WINE & MUSIC: WINE SCORES AND BOB SEGER

I’ve been a pretty big Bob Seger fan ever since I was a kid. I guess it had to do with his Midwestern sensibilities. So it is a bit of irony that I find myself thinking of Mr. Seger’s hit “Feel Like A Number” (from 1978’s “Stranger in Town”), what with the impending release of Wine Spectator’s Top 100 list for 2009.

Most of you who are familiar with this blog know of my hate-hate relationship with wine scores. I am not a big fan of them in large part to their extremely arbitrary view on something as subjective as taste. Scores don’t really give you the entire story behind a particular wine – they are a feeble attempt at encapsulating all that a wine is supposed to be for the consumer in a mad rush to get from point A to point B without any pausing or stopping along the way. It is an abridgement, a synopsis, and a flawed one at that.

Yet this is the time of year that I am coerced into paying more attention to them than I would like to do. Often times, I will have tasted a wine during the course of the year, and will have chosen not to carry said wine for one reason or another – be it I found the wine boring, bad, or just one of those “I have 20 similar wines at the same price point, do I need one more?” Then all of a sudden, an 88-89-90 point score, and I am suddenly suppose to say, “Wow! That wine is really good!” Kind of hypocritical, I feel. Yet these are the decisions that I have to make. These reversals due to an overdependence of scores that seem to permeate the mindset of some in this industry and at this company. I have to accept it, though I find myself gnashing my teeth every day about it.

As for the impending release of Spectator’s Top 100 – the bane of my retail existence – there isn’t really anything I can do about it, except prepare myself for the onslaught. What I find amusing is that the scores ranked by WS are previously released scores, and for the most part, the wines have come and gone without much hullabaloo. The list seems to make those wines more desirable, even though the scores didn’t change. It’s one of those “where were you when the scores first came out?” kind of mentality.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever whatever. It is what it is.

Right?

So I leave you with Bob, and I will stop whining about the inevitable.