Growing up, I recall watching Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. At some point in the show, two teens from the crowd would be selected and asked to rate a new piece of music. Regardless of the scores assigned, invariably one or both of them would note that the song "had a good beat and you could dance to it." And, frankly, when you are out on the dance floor, isn’t that all you really need?

But, when selecting a wine, as with music, it also depends on your mood in terms of the way you want to dance. You wouldn’t choose U2’s hard edge lyrics if you wanted to waltz, anymore than you would Beethoven’s Fifth to do the twist. Likewise, we should consider selecting wines that match our moods.

So, why choose a wine simply because someone said it was good. Shouldn’t it also matter whether it has a good beat? And, what mood are you in tonight? That cult California Cab may just be the equivalent of a rock band for all its subtlety while a lesser-known Pinot may provide a symphony of aromas and flavors. Or, what about an obscure wine from Spain — perhaps it is a tango in the glass waiting to happen?

With so many wines from which to choose, your dance card is sure to fill up fast, but don’t rush to book the same Tom, Dick & Harry’s (aka Chardonnay, Merlot & Cabernet Sauvignon). Dance with the grape less traveled. As long as it has a good beat, you’ll be sure to have a wonderful time.

As with a recent article in the New York Times, it seems that the media has finally woken up to the problem of the wine score game. While Robert Parker is attributed to having been the first to pioneer the use of the 100-point scale with wine, he is not to blame as the practice is certainly wide-spread.

What I do suggest is that wine afficionados take Parker and other critics in stride, the way we do with other products. When film critics rate a film, audiences read the review and make their own decisions about whether to see it. If they are familiar with a particular critic then they may have a better understanding as to whether their film preferences match or diverge with the critic’s. If Ebert & Roeper always like a certain kind of film and you’ve never been happy with their recommendations, you know to stay away next time and even possibly attend the film they pan.

If your tastes are aligned with Parker’s, then by all means follow his suggestions. But, if you aren’t sure you are in sync, why not read beyond the score? What did he find in the glass? Fresh fruit? Earth?  What are others saying about the same wine? A critic is just that, a critic. Yes, their palates are practiced from many years of tasting, but they are still human. They have their own set of preferences. Sure, keep reading the score cards, but remember that in your home, the only critic that matters is you!

At the Wine Styles Symposium, reported on previously, Mary Ewing-Mulligan addressed the issue of high scoring wines and the misguided assumption that a given score alone is an indication of quality. She noted that when asking Ed to select a wine to pair well with a given meal, she never once has requested a 92 point scoring wine (or other similarly scored wine for that matter). However, it is known that many consumers go into their local wine shop, using a minimum score among, or possibly as their only, selection criteria.

In listening to Mary speak, I was reminded of a similar discussion I had in graduate school. The key difference between the two was in the product — one being wine, the other being higher education. Whether one subscribes to Parker’s Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter or any other wine publication, a numerical score will be connected with nearly every tasting note included within its pages. Not dissimilar to the rankings allocated to our institutions of higher learning as found within the annual issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Prospective students and their parents look to these scores when choosing where to pursue undergraduate and graduate study. In some cases, the decision of where to attend school for the next four years can rest on the particular ranking that a college received that year. Can the average consumer determine whether School A, ranked 11th nationally, is any better than School B, which was ranked 15th nationally, based upon those rankings? Probably no more so than he or she can judge whether a 90 point Sauvignon Blanc is of any lesser quality than a 91 point Sauvignon Blanc or a 93 point Bordeaux.

Mary and Ed’s answer to the wine problem is to categorize wines by their styles, which they define as a taste profile, which brings together a collection of characteristics. In this way, a consumer who discovers their personal preference for aromatic whites over earthy whites could be taught to identify which whites meet their preferred taste profile. Moreover, they would, we hope, feel confident to try a new wine within that category as well as feel that their preference is equally valid as someone else’s preference for some other taste profile. As a result, the consumer would be able to identify and select wines that met his/her preferences and needs.

In response to the ranking mania associated with colleges and universities, several academics have proposed new approaches to categorizing such institutions that move away from scores, which bear little correlation to student learning and student experiences. A highly-ranked college may be well regarded, but may not be suitable for all students based upon their learning styles, value preferences or other individual attributes. One such approach was developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, culminating in the Collegiate Results Instrument (CRI). The CRI focused on the results produced by a given institution such as how its graduates measured their abilities and their value preferences. These measures could then be used by prospective students to see how a given institution’s graduates differed from its peer institutions.  In this way, a prospective student could decide which of the institutions would best meet his/her needs to develop a certain skill set or values upon graduation.

While, at the time, the CRI was adopted by Petersen’s Guides to College, I don’t believe that sales of the U.S. News’ annual college and university issue have declined as a result of its creation. Nor do I think that we will we see a shift away from wine scores anytime soon due to sales of the Wine Styles book. However, I do hope that conversations around new approaches will continue to illuminate this issue with rankings and help consumers see that there are other, more productive, ways to compare similar goods and services.

From a market perspective, given the weight that such publications carry in the respective industries, both wineries and colleges are hard pressed to ignore such rankings despite their protestations that such scores don’t really mean anything. Accordingly, until consumers trust that they can make their own, informed decisions about these selections, the rankings will continue to play an important role in which school is chosen and in which wines are purchased to toast the child’s college send-off.

