This post comes from our old blog (check it out here) from Cory, a well-read if not exactly optimistic soul, posted in June 2008.
I recently read a book entitled “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives” by Leonard Mlodinow, who was co-author with Stephen Hawking on one of his many books about the great cosmos. The title refers to a pattern that molecules follow when they’re bouncing around and how despite it’s erratic look, it’s actually a fairly predictable movement when you take into account all the natural laws and mathematics that govern supposedly random behaviours.
The basic gist of the book was this: ability and talent are pretty much irrelevancies-successes and failures in any arena follow a simple probability. Life is pretty much a coin flip either way and the outcome is pretty much unknown. It could be heads or tails. a film could bomb or be a huge hit. stock X could make you a ton of money or bankrupt you. There’s no way to truly know. But the way people are wired to assess means we *think* that these things are predictable and that there are reasons beyond randomness for the success of Energy Drink “a” over Energy Drink “B”, for instance. What really works in these trials isn’t as mentioned above necessarily talent or ability but simple perseverance. Keep trying and you’ll succeed. The simple law of probability guarantees it.
Leonard Mlodinow, author of "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives"
So what does this have to do with wine ratings? well, Leonard Mlodinow, besides being a mathematician, is also a wine geek and he devotes one of the chapters in the book to the example of wine ratings. He discusses the creation of the 100 point scale that virtually every wine publication now employs to judge its wines and how inherently flawed that sytem is, based on one really simple fact: your tastes are different from anyone else’s. Your opinion of any wine is just as valid as any magazine’s.
He cites a nice example of how one magazine named Wine X (i forget the actual wine) their absolute best wine of the year and and awarded it a 100 point score but a rival publication named Wine X one of their absolute WORST wines of that year, awarded a mere 32 points or so (which is an abyssmal score, BTW). Same wine, same year, same everything, ASIDE from the panel of people assessing the wine’s supposed quality. If it truly was an “exceptional” wine, then the scores SHOULD have been the exact same across the board (in every wine magazine that rated it.) But there were tremendous disparities.
The sad part of this is that as a society of consumers, we need those ratings to feel like we’re making the “right” choice. I see this so many times. People are afraid to buy something that isn’t well-reviewed, or are really afraid that there’s a huge difference in quality between a chardonnay that scored 90 points and one that got, say, only an 88. But there isn’t. I used to think that way as well. If someone tells you something is good, you’re more inclined to think that way as well. Simple psychology, simple human communication.
But we need to throw that way of thinking away. It’s defeatist. YOU know what YOU like better than anyone else. We can’t be afraid to try new things. It’s hit and miss, like tossing a coin. sometimes you’ll like the weird $8 wine that catches your eye, sometimes you’ll despise it. You might end up pouring out the $85 bottle you bought and going with a $10 “backup” that you had on the rack ( i’ve done this myself!) When i help people with wines these days i always try to impart the fact that tastes are radically different and unique, and that a wine that i love may be a wine that you end up hating, and vice versa. I try to make people aware of that and hopefully to have a little more confidence in just trying something to try it. Reinforcement of YOUR opinion isn’t really all that important, because it’s YOUR opinion.
don’t be afraid. the magazines and the ratings aren’t the law. they’re almost nonexistent.
heads or tails. yes or no.
