The LUCA MARONI System: HIGH Scores for BAD Wine?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 เม.ย. 2023
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I use this wine key: Laguiole en Aubrac Wine Key Ebony
I have used this glass in this Video: RIEDEL Veritas Champagne
I have tasted the following wines in this Video:
2021 Fantini Calalenta Merlot Rosato Italy:
www.wine-searcher.com/find/fa...
2021 Galadino Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Italy:
www.wine-searcher.com/find/ga...
The 100 Point Scoring System (from www.robertparker.com):
96-100: An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase and consume.
90 - 95: An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
80 - 89: A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
70 - 79: An average wine with little distinction except that it is soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.
60 - 69: A below-average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.
50 - 59: A wine deemed to be unacceptable.
The modern 100-point wine rating system was championed by Robert Parker, who introduced it in the 1980s. Parker saw himself as a consumer advocate, who operated independently. You can say what you want about him, but I have never heard anyone make credible accusations about him being biased when reviewing wines and the wine advocate did not accept money from producers.
His rating system is now used by most wine publications and wine critics and wines are rated on a scale from 50 to 100. The wines that receive a rating above 95 generally represent the crème de la crème, the best of what this wine style has to offer.
While there are differences in taste between different critics and there are some that consistently score higher or lower - there is a consensus on what 90 or 100 points mean. However, one critic has highjacked the 100-point scale and has created his system: Luca Maroni.
Luca Maroni is an Italian wine writer who has been working in wine for a long time and developed a scoring system he calls: THE LOGISMA OF THE FRUIT-GRADE OF WINE. While most critics nowadays give scores for a wine based on their overall perception of its quality Maroni scores his wines based on the slightly weird formula of Consistency + Balance + Integrity which results in his Index of Pleasantness/Fruit-grade.
Consistency and Balance are about the perception on the palate of the wine’s concentration and the balance between sweetness and acidity, tannins, etc. Integrity describes the wine's “purity” and fruitiness.
Each element can score between 1 and 33 points and a wine can get up to 99 points in total - but he doesn’t give 100 points because no wine can be perfect - which is in my opinion a bit of a silly argument as in this system the perfect wine then receives 99 points. I must admit that it took a while until I understood his scoring method and I am still not really sure whether I could score wines based on his system - or whether anyone can. What I am pretty sure of though, is that most consumers don’t know how this system works. And I am also pretty that his scores are not even close to reality.
I went through his last 1000 reviewed wines and exactly 33% or one-third scored above 95 points and ONLY 28 wines - 28 out of 1000- less than 3% of all wines received a score below 90 points. And now you might think: Maybe he had some amazing tastings in the last months? Nope … He is tasting way more entry-level wines than most wine critics and amongst the best-rated products are wines that I would not mind drinking but certainly not the best wines in the world.
There is quite a lot of other information on his website that I would argue with, like for example that wine does not get better with age. His scores are available for free, but he does not offer any tasting notes. Instead, he gives suggestions on when a wine like the Vecciano Rosato should be consumed- according to him as an Aperitif for a romantic dinner on a quote “Great event”, Christmas, Easter, or New Year's Eve as a “Morning wine” or an Afternoon wine. He also suggests that this dry Rosé wine goes well with Appetizers, Meat. Desserts, Fish. And Main course - so everything basically.
FINALLY! Somebody is standing up against this Madness 😳😳
Thank you, Konstantin, for taking a stand against the biased and corruption that is tarnishing the wine world. I've come across the Luca Maroni system, and upon inspection, I immediately recognized red flags - when it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Critics like Maroni tend to create speculative value as opposed to representing the true intrinsic value of the wine - his method of measure is purposely confusing to not lead the truth that it's entirely hogwash. In terms of other critics - my main go-to wine critic for many years was James Suckling, and while I often agree with his marks on Italian wines, there is a clear bias he has for South American wines. Many of his scores for South American wines are WAY off base and not at all deserving of super high scores. As a result, I have lost some trust in his scoring. It would be interesting if you made a video where a RP and JS scores have a large gap, and you do a taste test to see which score is more representative of the actual quality of the wine - and for my pleasure - for different regions, including Italian and South American lol. You and Peter Koff are the BEST and MOST TRUSTED sources of credible wine reviews from everyone that I have followed over the past 20 years. It would be SO amazing if you and Peter did a video together - and also, bring along Jay, of course lol. Jay is also a trusted source of valuable information.
