The San Francisco Chronicle has switched to using a STARRED rating system in it’s wine reviews inside its Thursday wine section. This is very good news. I’m not sure when the change took place, but I noticed it today in their review of California Petite Sirahs. The new system rates wines from 2 STARS to 4 STARS with half stars in between, making it essentially a five level scale: Good to Excellent to Extraordinary with half starts in between. The…

At what point does a wine reviewer have an obligation to comment on the price of a wine, in addition to its quality and characteristics? Pierre Rovani, a man who has proven himself to have a magnificent palate, rated the 2002 Domaine de la Romanee Conti Romanee Conti 90 points. The written review was ordinary. The wine costs $1680.00 You have to ask yourself if there is any point at which the circumstances of a wine demands the reviewer comment…

Yesterday I posted on the idea that wine critics are important. That they serve a purpose. Well, I get mail and comments on a regular basis in response to what serves as editorial here and this post was no exception. Interestingly, I got more mail in response to this post than there were comments. And almost all the mail was negative…that is, those writing had really very few nice things to say about the wine critic and their value to…

Tom Standage, the author of "A History of the World in Six Glass", has an interesting editorial in the Herald Tribune today. In essence he is making the argument that wine and status is a manufactured pairing that that we should rank wines not based on what a reviewer says but rather on our own taste. It’s a pretty common refrain, isn’t it?. How many times have you heard this: "So put not your faith in wine rankings imposed from…