wine with minor flaws”, 80 – 84 “Good-a solid, well made wine, and so on.

Then, what we really have is a 20 point scale. I remember, back in the day when I first began to be interested in wines, there was indeed a 20 point scale. It was composed of so many points for color, bouquet, taste, etc and if a wine was tops in all of these categories, then it would acheive a score of 20. No matter what Paraker, Wine Spectator, et al, say, I think that we have basically a de facto 20 point scale. Thus an 85 point wine would be (more-or-less) a 17 pointer, 90 –> 18 points, 95 –> 19 points and so on.

I regard most scores with a grain of salt. I find that I generally score wines for myself in the following two-tier scale:

Tier 1 — 0 to 5 astericks with 3 astericks and above being wines is lke a lot, a real lot and a really, really lot

Tier 2 — 0 to 1 0 – even though I may like it, its not worth it, 1 – its worth it.

I would like to see what scoring systems, if any, that others use.

Salut

Arrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can’t not do the heat episode! Particularly just because you forgot to shake a Yoohoo!!

Good episode on Chilean wines. Totally agree on the Los Vascos. I thought it was terrible.

So what’s in Sunnyvale, and how did EmeryP get Sunnyvale from Yoohoo?? And what’s in Sunnyvale? Are you going to make it up to Napa or Sonoma while you’re in our sunny state?

Oh now I get it. He messed up and said Yahoo when he opened the Yoo-Hoo. Man am I slow…

Springfield, NJ or is it Millburn. Same desk as always…

Obviously Matthew L Has not been a long time viewer of WLTV. Gary’s method of scoring has very often not been “in step” with his descriptions and recommendations of the wines. He may use the same number scale (1-100) as WA and WS but lacks the structure of those systems (as the WA method you described and the WS system previously described). There may be some validity to his extreme scoring (below 80 or above 90) but you just have to ignore his “in between” scoring and focus on what he says about the wine.

Obviously Matthew L Has not been a long time viewer of WLTV. Gary’s method of scoring has very often not been “in step” with his descriptions and recommendations of the wines. He may use the same number scale (1-100) as WA and WS but lacks the structure of those systems (as the WA method you described and the WS system previously described). There may be some validity to his extreme scoring (below 80 or above 90) but you just have to ignore his “in between” scoring and focus on what he says about the wine.

Julius – I agree completely. He’ll say, “Oh man this is a great wine — I love it”. Then he’ll give it an 89. Then he’ll pan a wine, say it’s terrible and give it an 89. I can’t wait to see the spreadsheet. I’m guessing there are a double-ton of 89s. The Vayner-Nod is a much more accurate measure of the wine’s quality.

Julius – I agree completely. He’ll say, “Oh man this is a great wine — I love it”. Then he’ll give it an 89. Then he’ll pan a wine, say it’s terrible and give it an 89. I can’t wait to see the spreadsheet. I’m guessing there are a double-ton of 89s. The Vayner-Nod is a much more accurate measure of the wine’s quality.

I had a bottle of $4 Purple Moon shiraz (from Trader Joes) the other day. Man that stuff isn’t bad for the price.

GaryV – I just got my shipment of those 4 free shipping Rieslings. Which one should I drink tonight?

Julius…thanks for responding. I’m not “new” to WLTV. In fact, thought I stumbled upon the v-blog a few weeks ago, I watched all the old episodes (what does that say about my use of free time huh?–*shrug*) Anyway, you make a good point, and I do listen to what Gary says more than rely on the rating number. With that said, I still stand by my original line that there have been a number of reviews where he clearly didn’t like the wine AT ALL and still scored it 86. I’ve been thinking WTH? Other than pissing off distributors, which Gary doesn’t seem to have a real issue with, why not poo-poo a bottle if it’s really bad.

TimF…I agree that the Vayner-Nod is the most accurate wine rating system I’ve seen to date. I guess my question shouldn’t be limited to Gary and is a large query about the wine rating system itself. That’s why a couple weeks ago I mentioned an article in the NY Times about the problems with wine ratings. Here’s a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/business/yourmoney/13rate.html?ex=1313121600&en=a02ef283eea32540&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I, too, am interested in that spreadsheet!

That’s maybe the best thing about WLTV. You actually see Gary’s reactions to tasting. You can’t see when RP makes a funny face — that doesn’t show up in the Wine Advocate. But you can tell when Gary likes something or doesn’t. In fact, that should be a column in the spreadsheet VaynerNod/VaynerChuck. Keeps it simple…

Gary – Thanks for the “intern” QOD!!!

YOU HAVE REACHED HIGHER GROUND. I see that your competitors are WATCHING!!! The Wine Buyer (WAYNE, NJ) is bagging you on a bulk e-mail sent today.. I quote: “Unlike Our Competition, this is NOT our last Free Shipping offer of 2006! In fact, weâ??re going to keep our free shipping page going with over 50 wines FOR THE REST OF 2006!”

Is this a “Mine is Bigger” fight?? LOL

Gary – You going to take that????!!! Those “Yahoo’s” (I know they are reading the comments too) have one-up’d ya… Just kidding – they are offering Free Shipping cause their prices are much higher and have a bunch of stuff they can’t move!!!