I take every JS score and subtract 4 points from it. For accurate scores I look to Antonio Galloni or the CellarTracker average.
@@SethKBaldwin Yes, totally agree, 4 points as a minimum! I think it's more important to find a "critic" that your taste aligns with and then follow their recomendations. Wine professionals give so much great information and then are let down by a few money grabbers.
@Charlie--The problem with the Advocate is there are many tasters now(like the Spectator), so you have to verify all of them to your palate.
@@SethKBaldwin--I find that both Suckling & Galloni have the same problem with Non-Italian wines. They want all regions to taste like Italian. Both like unripe, Green flavors.
It would be the same problem if you loved Bordeaux or Red Burgundy, and served them to California Cab & Pinot Noir lovers. They would say, "meh"
Oh man! A video where it's unknown the score Parker and Suckling gave and you give your score and then see what they rated it. That's exactly what Konstantin should do!
Very inspiring, thank you. I would just like to add - as an Italian - that in our country Luca Maroni's scores have very very little relevance and consideration. No one considers them to be *really* trustworthy (except the wineries that get awards, of course).
That's true, as well as his wine descriptions are hilarious.
Jacopo, when can we expect a new podcast? Looking forward👍🏽
@@RenatoLaino Within the year!
Luca Maroni is considered totally untrustable in Italy. More, many sommelier or wine experts openly laugh about his job. Nevertheless, as you, Konstantin, pointed out, he seems to run for help all the cheap brands who need some kind of "medal" to wear in order to get high visibility in the supermarket. Thanks for pointing out this tricky habit.
I thought such "fake scores" cost mass-product wineries 1000s or 10,000s of EUR, and it's quite disheartening that they buy the certificate for literally 50-100 EUR. I thought selling one's reputation would be more expensive than that.
@@KnightMirkoYo maybe selling -as you say- "one's reputation" would be sold at a higher price, while selling hundreds or thousands reviews results in a cheaper, more affordable price for the winery and in a big business for the "wine expert".
That's really sad.
No they don’t
I've never tasted any wines rated by Maroni and after this video I probably won't. Thanks Konstantin.
You might have to rule out Italian wines altogether then, Luca Maroni is close to omnipresent in Italian wine. I quickly became wary of his recommendations because, as Konstantin points out, his ratings are insanely high all the time. I find a Vivino user rating usually more reliable, but you do have to look at how many users rated the wine: Ignore the 5s, ignore the 1s, ignore the people who rated without writing anything, read the 3s and 4s, and if the overall impression is that this could be a wine you'd like, give it a go. It usually works for me.
@@CzarDodon Vivino has been my guide for years. For my inexperienced palette, any wine around 3.5 is almost always good, and above 4 is heaven dew (given't there's enough reviews). I also feel that Vivino rating resembles price-value more so than the absolute quality. 4.0 for a 2 EUR wine is not the same as 4.0 for a 50 EUR wine.
@@KnightMirkoYo good point about price range, what you're will to spend and what you expect to get are factors that play off each other in rating a wine, I can't afford to spend hundreds of euro for a bottle of wine, so I guess my taste is adjusted to the lower end price wise
Haha, exactly! I've told to my colleagues at work, whatever Luca rates below 99 might be undrinkable :D
Given how many cigars James Suckling smokes, im surprised anyone trusts his taste buds at all at this point
he gives such high scores its almost worthless
So happy to see somebody call this stuff out. When I first got into drinking wine I got burned by 1 or 2 "Luca Maroni" bottles before I realized what was going on. James Suckling also seems to rate much higher than other reviewers on a consistent basis. I mostly trust Robert Parker and Vinous.
This makes so much sense now OMG
I had no idea he used a completely different scoring system. When we tried a primitivo at work with a Luca Maroni 99 points badge, I just assumed he hadn’t been spitting the day he tried this wine and by the time he got to it he was blind drunk.
Very informative video. I liked how you included some statistics, when you only score 3% of wines below 90 points, it's clear that your 90 point score doesn't mean much. Of course it's not just Luca Maroni, there are other critics and wine competitions that score in similar ways.
