How do YOU keep score?

[Randy Caparoso]

Curms, well, not exactly. While I did admit that the 12 part system I use can be translated into a 100 point, or even a 20 or 14 point system, you have to understand that I guy like me just cannot stand at a table and assign numbers to wines. It's completely foreign to my comprehension. When I'm doing my rating, I am NOT thinking 12 when I rate a wine EX++. I really am thinking "Excellent-Plus-Plus," or way beyond my quality expectations. To me, it's like going to the beach and looking at the girls and saying, "she's a 10,and she's a 7+." I just don't think like that.

Now I totally realize these are personal predilections. The difference is seen especially when I actually write. Thank goodness, of course, I do not have to make those weighty decisions about whether or not I should use a 100 point system to communicate to a broad cross-section of readers. I think you do it well, and your secondary value rating is a really clever compromise between reader expectations and your own convictions. However, my readership is still local, and so it is perfectly okay for me to just recommend the best wines I have found (usually the VG-pluses through EXs), and concentrate on words to convey the taste and quality level. I write about wines in the Honolulu Advertiser the exact same way I write in the Wine Board threads. In other words, completely ignoring numerical equivalencies.