I think WineX magazine, a wine rag with waning influence that publishes maddeningly infrequently and has absolutely no focus or clear audience save for perhaps a long in the tooth 37 year old hipster in West Hollywood, dropped an early April Fool’s Day joke this year.
WineX Magazine has launched a new portion of their web site called “Just Wine Points.”
Seriously, this is one of the moments where you’re not sure whether you’re a part of some elaborate ruse, or if this is for real.
The blurb from the site goes:
justwinepoints represents 20 years of research into why and how wine aficionados purchase wine. After examining and categorizing our data, we believe this site presents wine reviews exactly the way wine savvy consumers want them – by the numbers and numbers only.
With the homogenization of wines over the past 20 years, along with the wine industry’s over-zealous use of oak to mask wine’s attributes, justwinepoints cuts to the chase and offers exactly what the wine savvy consumer wants – a numerical score without all of the flowery baggage (descriptors). Let’s face the facts: The sophistication level of a wine consumer who uses the 100-point scale far exceeds that of the average, uninitiated layman. The savvy wine aficionado understands attributes associated with different wine styles, varietals and regions. They understand about aging young wine and the influences brought about by proper cellaring. The savvy wine consumer knows that pairing wine with food is a subjective preference, so someone else’s opinion is basically worthless. Thus, descriptors and any baggage glommed-on to rating points is wasted time and effort by both reviewer and reader.
So use justwinepoints to find the highest-rated wine without any distractions. Use this site to cut through the clutter of magazines and newsletters that spew descriptors as if someone will actually use them. Use justwinepoints to find that near-perfect wine before someone else does… or you may be compromised to drinking sub-90s wines.
Um, I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s assume that this is for real and that they are completely serious about just providing wine scores for discriminating buyers who hunt wines by numerical value. The point they are missing is that points are given valid context because, as in the case of Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate, a consumer has come to trust their reputation for wine knowledge and expertise thereby creating credibility. Maybe they’ve heard of a little phenomenon called “Parker’s Palate.” If Robert Parker was ‘Bob the Staff Accountant from Baltimore’ why the hell would anybody trust his opinion?
What they fail to realize in reviewing their “20 years of research into why and how wine aficionados purchase wine” is that points don’t mean anything without respected opinion and that’s the one thing WineX has lost with their inability to publish a magazine with any timely consistency that hits any semblance of a coherent target audience.
Just Wine Points just might win bad idea of the decade.