I am sure you have come across 90-points, 94-, 96-point wines advertised in wine stores, in wine magazines and newspapers. You may even have come across the odd 100-point wines on occasion.
What are these ratings? Who rated them? Should you trust them and use them for your purchase?
First, a bit of history. 60 or so years ago, there was no systematic rating for wines. A 20-point system first appeared about 50 years ago out of wine making school at the University of California, Davis (UCD). A professor at UCD came up with a 20-point matrix for evaluating wines for the purpose of wine production, for wine makers to use.
It is a matrix with points and half points given to categories such as colour, aroma, truthfulness to varietal characters, truthfulness to regional traditions, body, balance, finish etc., which adds up to a total of 20 points.
Shortly after that Robert Parker, at Wine Enthusiast at that time, started to rate wines using his 100-point system. According to him, he also uses a matrix system given to different aspects of wines during evaluation to come up to a total of 100 points. Magazines such as Wine Spectator, Decanter then followed suit and now almost all wine critics use the 100-point system and all claim they have their own proprietary matrix for the evaluation.
But I rarely find any disclosure of the underlying matrix other then the original UCD 20-point matrix.
In general, this is what the scores mean:
95 to 100 points rating means the wine is Exceptional, a Classic
90 to 95 score means Outstanding, Superior
85 to 89 score means Very Good
80 to 85 means Good, Solidly Made
Most publications do not list any wine scoring below 80
For you, what does that mean? Will you like or dislike a high scoring wine? Should you buy wines based on the published ratings? My own experience: I need to know who was the critic that rated and scored the wine. There are people I trust, names such James Suckling, Janice Robinson. There are magazines or rating sites I respect, names such as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Advocate, Decanter, Vivino.
Ultimately, there is no guaranty you will like a wine because it scored highly. When buying wine, I still prefer to be able to taste it first no matter what the score is or recommendations from the salespeople at the store. That is why a membership in clubs such as the Friends of The Vine is important!
However, a lot of the time, especially with highly priced wines, I may not be able to taste first. In that case, I would base my buying using scores from critics or sources I follow and respect.
For wines I am buying for long-term cellaring, and I would like to buy multiple bottles for cellaring, if possible, I would buy one, tasted it and go back to buy multiple bottles for cellaring depending on if I like and think there is likelihood of improving and aging.
But for very rare wines with limited availability and I know other people might be competing to buy, I would have no choice but grab them before they are gone, strictly based on ratings and scores from respected sources.