Here at Bordeaux Gold we’ve developed a new scoring system for Sauternes and Barsac – the Gold Star System!

Why?  Well, frankly in over 40 years in the wine trade I’ve never been comfortable using any of the existing systems and now that I have retired from my life as a negociant (but not from wine altogether and certainly not from Bordeaux Gold) it’s time to turn over a new leaf.

The difficulties I find with the 100 point or 20 point scales mainly used today include:

• At the top end they tend to be inflationary – as soon as a wine scores over 95/100 or 18/20 the price goes up somewhat negating the value of the information provided to the consumer
• It is difficult to compare wines from different years – if two wines not from the same year have the same point score how can the consumer differentiate between them?
• The consumer has to make up their own mind on value as the systems are focused purely on quality
• The scales aren’t really what they say on the tin – for example, the 100 point scale is more like a 20 point scale as few wines score under 80 these days and the 20 point scale is more like a 10 point scale!
• There is an inclination for unscrupulous users of a scale to inflate a score to attract attention either to themselves or to a wine – maybe I’m an old cynic but I’m sure there are a lot more 100 point wines around today than there used to be!

Can the Gold Star System solve these problems?  Well, we think it’s worth a try – here’s how it works.  Each wine has 3 separate scores out of 10 – one score for the quality of the Year, one for the quality of the Wine and one for Value.  These scores can be looked at separately or combined together for a simple overall score.  Here are some examples to show you how it works:

2001 Chateau Bastor Lamontagne = 24 Year – 10  Wine – 6  Value – 8

2008 Chateau Guiraud = 21 Year – 6  Wine – 7  Value – 8

At a glance consumers can tell a lot more about a wine, the year it was made, how it has performed within that year and what value it represents.  Here’s how we breakdown the scores within the Year, Wine and Value categories:

	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1
Year	Outstanding	Excellent	Superb	Very Good	Good	Average	Fair	Poor	Bad	Terrible
Wine	Outstanding	Excellent	Superb	Very Good	Good	Average	Fair	Poor	Bad	Terrible
Value	Outstanding	Excellent	Superb	Very Good	Good	Average	Fair	Poor	Bad	Terrible
Total	25 - 30 = Excellent Buy		20 - 25 = Good Buy		15 - 20 = Possible Buy			Under 15 = Poor Buy

 

Just one clarification – we consider value not on a strict ‘how much quality do you get for how much money’ ratio system but rather as ‘would you be happy with the quality given the price paid’ judgement.  Even very expensive wines can therefore be ‘outstanding’ value and cheap ones can certainly be ‘bad’ value too.

It is nearly impossible for a wine to score 30 but if they do then suppliers have to be very careful about raising prices as the value score would decrease almost immediately!