Comments on: Wine Peeps: Leading the Coverage of Washington State Wines

By: Sean Sullivan

Sean Sullivan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:56:10 +0000

Dave is correct on the 85 point cutoff for Spectator and the implications for the percentage of wines rated 90 points or above. ‘ll be writing more about this in a subsequent post.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:53:28 +0000

Many Washington wines are not submitted for tasting by Jay Miller of the Wine Advocate. And of those he does taste, only those scoring 85 points or higher are published. Therefore, the number of wines scoring 90 points or higher as a percentage of all Washington wines is much lower than the 60% mentioned in this article.

By: John

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:35:44 +0000

Walt,
Thank you for valididating the importance of blind tastings and QPRs, two cornerstones of our approach here at Wine Peeps. We’re still working on the searchable data base, one of our goals for the coming year.

By: walt

walt — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:40:13 +0000

I look forward to finding your aggregate tasting data. Let’s face it, no matter what one’s budget, QPR makes sense to everyone and I thank you for providing this service. The 2 reasons I find the Spectator’s evaluations valuable are 1. organizational (searchable online database is the best out there) and 2. their tastings are done blind. If you can match these 2 points, your site will be the most valuable to discerning enthusiasts like myself.

By: Sean Sullivan

Sean Sullivan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:55:47 +0000

In Advocate’s case it will actually change the percentage considerably based on their publication criteria. I’m waiting to get some information from Spectator as well. More to follow.

By: John

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:21:42 +0000

I’m looking forward to your additional data, Sean, however, I doubt that it will change the relative percentages much, because we all taste wines that we don’t publish about.

By: John

John — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:13:46 +0000

Thanks for the clarification, Sean.

By: Sean Sullivan

Sean Sullivan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:39:06 +0000

John, just one clarification. As mentioned in my post, Miller gave 60% of the reviews the Advocate *published* 90 point ratings or above. A considerably larger number of wines were sampled than were published. I will be providing more detail on this in a subsequent post.