The insignificance of wine ratings

In 1978, a lawyer turned self-proclaimed wine critic, Rober M. Parker Jr. decided that, in addition to his reviews, he would rate wines numerically on a 100 point scale. Over the years most other wine publicaitons followed suit. From the theoretical view point, there are many reasons to quesiton the significance of wine ratings. For one thing, taste perception depends on a complex interaction between taste and ofactory stimululation. Strictly speakig, the sense of taste comes from 5 types of receptor cells on the tongue: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. But if that were all there was to taste perception, one could mimic everything, fortunately there is more to gluttony than that and that is where the sense of smell comes in. The perceived taste of wine arises from the effects of a stew of between 600 and 800 volatile organice compounds on both the tongue and the nose. That's a problem, given that studies have shown that even flavor trained professionals can rarely reliably identify more than three of four components in a mixture.

Let's just say that the quality of a wine's taste is pretty complex. Skeptical of the numbering system yet? OK, scientists have designed ways to measure wine experts taste descrimination directly using a wine triangle (each tastor is given 3 wines, two of which are idnentical). The mission is to choose the odd sample. In many studies over the years, experts could only do it only 2/3 of the time. "On many levels the ratings system is nonsensical," says the editor of Wine and Spirits Magazine. But why does the system endure? Because people are attracted to and have faith more in numbers than other systems of rating.