There are only two possible justifications for burdening the world with more tasting notes. One is if they are useful. The other is if they provide a pleasure of their own.

Useful tasting notes are those written for wines which are likely to endure for longer than three years, or which are expensive, thereby engendering high hopes in the purchaser.

They should provide accurate assessments of a wine's character and quality, enabling those who have never tasted that wine to gauge what it might offer, and thus to buy it, to store it, to drink it at a certain moment, or to avoid it.

Tasting notes which are pleasurable to read in their own right are rare, since this is a literary genre without intrinsic human or narrative interest. It merely describes a fugitive and narrow sensual pleasure enjoyed by someone else. Even the greatest tasting notes, thus, require a fond indulgence on the part of the reader.

The tasting notes I intend to post on this website will, I hope, be useful. If a few of them provide pleasure, so much the better, but don't count on it.

Scores
"If one wine was a winner, all the rest were losers."   Hugh Johnson

Scores are philosophically untenable, for reasons almost everyone using this site will be well aware of. Namely, that wines perform very differently depending on the location, temperature, humidity and general surroundings in which they are being drunk, as well as the mood, health, circumstances, age and experience of the drinker.

All wine-tasting, furthermore, is subjective. Tastes differ. So they should. There are many occasions in life when a lower-scoring wine is preferable to a higher-scoring one. I try to buy all of my own wine on the basis of tasting, and take little or no interest in scores. Wine, for me, is excitement and adventure; scores are dull certitude. However, scores are useful.

The scores of Robert Parker are useful to wine investors, since they make much of the market in fine wine (and particularly top Bordeaux). And the scores of all good tasters are useful in that they help readers of tasting notes to discern shades of enthusiasm (or distaste) which may not be immediately evident from the note itself. They also permit swift comparisons to be made between wines.

The notes on this site, accordingly, are accompanied by scores (out of 20). The score is an aggregated aesthetic one; it is not based on any anatomisation of colour, aroma, flavour and length. Thus:

• 0-7 means an unpleasant or faulty wine
• 8-10 a dull one (Unlikely I will post notes for such wines.)
• 11-12 signifies a simple but enjoyable wine
• 13-14 a good wine
• 15-16 is an enthusiastic score, denoting a very good wine
• 17-20 are reserved for outstanding or great wines

All scores reflect my own tastes, and make no pretence at universality. You are invited to disagree with them.

Indexing
The tasting notes on this site will be indexed alphabetically by producer's name, excluding words such as 'château', 'domaine' etc. For example 'Château Latour' will be filed under 'L' for Latour and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) will be filed under 'R'.

Copyright
Some of these notes are written for this website alone; others are shared with The World of Fine Wine (identified by WOFW Yes/No next to the tasting note). Readers are welcome to quote them, providing Andrew Jefford is identified as their author, and this website and/or The World of Fine Wine is cited as their source.