The Review of Washington Wines to Use the 100 Points System

As of this date, April 1, 2014, the Review of Washington Wines will no longer use the University of California, Davis 20 Point System for scoring wines and will use the 100 Point System instead. After all, 100 points encourages winemakers to seek the Holy Grail of getting 90 or more points. It's all about the numbers. Never mind color, clarity, bouquet, etc. - 90 points is a lot more than 18 points. The higher the number, the better, so let's make it 100 points instead of 20. After all, the U.C. Davis faculty was just a bunch of old fogeys making weird wines like Zinfandel, Petit Sirah and what was called Pinot Chardonnay. Time to modernize!

 

Highlights of Taste Washington

Now, kidding aside, here's a report on Washington wine's biggest event, Taste Washington Seattle. Lynn and I attended as media representatives of the Review of Washington Wines. Over 260 wineries were represented and many hundreds of wines were poured. Here are some of the highlights.

In the morning, we attended a seminar, "Playing Matchmaker - Pairing Food & Wine to Your Palate," moderated by Jamie Peha of TableTalk Northwest (tabletalknorthwest.com). The panelists were Jameson Fink (Grape Collective), Lenny Rede (Esquin Wine & Spirits), Reggie Daigneault (South Seattle Community College), Sean Hails (Columbia Winery) and Harry Mills (Purple Cafe & Wine Bar). It was a stimulating and educational session. A full report will be in an upcoming Review Blog posting.

At the VIP Tasting in the afternoon, we sampled stellar releases from Avennia, Cadence, Betz Family, Kevin White, Upchurch Vineyard and Owen Roe, all scoring 19/20 points or more. These will be reviewed in the May issue of the Review of Washington Wines. We also tasted wines from up and coming wineries such as Alleromb, Lagana Cellars, W.T. Vintners, Kitzke, J.B. Neufeld, Market Vineyards, For a Song, Chatter Creek, Waitsburg Cellars and Cinq Cellars. These will be reviewed in upcoming issues. More later!

 

Coming Up on the Review of Washington Wines Blog

April 8 - Highlights of Cayuse Weekend (April 4-5)

April 15 - The Playing Matchmaker - Pariing Food & Wine to Your Palate Seminar