Turning the Tables on Wine Critics

Since the first time it was offered, our seminar Wine Advocate vs. Wine Spectator has become an instant hit. Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator are arguably the most influential wine publications in the world. But Decanter, Vinous and James Suckling are becoming more and more relevant. All claim to score wines in a 50-100-point scale, but in reality, most fall between 85 and 100, making it a de facto 16-point scale. Even in this narrower range, oftentimes they rate the same wines with quite diverging scores, frequently with 5 or even more points of difference. And sometimes, as it happened with Wine Advocate, switching to a new reviewer with a different taste profile often leads to different reviews and scores than those of the previous taster. In this seminar we turn the tables to look at the way top critics taste and score wines.