When you get more experienced, you kind of get a feeling for what critics and producers you can trust to some degree, but especially for new wine drinkers those high scores from some critics can be very misleading.
Thank you Konstantin...as Italian that love wines I found your video really good and precise....helping people to understand in a better way all sides of wine's world
Thanks for the heads up! You've certainly convinced me, and I am one who does need guidance on these things. On that point may I take the opportunity to say how useful it can be to read through the comments.. There are some knowledgeable folks out there! Nice one Konstantin. 🌟👍
Thank you for doing this. As I was falling in love with wine and trying to learn, critic scores were a useful guide on where to spend what little budget I had. Maroni duped me a few times before I figured him out. Here in Canada, they translate his notes, and they are also egregiously misleading. It is common for him to say “one of the best wines of the year” for poor quality wines. He should be ashamed of himself, and any retailer that publishes his scores should also be ashamed for misleading consumers.
Excellent video.
Thank you for doing this. Very helpful for casual American drinkers who might be swayed by the apparent sophistication of a European critic!
Not just casual American drinkers but everyone in Europe too, these point awards are out of control in France, where you can find even two or three appearing on the bottle.
Thanks a lot for the voice out as I m consulting an Italian wine specialist company and they often get high scores for bad wines, and those high scores were so unreasonable for the price and I based the standard of quality in the IMW what a good wine should taste like and look for. Thanks very much for your video.
Great information. Thank you and brave to call it out.
Konstantin… Thank you for this good information!
Thanks for pointing this out. Very helpful.
Thanks for trying to put an end to this absolutely mad rating system Konstantin ! About time somebody said it :)
Love good consumer advice. Thank you!
Great post - thanks for telling it as you see it.
There is a useful side of the Luca Maroni system: avoid online resellers that put Maroni’s higher voted bottles on price discounts.
(it’s interesting that at the biggest wine business fair in Italy, Vinitaly in Verona, wineries that remain under his "influence" were completely empty…)
I've followed (well: tried to follow) Maroni from day one, I've stopped after a couple of years. Nice to see you agree with me.
Konstantin, one of the greatest aspects of your channel is that you always keep things real. As an example, you are down to Earth enough to admit when you get something about a blind tasting or a wine in general incorect and you keep rolling. It's nice to see someone with your title(s) who remains so humble. As for the video, this was a great topic to talk about as I review wine from the average person's point of view and I always tell my followers that if I like a Cabernet Sauvignon and they like the same wine then we might have a similar palate and they could probably go by my thoughts in the future on that particular varietal. If however, we disagree on a wine then give me another shot and if we still disagree then perhaps you might look elsewhere for reviews on that varietal as our palates are different. I think that just like any other profession, there are those who happen to know important people, play the game, and are "initiated" into the "professional" circles so to speak, and those who don't play the game and are thrown to the side or are ostracized. As an example, I almost always (95% of the time) disagree with WIne Enthusiast (WE). There is rare times I will taste a wine and be head over heels in love with it but WE will rate it at 87 points or even a bit lower while other publications or reviewers will rate it about where I placed it. As for James Suckling, I disagree with him only about 90% of the time. Anyway, I think I have said enough. I enjoyed the video and look forward to your next one.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and calling out ‘unexperts’. I trust your judgement. Lucky we don’t have his rating here in Australia.
I just bought a bottle of 2021, Vecchia Cantina, Rosso DI Montepulciano, Tuscana for $16.00 at a Total Wine store in California. The front label was incorporated with a one-inch gold circle with a 94 point rating from Luca Maroni, like the Galadino wine in your vid. I asked the floor manager about the 94 rating on the label and asked who is rating this wine? He said "oh, it's Luca Maroni." I said, "who the hell is Luca Maroni?" He said "he's an Italian wine rater who sells high ratings." After reading all these responses here and elsewhere online, from now on, anything with the Luca Maroni point score, recommendation or name on it will be avoided, pretty simple. Thanks for you review.
Great video, please do more on this
Nice info - thank you for this video and as allways your great commitment to god wine
This was an awesome video. I drank some TERRIBLE wines that received 99 points from Maroni, most of them were from the Puglia region
Brilliant video.
