Other Red Blends from Paso Robles, Central Coast, California

Syrah 52%, Petite Sirah 30%, Grenache 9%, Tannat 9%

Purchase Price: $19.99

Wine Enthusiast 91, James Suckling 90, Cellar Tracker 88, ElsBob 90

ABV 14.0%

A deep purple to deep garnet wine with aromas of red fruit and spice. The mouth feel is dominated by herbs and dark berries. Medium bodied with balanced tannins and acidity. A short but complete finish. Will pair well with chocolate.

A fine wine at a very reasonable price, typically found at retailers between $19–25.

Through the Grapevine: While this wine doesn’t exactly illustrate how modern scoring has shifted from its original purpose, probably just the opposite, but now seems a good time to clarify how I personally rate wines. I use the industry’s familiar terms, 90–93 as “excellent,” 87–89 as “very good”, but I also believe these words have been inflated to the point where they no longer match the sensory quality of the wines. When assigning a value, I return to the original meaning of Robert Parker’s 50–100‑point scale, where wines in the 70s were flawed, the 80s were decent, the 90s were very good, and only wines in the 95+ range were truly excellent. Over time, the language inflated to match the numbers, and the numbers inflated to match marketing needs.

When Parker created the 100‑point scale, or more accurately a 50-point scale, he intended it to be broad, honest, and fully used. Scores in the 70s and 80s were meant to be normal, sound, drinkable wines ranging from “average” to “very good.” These wines were meant to populate the central region of a normal gaussian distribution with the tails reserved for those far below and far above average. Only wines with real distinction, complexity, and character were meant to enter the 90–95 band, and the 96–100 range was reserved for truly profound bottles, and the truly expensive. In that framework, an 88 wasn’t a slight; it was a clear, respectable value that was good but not exceptional: average. The scale was designed to give consumers a realistic sense of quality across the entire market, not just the top end.

Modern wine criticism has collapsed Parker’s system upward. Scores below 85 are almost never published and below 90: rare, even though Parker explicitly defined them as perfectly drinkable. The practical scale now runs from 88 to 95, with 90 functioning as a marketing threshold rather than a qualitative one. Retail pressure, producer relationships, and consumer psychology have inflated both the numbers and the adjectives attached to them. “Very good” has become “excellent,” “excellent” has become “superb,” and the entire 80–89 range, once the heart of Parker’s system, has been reduced to a no‑man’s‑land that critics, and marketers, avoid. The result is a rating culture where words and numbers no longer align with their original meanings, and where the nuance Parker built into the scale has been replaced by commercial necessity.

In the end, a 10‑ or 20‑point scale would have produced far more clarity, but that’s not the world we live in.