An expatriate American who has lived in Germany since 1983, is a regular contributor to Germany's leading wine magazine, Vin

Joel B. Payne

“There is no perfect wine guide,” observes Lamberto Frescobaldi of Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi in Italy, “as they are all written by people who express subjective opinions.” However, as Francois Mauss, the president of the Grand Jury Européen, remarks: “The sum of well informed subjective opinions approaches an objective viewpoint.”

No guide is written by only one person. Most, like mine today, are the effort of an ever larger team. It was once sufficient to visit and write about a small number of growers in any given region in order to provide consumers with a comprehensive picture of what is recommendable, but today the sheer number of quality estates is unimaginable.

Few readers understand just how much work goes into guides: Researching each region of production, writing to the producers, receiving samples, unpacking boxes, chilling the wines and discarding the empty bottles is an enormous logistical exercise, consuming far more time than tasting and writing about the some 12,000 wines that we review for each annual edition of the German Wine Guide – and Germany has only 100,000 hectares and some 10,000 producers. France, Italy and Spain are considerably larger.

Blind tasting

A point that is often discussed is whether wines should be tasted blind.

In fact, I always first taste wines first estate by estate in order to assess the style of a grower’s production, trying to understand his vision of each wine and judge the potential of the given vintage. As each producer submits double samples, I retain those wines that I found to be particularly successful for a region final in which I then, blind, compare by category such as dry Rieslings with dry Rieslings. Then, at the end of each summer’s deliberations, I cross check again blind, pitting the finest examples of each region against each other in order to establish my annual top ten in each category.

Given this triple layer of inspection, those wines chosen for the hit lists are beyond reproach, but that does not mean that we did not ‘miss’ the quality of a particular wine on a given day or overlooked a pearl, which is why all publications are loved by those who gain high scores and hated by those who don’t receive what they think they deserve.

Behind numbers

Scoring wines is one thing, ranking producers another.

To what extent do you include track history, ageability and, perhaps more importantly, reputation in your judgement? Is Latour better that Lafite? Can you criticize Romanée Conti?

The two major qualms that many producers have with most guides is that first the wines are supplied by the producers rather than purchased on the market, which might lead to ‘special bottlings’ for those chosen journalists, and - more critically - that the sale of publicity in the wine magazines, often owned by the same guides, can create a dangerous complicity between producer, wine writer and publisher, potentially interfering with the overall objectivity.

Believe Whom

Italy is a country with of highly individualistic views, “a country with many heads and even more ideas,” says Piero Antinori. Not surprisingly, very few wines, if any, are awarded top scores by all five publications. In a normal year as many as 1,600 wines will be given a top score by one of the guides, but when I comb through them for any congruence, I seldom find many wines that are given top marks by four of the five guides. Even world stars like Angelo Gaja and Ornellaia are seldom rated highly by more than three of the producers. Humorously, it is often the wines made by international varieties that fare the best, but Nebbiolo and Sangiovese have gained ground in the recent past.

“Differences and incongruence of wine guides is not all together negative,” as Francesco Planeta from Sicily observes. “By providing consumers with different vantage points, a wider of variety of styles is given a voice. However, much to the chagrin of the Italians, many Asian consumers now look to the Wine Spectator, the Wine Advocate or Decanter for guidance in what a wine should be.”

What the guides do best is highlighting for consumers the Best Buys. However, as wine knowledge improves, few guides are as influential as they once were. They may move the general public, but seldom the knowledgeable consumer who knows what he wants. Such collectors, though, probably read a number of guides and use a collection of different perspectives to nuance his database. That is how it should be!

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