Great video! 💯💪
Very informative! I've been wondering what the deal is with those "99-points" golden stickers I've seen around. Usually not a sign of a very serious producer. They aren't allowed on bottles sold in Norway, whether they are Robert Parker's or any other's.
Thanks for that, I got a few bottles with a Luca Maroni score. Now I treat his 99 points as a warning to run away from the bottle
His 99pt Sauvignon Blanc from Casata Mergè in Lazio is a fantastic wine.
Luca Maroni's scores all over my local wine store. They also use some of his scores quite often at some of the daily closeout wine sites. I'm glad you've made this video, I got burned a few times with his scores thinking I got a great value only to be highly disappointed.
6:32 "We'll certainly use this" 👀
Thanks, Konstantin for sharing this grounded point of view on the scores from Maroni. He is known to be profilic on 99pts for his reviews... it is just sad how it murks consumer choice and takes the credit away from great wine producers, while the retail is incentivized to support it (because scores "sell"). 😕
As long as those suggestive adhesive tags with totally subjective, personal, arbitrary scores and tasters’ or magazines’ names will be tolerated alongside the wine labels on the bottles, despite an express prohibition by the law (at least, the Italian law) as ‘laudative mentions’, it will always go this way. The mentions are banned on brochures and websites as well, but apparently not on bottles, which is frankly a scandal nobody talked about as of today. And a ‘97/100 by XY’ tag is indeed a ‘laudative mention’, isn’t it? Or should it be considered as an ‘information to customers’, lol? Someone thinks we’re a bunch of idiots, I guess.
Well, yes they know that we are a bunch of idiots because we are 😉
It's marketing and many people react to scoring labels even though we might be aware of the fact that it's just a fake label. It's called cognitive dissonance...
Well done. I don't usually take much notice of scores. Much prefer tasting notes, drinking windows, etc.
Thank you for speaking up on this. In my mind, wine critics’ scores certainly help push sales but it has to be grounded in integrity. I’ve had a 99-point Nero d’Avola and it was a fruit bomb that came in a heavy bottle. I liked it, but I was a beginner in wine then! Would love to see what you think of other influential critics like JS and RP, whether the scoring system needs an overhaul (a 20-point scale favoured by Peter Koff MW and Jancis Robinson, perhaps?)
One of my problems with the UC Davis 20-Pt System is the points they give for "clarity". Stripping the wine of its essence, by filtering it was the Only way to get 20 points. When that scoring system was invented, they were teaching students to make wine "by the numbers". Pick the grapes at Exactly 23.5% Brix, whether the grapes were physiologically ripe or not. Add acidity, or over-macerate as long as the chemists & scientists were happy.
Never heard about him..will remain in the limbo...thanks
Good to know that not every rating is equal! I have a request. Through the reviews that you’ve done in the past, I’ve discovered some amazing wines (thinking of the Dido “la universal”). Can I find more of those recommendations? Or can you maybe add a short segment to your videos ;)
Could not agree more ! Well done and well said :-)
interesting video! and thanks for standing up for all of us wine-nerds ^_^
You are spot on Konstantin, I have bought rubbish Italian wines based on Maroni's ratings. Thanks for exposing his system. Keep up the good work.
Generally speaking all the rating scores are marketing tools (in some case they also have a financial relevance - think of the en primeur in Bordeaux - exactly like the rating agencies overlook (in a certain way a rating by Robert Parker or Wine Spectator has similar effects to those by Fitch or S&P). When talking about Luca Maroni ... gotta say in Italy is not exactly considered as an influential critic.
Thank you for sharing this about the Luca Maroni scores! The truth is always in the bottle.
Great job on calling this out Konstantin. I’ve personally never come across him, but I think alarm bells would already be ringing for me if a wine is sub-4 EUR and getting a 97 point rating! To your point, I shudder to think what has gone into the bottle if they are able to economically make a wine that cheaply. Also, you’d have thought super market buyers would be wise to this….
Thank you Konstantin for putting LM scores onder scrutiny. The scoring is so inconsistent and random that I was wondering if such scoring was illegal.
I shake my head at some of what I term as "cash for good ratings" systems.
