Throwing out baby with the bathwater
Monday, 6 February, 2012
Neil Pendock
Neil Pendock wonders whether SA wine shows are missing the point.
The 100 point scoring scale pioneered by American tastemeister Robert Parker has been widely mocked for offering the illusion of precision where none is possible. But no one can deny that most wine judges at least, take scoring seriously – it’s just a few cynical show owners who mess things up when they interfere. Like the scandalous situation last year when the “technical director” of a major SA wine competition unilaterally excluded dessert wines from contention in deciding “wine of show” as “we don’t want another sweet to win.” That chicken will come home to roost this year, with at least one major producer refusing to enter. Caveat Emptor – literally empty cave - as the Romans used to say.
In my days judging the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show – then called the Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show - more effort was expended differentiating between a “high nothing” with a score of 69 and awarding a bronze medal to a score of 70. The difference between 69 and 70 is far more precipitous than the point between 75 and 76. Similarly, there’s a world of difference between an 80 and 89 point wine, yet both are silver. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calls this “the tyranny of the discontinuous mind” and points out just how unfair it is to enforce fixed categories – like bronze, silver and gold medals – onto a continuous distribution.
The most egregious case led to the election of George W. Bush as US president in November 2000. Not only did Al Gore receive a larger percentage of the national vote, but in the case of Florida, in which the result was essentially tied, by insisting that the entire 25 votes of that state be assigned to Bush, his election was assured. If the votes had been split 12 and 13 (it makes no difference who gets 12 or 13), or Florida excluded, Gore would have won and the world would be a totally different place. Would 9/11 have happened (Bush was warned by the CIA and laughed it off)? What would the planet’s CO2 levels be today?
Writing in the Christmas edition of The New Statesman, which he edited, Dawkins makes the point “what is more serious is that there are some educators – dare I say especially in non-scientific subjects – who fool themselves into believing there is a kind of Platonic ideal called the ‘first-class mind’ or ‘alpha mind’, a qualitatively distinct category, as distinct as female is from male, or sheep from goat.” So it is with Platter five star stunners. SA is full of higher scorers than any year’s five star crop as the process that produces them is unfair. And besides, a Pinotage has to be a heck of a lot better than a Pinot Noir to be a member of the five star society. Come on Andrew McDowell (Platter publisher), score them all blind, publish the scores and be damned.
Rather than Old Mutual gold, wouldn’t you rather know this Shiraz was rated third out of 151 entries? After all, there could always be a double gold (Veritas) or grand gold (Michelangelo) category – or rather Grand d’Or as its pompously called - you are unaware of, which tarnishes a mere gold down to mediocrity.
The law of large numbers from statistics says that wine scores for a competition such as Veritas, Old Mutual or Michelangelo should follow the bell curve or Gaussian distribution, the same as height, weight or IQ. Far better to publish the score, or rank of a wine, than force it into a medal class. After all, much effort was expended and auditors were paid (in some cases) to ensure the numbers (at least) are accurate, only for them to be ditched at the last moment.
But marketing loves a simple message and different colour stickers are easy to understand. Besides, selling stickers provides another revenue stream for avaricious show owners and putting a numeric score on a bottle would be confusing with a price. Not that many wannabe icons cost less than R100 these days.