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Vintages Saturday,
Welcome to the inaugural Friday First weekly edition of Liquid Assets. Michael Vaughan features will appear nationally in the weekend section of the Financial Post commencing February 2008. It is my belief that content is what drives a newspaper. It is here where I have strived to bring readers accurate, cutting edge information each and every week for the past nine years. Thanks to your support, our website now receives up to 23,000 hits a day. As a courtesy, National Post readers are still able to access the January 19 edition of Vintage Assessments click here. Friday First No more waiting for the Saturday paper to "knock" at your front door. The really big advantage is that almost all the LCBO stores have the Vintages products on the shelves by Friday. No lining up on a cold frosty morning to nab that rare bottle. In fact, it's tough to find any line-ups anywhere anymore. It seems that there's too many wine values chasing too few dollars. Saturday, February 2nd Vintages Release It's a slippery slope. Everyone wants to sell wine and it seems that high scores are the easiest way of achieve this. Today's 25 Vintages selections all score 90-points or more. That's great, but the real question is: are they actually worthy of the published score. In my opinion, the answer is simple - no. Of course, one expert can love a wine, while another might dislike it. It is always a matter of taste and personal preference. There are a multitude of problems associated with numbers. Who did the rating is critical. It's much harder to get high scores from some critics than others. Another critical aspect is when was the wine scored - two months ago or two years ago? Was it from a local store, barrel sample or a specially delivered one-of-a-kind bottle? Does the tasting note include a bottle lot number so you can make sure that what you're buying is identical? In what kind of wine glass was it assessed in? I should mention that on this last point, the easiest way to get a different score is to change the tasting glass. I don't want to venture into the quagmire of saying which authority is right or wrong, too high or too low. Personally, I will continue to give readers my personal ratings. A guide to how I my ratings work appears below. Note that if you searching for 90 point wines, then the range to is where you want to look. Over 90 points? Then it's and perhaps which is as close to perfection as it gets (100 points).
As for the rising tide of high scores, it's tough to resist. It seems like a disease, ninetypointitis. Tens of thousands of wines are now popping up everywhere with higher than ever scores. Take the December issue of First-In-Line where 53 out of the 100 Vintages releases reviewed scored 90-points or more. A whopping 53% got the magic score. Who says it isn't fun to be Santa? February 2nd Whites
February 2nd Reds
February 2nd Five Sweeties
February 2nd ISDs Sunday, February 3rd
Super Bowl & Super Best Buy |
Let me kick off with tomorrow's Vintages special thematic:
90+ Wine Scoring Demystified. Perhaps the LCBO Catalogue says it best: "WHAT'S THE MAGIC
NUMBER? When a wine scores 90 or above with the critics, it is almost always a
guarantee of excellence. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 100-point
scoring system first employed by the esteemed critic Robert Parker Jr. Vintages
marks this milestone with a cream-of-the-crop selection that proves high-scoring
wines don't have to come with a hefty price tag".
Finally, given the fact that it's the Year of the Rat (Thursday, February 7), a
special salute to Vintages who seems hell bent on increasing the number of
untasted in-store-discoveries (or ISDs) in each release - despite a promise last
year to reduce the number. Well I don't want to call anyone Pinocchio, but it
seems that we have 16 for tomorrow, 19 on February 16th and a whopping 27 on
March 1st. If you looking for something outstanding, don't miss 
Looking for delightful best buy for tomorrow's Super Bowl?
Last September I raved about winemaker Darryl Brooker's