As soon as I see a bottle label that has a "high points' sticker attached to it, or here in Australia one may see stickers of gold/silver medals, you have to take that with a pinch of salt!
But, yes, I do worry about consumers who get fooled by it all.
Cheers, Marc D
James Halliday ratings for Australia wines are reliable in my opinion
Good to know! Thank you.
He(Luca) has hijacked a commonly accepted reference to school grades to fit his narrative. I assume he has his own scale measuring the temperature of the air. And that he(Luca) invented the "question mark" and the modern-day calculator.
Gesundheit! This is the best video ever. I give it a score of 100. Note: I have also drank bad wines with high scores from Parker, Suckling, Peñín, Decanter, Atkin...Who says their palate resembles mine? Do they have the same taste in clothes, books or food than I do? No. So why would we have to agree in wine scores then? My suggestion is do your own (blind) tasting and decide. Konstantin, thanks for the video.
Thank you for dedicating a whole video for this topic. I wrote it a few months ago under one of your videos about wine scores that, for me, the greatest fake is LM.
I stumbled upon his shitty points a while ago. I looked him up after I made the unpleasant experience of drinking a 99p wine. It was the worst wine I ever had and poured it into the sink immediately.
Meanwhile I know that you must avoid LM rated wines, especially with high scores...
I thought he was the Parker scoring system 😅, thank you Konstantine Baum
very enjoyable! never heard of the guy but what a racket.
Thank you!
The really tragic thing about Luca Maroni is that he's making me ( an probably many other wine enthusiasts) just automatically dismiss the wines that use his score to be promoted ( webshops but also shelves )
I'm pretty sure I'm missing out on some good ones, but the fear of getting another generic vanilla jambomb is just too damn big...
Good job, Maroni!
Luca Maroni's evaluations are fantastic - as a contra-indicator!
Thank you for this post! I can now better explain why I do not trust "Luca Maroni"
For a period of time, in my region of Canada (Ontario), the stores were seek many bottles with LM ratings. A quick search will turn up how inconsistent it is with other reviewers. Thank for clarifying the system he uses. I think there was some push back from consumers and LM ratings have largely been reduced.
They are very much still around and in vogue - the Nero d'Avola from the last Vintages Release being but one (very middling) example.
Thanks kostantin! Now i understand why I wasn't impressed by that bottle I bought at the supermarket with 99 points on the label....
The only thing I have heard of something like the Maroni system is the Mollydooker Winery in the McLaren Vale in Australia. They decide which grapes/wine goes into which bottling based on fruit weight, which is the weight of the fruit on the winemaker's palate. I understand that it is how far down the palate the fruit flavors go. The top bottlings have a 90% or better "fruit weight". This system is only used at this one winery to the best of my knowledge.
i saw a wine in netto today that was rated 98 points and i thought to myself: that seems incredibly high for a discounter wine (4.99€), then i see this video in my recommendations. thank you for confirming my first thoughts.
Thanks for doing the video. I was already onto Maroni from the first time I tried one of his 97 pt wines and looked him up. Here in the US, I feel like James Suckling is doing an even more insidious job of destroying the 100 point system. Horrible score inflation. I think Suckling does have a good palete and knows a LOT more about wine than me, but scoring so many wines in the 90s is obviously self-serving. Even if he is not directly compensated in some way for scoring higher, the fact that he does means that his reviews and name are all over the place. Generally, I have to discount his scores by at least 3 points when making a buying decision if I even take his scores into consideration at all. Like Maroni, he is pushing more informed and honest reviews out of the discussion space.
Suckling needs those 90 pointers to stock up his 90 points wine bar.
Yeah I also commented about Suckling he seems to be doing it as well and his scores are consistently higher than other reviewers on wines that just dont deserve it.
What will retailers choose? A shelf talker at 90 points or one that says 95 points for wine? The market is vulnerable to score inflation. All we can do is read the tasting note and slowly align our palate with one or two critics who seem to closely match ourselves.
@@marknelson8724 If it was truly about palate.
Suckling seems to at least be consistent in his ratings. If you just subtract 4-5 points from his rating it's probably spot on.
I'm Italian and...thank you.
Thank you!!
