In their wine column in The Wall Street Journal today titled “
A ‘Delicious’ Quest”(WSJ subscription required),
Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher wrote about their highest rated wines in 2006 – i.e., those earning a “delicious” rating. A 10-step plan to discovering such wines yourself is also offered. 15 of 2,000 wines tasted rated “delicious”
Uhhh…that’s a pretty low ratio (3/4’s of 1% to be exact or 1 of every 133 wines tried). Then I read that the list is “longer than usual.” It’s also worth noting that the list only has 6 wines under $100. While they suggest there are “hundreds of delicious wines out there”, why didn’t they come up with more? To find 200 delicious wines using their success ratio, one would need to taste almost 27,000 wines (200/0.0075).
While one could settle for “very good” (their next highest rating), if there is a better wine to be had, most wine collectors want it. Moreover, the time and cost of going through 133 bottles to find the holy grail is not something even the hard core collector will do (as much fun as it might be to try). So how do you simplify your search?
“Knowledge makes everything simpler” – Law 4 of The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda
Gathering knowledge, both personally from tasting experiences and by calibrating one’s taste preferences with those of known wine critics, will help you zero in on wine worth trying in the search for “delicious” head-turners.
But I agree with Gaiter and Brecher’s first and last step of their 10-step plan which is to “Find a good wine merchant” to provide advice and guidance. I know that Vinfolio has almost 2,000 wines available and I can guarantee that far more than 15 of them would justify top rankings. We actually assign every customer their own wine specialist to provide advice over the phone or via email (read The Vinfolio Advantage).
Bottom line: Whether you buy from us or from other retailers, Gaiter and Brecher’s recommendation to utilize good wine merchants for guidance will shorten your search.