I sent in the following letter to the Decanter editor, but it wasn’t published in this month’s issue (although one from a fellow DWS classmate – Lisa Carley – was), so rather than have it go to waste, I’m posting it here.

If top collector Charles Klatskin isn’t buying certain 2005 Bordeaux futures on principle (Decanter.com: ‘Insane’ Bordeaux prices turn top collector away, July 12, 2006, Howard Goldberg), what hope do the rest of us ‘mere mortals’ pleading poverty have? Actually, quite a lot.

As a much more modest collector, but one not immune to the 2005 hoopla, I have sought out a few bargains and generally managed to stay close to the $500 budget I set for myself. Distilling reviews and advice from Decanter, Jancis Robinson’s website, along with Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator tasting notes and scores provided on my wine merchant’s website, I found a few gems, which seem to hold promise in both the appreciation they will find on my palate and provide on my pocketbook.

At $55.95 per bottle, my splurge was a single bottle of Domaine de Chevalier, one of the only wines I could afford from Decanter’s list of 5-star wines. More frugally, I picked up a case of Chateau Beaumont ($150.00/case) and another of Fonbel ($225.00), the latter of which, with a Parker score of 90-93, was a veritable steal at $21.95/bottle. This was rounded out with two bottles of Chateau d’Armailhac at $39.95, of which I have a bottle of the 2000.

While I don’t expect to get rich on any of these purchases, I am confident that these wines will provide great pleasure, if not the staying power of their more expensive counterparts. Of course, wealthier and less- principled collectors may have more stellar wines in their cellars. But, from my standpoint, if a rising tide lifts all boats and, by all accounts, the 2005 vintage was a heck of a tide, we should all be in good stead when it comes time to drink.

Another session I attended at the SWE Conference last month featured several wine producers from the Dundee Hills appellation in the Willamette (rhymes with damn it!) Valley of Oregon. The Dundee Hills has the highest concentration of vineyards and wineries within the state, with approximately 2,000 acres planted.

Located on the 45th parallel, which places it similarly to Burgundy, the region benefits from a maritime climate as influenced by the Pacific Ocean, making it more temperate than Burgundy. The first plantings were made in 1966, with the first grapes harvested in 1970. The better plantings are found on hillsides, with good drainage.

As members of the panel related, many of them second generation vineyard owners and winemakers, there was a lot of collaboration among growers in the 1970s. They recalled the parties at which the grownups would discuss trellising and clones, while the children would run amok and have fun. The area arrived at a turning point in 1980 when its wines placed in a Paris competition.

Today, Dundee Hills is considered the epicenter of Oregon Pinot Noir and is highly regarded for these wines. Produced from the Pommard clone, the wines themselves have a brightness of red fruits, with nice, lively acidity and freshness; they are silk and velvet on the palate.

As this next generation guides Dundee Hills and makes wines of great repute, it is clear that they too know Pinot.

Well, we finally placed our futures order for the 2005 Bordeaux. We spent a Sunday afternoon flipping back and forth between the Sherry-Lehmann website, Jancis Robinson’s website and the Decanter magazine article that rated the 2005 futures. Much of the decision was made on price, with a wide number of wines priced well-beyond our range. We set a budget of $500, with the intent of purchasing several wines in the $20-$50 bracket, as opposed to a single bottle at $500.

In selecting the individual wines, we tried to find wines that not only scored well, but also had tasting notes, which appealed to our general taste in Bordeaux wines. We also looked to balance high scores with lower prices, in addition to the wine’s pedigree, i.e. third growth vs. cru bourgeois. Ideally, our selected wines have great tasting profiles, reasonably good pedigrees (most of the classified growths were outrageously expensive), high scores across critics and reasonable prices. 

While we don’t generally give considerable weight to critic scores in our buying decisions, in the interest of at least maintaining our investment value in the wines, we felt that such consideration was necessary. We are not expecting to make money on our futures purchase, but we don’t want to buy something now, only to find that it is available much cheaper later on. Of course, despite the machinations we went through to select our wines, it is still somewhat of a gamble. Only time will tell. Check back with me in 2008…

Many people wonder about pairing the right wine with the right food. Fortunately, we have moved well beyond the simple mantra of white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat. I am willing to try new combinations of wine and food and have attended several educational sessions, which challenged the participants to think outside the box when pairing.

However, I often have a more basic dilemma. We have several bottles in our cellar, which I consider to be very nice bottles. These are bottles that are generally more expensive than our standard house wines and are often somewhat special in their limited production, my sentimental attachment to them or both. The problem is that I am not comfortable in opening these wines to pair with simple food.

Yes, that bottle of Pride Mountain Merlot (purchased at their Napa vineyard) might go well with Italian food, but, if I make spaghetti and open a jar of sauce, am I being disrespectful to the wine? What if I am too lazy to even boil water and microwave a Weight Watchers pizza instead? I wonder how the winemaker might feel knowing that I had squandered their lovely wine by drinking it with a frozen dinner. Would s/he be insulted? Or, perhaps they don’t care, as long as I enjoyed the wine? 

I know I feel guilty to "share" these wines with such base food. Rather, I hoard them until I am ready to make a fancy dinner. But, unfortunately, among work, school and launching a business, I rarely have the time or the energy for grand cooking endeavors anymore. Hence, my nice wines remain in the cellar. Perhaps I am overthinking the whole thing and should simply consider that wine goes with food, period. Is it time for dinner yet?