I use the 99 point scores to indicate wines to avoid, I have purchased some in the past and couldn't understand how they scored so high and thought I was the problem. Cheers
As a wine pro, thank you for making this. My employer proudly features wines with high scores from Luca Maroni, and while there are rare exceptions, most of the wines are middling at best, unbalanced, with sweetness far more than is needed given the style. I personally believe he is singlehandedly responsible for the big push towards high residual sweetness (>15g/L) wines from Southern Italy in our market. Honestly, I think there is an inverse relationship between the quality of the wine and the Maroni score - wines with 91 points will have acidity, appropriate levels of sweetness, and overall have more balance.
First there was the Parkerization which led the market to more bald wines and in recent years the number of extremely rich, intense and sweet red wines is increasing to an almost unbearable amount. And that's not only southern Italy. I always see IGP wines from France that have the same issue. They most likely are not allowed to carry a appellation label because of residual sugar.
For my taste that's just crap and I really hope this ugly trend will be over soon
Thank you as always for your video! I personally really dislike wine scores; I find them to be both very subjective and also biased. 100 point wines do not need a sticker on the bottle. People know the wine is great based on reputation, price, and personal experience. I do sell a lot of approachably-priced wines and if I come across a wine with score stickers/medallions, I immediately know the wine is not as good as what it claims to be. For example, a Duckhorn Three Palms Vineyard Merlot may be rated 100 points; I cannot believe some regional Toscana IGT that is light, reductive, and lacking substance is also in the neighborhood of 100 points.
As an Italian wine enthusiast I am deeply ashamed from Luca Maroni.
When I see wines scored by Maroni I usually don't buy them.
A wine store I frequent in NZ, has many Italian wines. Quite a few rated by Maroni, and often rated in the high 90s. Immediately knew this was bogus.
Hey Konstantin! Can you do a video about other wines than grape wines? Like comparing strawberry, blueberry, cherry or even banana or guava wine?
Einfach als Idee :)
Liebe Grüße
Konstantin already did that. It’s an interesting video as well. th-cam.com/video/d13wVlWHwwk/w-d-xo.html
I had actually never heard of this guy. Which I guess is a good thing as the places where I buy wine don't display his scores :)
Brilliant video sir 👍... I've never heard of him 😂
I went to a Luca Maroni event in Hamburg and after 3 days i still had a taste of vanilla in my mouth...
Hi Konstantin. Interesting video. I think you’re spot about Luca Maroni and how he can mislead consumers. His Wine ratings are laughable. I had a wine he had scored 99 points a while ago and it wasn’t worth drinking.
Thank you
I haven’t seen these scores at Aldi in the USA (part of Aldi Süd; Aldi Nord has owned for a while now another seller of cheap wines, Trader Joe’s). I’d say that the scores occasionally posted on the shelf next to wine at my local Aldi here in Florida are a bit optimistic but not ridiculously high. Rarely over 92 or so, usually in the 80s.
Have to remember we are talking about personal taste. Also, can we really make a meaningful distinction of 1 or 2 points? Tasting notes, especially re actual flavor components in the mouth, are the most useful to me. Aroma is nice, but flavor is what I drink wine for.
Great video! What are your thoughts on rating inflation in general? There’s an abundance of 96+ rated wines nowadays, with one of the most egregious being James Hallyday from Australia. Would love to hear your take
James Halliday's points are inflated but are okay if you take that into account. The best Australian reviews by far are on The Wine Front. People who follow them don't completely disregard Halliday, we just subtract 3-4 points. The Wine Front is amazing though, well worth subscribing.
Could u also talk about online wine retailers like weinfürst etc and rate their selection? :)
Great video as always Konstantin! As someone who works in a job selling and recommending wine to consumers, it saddens me that so many people are easily swayed by critic scores on shelf talkers that the agency sends to market their products. That goes double for critics like Luca Maroni, especially when he seems to give every overextracted off-dry red from Italy a high score. I've maybe only enjoyed a two wines total that I'd ever recommend to customers (funnily enough, his low 90 scoring wines were far better than his highest scores!) but he has so many misses, but as long as people keep holding his website reviews up as high quality marketing he'll only continue to burn wine consumers looking to actually buy more.
However, I have seen him give far more reasonable reviews when writing for other publications like Robert Parker's Wine Advocate so he's not necessarily a hack, but he is an obvious opportunist when it comes to his own name brand.
