While I could see grammar and readability in tasting notes–either user-generated or from critics–making a difference on sales, wine writing (for better or generally for worse) has its own Mechanical Turk for smoothing out all those pesky words: the score. will blow yer mind! An interesting phenomenon to be sure. wine writing MORE >>

Is inflation crippling wine scores? In the near future, will it take a wheelbarrow of points to sell a Moscato? Let’s hope Ben Bernanke–or, eegad, Paul Volcker!–doesn’t –doesn’t read this post or he might take the punch bowl away. Fully 123 the wines received 95 or more points. 91 and 92 are no mans land. MORE >>

They want to crack into the US market and they figure the best way to do so is to get a score from the Wine Advocate (even if one document from the regional organization referred to the scores as “Parker points”). What do you think: should the wine industry move beyond scores? Grapes Wine Co (no Miller scores). MORE >>

The story also applies the discussion to wine ratings and scores, underscoring their inherent subjectivity even though pallets of wine are bought and sold every day on these snapshots. Saturday’s WSJ catches up with Robert Hodgson’s research on the randomness of gold medals in wine competitions. Yeah, me either. MORE >>

In an article entitled “Once Upon a Time (1899, 1929, 1949, 1959, 2009),&# he lavished praise on the vintage, particularly the cabernet blends of the left bank, and on many wines individually: 21 wines received scores of potentially 100 points. Robert Parker posted his reviews of Bordeaux 2009 yesterday on his subscription web site. MORE >>