A Day Without Wine Ratings
By Tom Wark
What would happen if there were a day without any wine ratings?
Imagine walking into a wine store, supermarket, any store and finding in the wine section no little “shelf talkers” touting the wines’ 90-point scores from The Wine Spectator, Robert Parker, Wine Enthusiast, etc. Could the consumer survive? Would the wine industry survive?
I suspect they would all survive, but the consumer would have to rely on different tools — and certain patterns of behavior would emerge:
1. The label, though important now in attracting interest, would … …turn out to be far more important to consumers’ selections.
2. The wine’s back label would take on much greater importance as consumers look for some nugget of information to influence their purchase in the face of the hundreds of wines staring back at them from the store shelves.
3. Familiar brand names would have an even greater advantage than they do now since consumers generally have greater levels of fear associated with their wine purchase than any other sort of purchase. They will look for a brand that they think others are familiar with.
4. Clerks in the stores would have the greatest influence of all on purchasing decisions without any ratings to guide consumers.
5. Consumers would give greater thought to their expectations for different grape varietals. Instead of looking for the comfort of a third-party endorsement, they would look for the comfort of a grape with which they are familiar.
6. Price would, in the consumers’ minds, take on an even greater connection to quality.
7. Recommendations from friends and family and co-workers would become far more important, making “buzz” a real factor in a wine’s success.
What does all this mean? It means that ratings are the vehicle that have soothed consumers’ fears. Scores have made the selection of wine easier for consumers and more comfortable. Reliance on marketing with scores has made many retailers lazy salespeople.
Clearly there is good and bad that comes with scores. But fear not, the ratings and scores for wines are not going away. They will be with us long after you go to that great cellar in the sky. It’s just that it would be very very interesting to live in a wine world in which two digits did not determine what people believe is quality.
