Since we’ve been talking about medals, wine ratings and such, I think it’s time to re-visit Justwinepoints.com
Back in March, when the wine blogosphere was doing a post-mortem (Good Grape included) on the train wreck that was WineX magazine, Tom at Fermentations did something of a redemptive post on WineX founder Darryl Robert’s penultimate act, Justwinepoints.com.
I’ve come to trust Tom’s opinion and leadership, so I mentally backed off my own vituperative response … and I subscribed to their weekly newsletter.
While re-visiting the Tom’s original post (found here) and then reading through the comments in which co-founder Jenna Corwin claims their dead serious intentions and not the satirical nature that Tom suggests (perhaps in good p.r. spokesperson mode he’s attuned to always looking for the silver lining), I decided it’s time re-review this thing.
As a quick refresher, Justwinepoints.com’s position to market is eyebrow raising, to say the least. As excerpted from their home page:
You never settle for less, and you’d prefer never to drink another wine that has scored less than 90 points. But who has time to filter through hundreds of pages of excess “information” during their ultra-busy day to try to find the right wine? justwinepoints to the rescue!
justwinepoints represents 20 years of research into why and how wine aficionados purchase wine. After examining and categorizing our data, we believe our easy-to-use, risk-free system presents wine reviews exactly the way you – the wine savvy consumer – want them: by the numbers, and numbers only.
So use justwinepoints to find the highest-rated wine without any distractions. Use our convenient, quick-access system to cut through the clutter of magazines and newsletters that spew descriptors as if someone might actually use them. Use justwinepoints to find that near-perfect wine before someone else does… or your lifestyle may be compromised by drinking sub-90s wines.
Um, okay. Pull this leg and it plays jingle bells. Except, unfortunately, just as Tom thought this was satire, I, too, want to think this is some sort of farce, but it’s not. They play it true which is cause for my blood pressure to rise to a near boil.
A friend tipped me off with a forwarded email from Sam’s Wines and Spirits that Justwinepoints.com is, obviously, reviewing wines for Sam’s, evidenced by the 95 point rating they gave to a Zinfandel, the 2004 Sobon Estates “Rocky Top” Zinfandel, more on this in a second.
As I was reviewing some files from last year, I noticed an advertorial that I had clipped, coincidentally, from Saveur magazine that talked about Sam’s and wine sales online. The brief article says, in part:
“Selling via email is great,” says Chris Durbin, head wine sales specialist for e-commerce sales. “We have the ability to send information immediately to a customer base of more than 33,000 people. We can sell 100 to 150 cases of a wine in a matter of hours.”
Durbin loves the email “perfect storm” of “a good price, a review over 90 points, and a wine that people are looking for.”
Understanding this context, quotes from last year, before Justwinepoints.com came on the scene, becomes important when you consider the email offer for the Sobon Estates that I received in the Sam’s email forwarded from a friend—which, typifies, to me, what seems to be a MANUFACTURED “perfect storm” so eloquently described by Mr. Durbin:
Durbin intros his passion for all things Tennessee football and goes on to say, “… being a sucker for all things Big Orange, when I first saw the Sobon Estates “Rocky Top Vineyard” Zinfandel, I knew that would be bringing a bottle home with me. Just because of the name. I am sure I did not need another excuse to bellow “Rocky Top” loudly and tunelessly, but I could not pass it up. I had no idea about the wine inside the bottle, nor did I even really care for Zinfandel, as I had never tried a good one. This one, however, did not disappoint.”
The email goes on to give a tasting note for the Sobon Estate and this parting word,
To top off all of that, Justwinepoints.com just awarded this beautiful bottle a staggering 95 point rating.
So, let me get this straight, we have a guy emailing a Zinfandel wine offering that admits that he loves a “perfect storm” of “a good price, a review over 90 points” in addition to noting, “nor did I even really care for Zinfandel, as I had never tried a good one …” and we have an online service dedicated to providing scores for a vacuous audience in order to, “use justwinepoints to find that near-perfect wine before someone else does… or your lifestyle may be compromised by drinking sub-90s wines” and we’re supposed to believe and buy this wine, however good, based on this garbage charade?
Maybe I’m starting to get old and steeped in minding the boundaries between right and wrong, but this just smacks me as wrong—manipulative, disrespectful of wine consumers and a complete error in judgment. Is it too strong of a statement to say that somebody in this equation is morally bankrupt?
Maybe it’s me that’s wrong and manipulative—maybe I’ve done a pastiche of quotes that isn’t representative of the situation, but somehow I doubt it.
I defy Justwinepoints.com to say that they proactively rate wines that ARE NOT sent to them. And, I defy Justwinepoints.com to say that they aren’t getting paid to rate wine for Sam’s, specifically. Should I find out that I’m wrong, I will gleefully fall on my sword, but I worry that I won’t have to.
So, my overall point is, just as we’re wondering whether fair competition medals are meritorious and the finer points of a wine rating system to use in the blogosphere, know and understand that people are absolutely snowing consumers with a tap-dance of bullshit that, ultimately, will paint a lot of people, perhaps you and I, with a broad brush of bad behavior—when these things blow up they don’t cut surgically, they cut gaping wounds and it will make our review of medals and talk of rating systems seem like girl scouts selling cookies compared to an ethical blowout of the entire 100 pt. system and its interpretations.