Chronicle of the Unknown Taster

The Winemega Index

Users of the fabulous Winemega site can use it to create a simple quality index by which they can judge any Bordeaux vintage since 1997 with overall accuracy. I call it the Winemega Index (WI) and it is easy to calculate and quite revealing. Simply put, you look at the Winemega top 50 wines for the vintage. You scroll down to the last wine that received 90-points or higher and see where it ranked. Its rank becomes the WI. The year 2005 is the first year that all the wines in the top 50 received 90 points or more, thus 2005 gets a perfect score of 50. This means, to me, every small winery in Bordeaux has a shot at making great wine and this is a year to look for bargains from small fry.

This index works because all the scores on Winemega tend to be from the same blue chip wineries and are statistically derived from numerous tasters. Thus the whole thing is normalized and can’t help but represent the overall quality of a vintage. That said a look at all the values since 1997 reveals one thing clearly. We were scammed by the 2000 vintage as being the greatest in history. It appears not to even be the fourth greatest in a decade.

Here are the values for each vintage:

• Year (WI)
• 1997 22
• 1998 39
• 1999 19
• 2000 28
• 2001 17
• 2002 22
• 2003 34
• 2004 32
• 2005 50+

You can clearly see why 2003 was so pumped up and how it was “suggested” that it was better than 2000 – because it was. And apparently 2004 is better than 2000 and clearly so is 2005. So how did the best vintage in the history of Bordeaux come in fifth in a nine horse race after being the best in the history of Bordeaux? Someone should ask Parker and all the other shills.