Santa Julia?

[AlcoholReviews]

Drew-

Thanks for the message. A point well taken.

However, I gues the notion is this: some wines are just good enough that we think them worth buying. Those we rate 3 stars. Then there are those that are clearly worth buying but they aren't so good that our writers would seek them out. For example, if I was en route to a party and needed to pick up a bottle of wine, I might stop in a wine store and on spying a 3 star bottle and no other wines that I recognized, I might buy it. But I wouldn't make the point of going out shopping for a 3 star bottle, yet I would for a 4 star bottle.

Now, as for the 3.5 star bottle vs. the 3.75 star bottle: no doubt they are close in quality. And our tasters often quibble over whether another 1/4 star is justified or not. Fairness and accuracy would seem to demand that if we taste one merlot and then another and the second is slightly better that we give it a slightly higher rating (our readers probably want this too!)

But at the same time this is no science. And I think the 100 point scale can be problematic in this sense. There one can scratch one's head over the differences between an 83 and an 85 rating. On the 100 point scale the acceptable range is between 80 and 100- that's 21 possible scores a wine might get. For us there are but 9 ratings a decent wine might get: 3, 3.25, 3.5, ... 5. simpler, but by no means perfect.

Cheers,

KRK
http://www.AlcoholReviews.com