I've been reading and listening to quite a bit of content on wine appreciation and quality of late. I recently went to a wine megastore (I live in Northern California) and picked up a couple cases of wine from a variety of regions -- California, Bordeaux, Argentina, Italy. I find that -- usually -- if I purchase wines rated in the high 90s by the top names (Advocate, Enthusiast, Spectator, Suckling and Dunnuck), I'm rarely disappointed. But I picked up a couple bottles of St. Giorgio IGT Super Tuscan -- rated 97 by Maroni - and was excited because it appeared to be a find at $15. I was surprised to find it was barely worth the price, let alone the rating. I had never heard of Maroni before. Knowing what I know now, I'll avoid these recommendations altogether. One question for Konstantin and other folks on this thread: what do you think of the Decanter ratings? What about the awards themselves?
Very Interesting
Danke Konstantin. Zu oft habe Ich auch gleiche erfahrungen mit Maroni Weine gemacht. Here at the LCBO in Ontario Maroni stickers are on too many bottles. Luckily there are still some good product consultants at these stores to guide you. Until next time….
Thanks Konstantin for exposing this scam for what it is. This waterfall of high end false points has been bothering me for a long time now. Well done!
I tend to avoid a wine with Luca Maroni 99 points sign on. Thanks for the video.
Absolutely amazing breakdown of Luca Maroni's so-called wine rating system- I once bought a Barolo he rated 94, which I found to be absolutely disgusting, nowhere remotely near the quality one expects from a Barolo, much less one that's in the 94+ range.
I laugh everytime i see a LM 99 pointer. We literally refer to him as Luca Baloney 😂
Thank you for this video. Luca Maroni has lost all credibility with me, after I bought several 98 pointers in heavy bottles which underwhelmed. My favorite wine shop refuses to display any scores.
I am Luca maroni fan. I use him as guideline to my wines I buy. That said not everyone is as good as he says, but I have been happy more often than not. I also buy Italian wine not rated by him.
So all of those who dislike you wouldn’t buy his rate wine anyway.
Some agents/importers in Ontario love the inflated and laughable scores from Maroni so the LCBO will happily stock these for unwitting customers. It’s such a joke.
Its all about "the scale" 😂
I 😮am not so sure of the 100 point system anyhow, most wines are in the 75-95 range so probably we could remove the lower 50.... then I think Luca Maroni is the low price wine critic, so an excellent wine at Aldi is targeted for those buyers. It means though, a typical solid wine is going to be scored about 150-200 with his scale.
Interesting video, Konstantin!
My problem is not with robert parker but with the wine maker and the "parkerisation" of wines, modifying the product to suit one persons taste to get a high score and command a higher price.
For me, Jancis Robinson is my go to. And yourself of course!
Great video. Now do James Suckling.
I've found that Wine Spectator and Robert Parker are the most trusted. Anyone else have an opinion on the most trusted critics?
In general, tasting notes are more important than scores. But certainly, high scores do grab one's attention. Still, I'm always skeptical of any scores above 95 points, especially when the wine is less than 20 US$$. Don't know that I've seen Maroni scores (or maybe just didn't pay any attention to them), but I pretty much ignore JS and Decanter scores, in general (although, I do still read their tasting notes).
Hi Konstantin,I 100%agree with you.and…why he give a 99% to a Italian wine…??? Very curious…😜…regards from Uk
Thank you for another great video. Without trying to push you to hate on a critic of reputation, Suckling’s approach of liking and rating most wines a few points higher than most of his colleagues is certainly also a questionable m/o. His ratings seem generally strangely often close to the top of the mountain. But while producers probably love finding their just good wines suddenly getting really great ratings, and the economical customer all of a sudden feeling excited about drinking wines in the 90ies ratings, Suckling consequently loses room for nuance and hard earned reward for an outstanding wine.
While you have commented on your own point approach in the past, it would be interesting to know, what a high rating means to you given the fact that for example certain regions are producing far more complex products than others.
Does the greatest vinho verde get as high a score from you as the greatest white Burgundy by virtue of being the best in its category? Or if not, how do you mitigate differences in your point award approach?
Of course many more questions could be asked.
Anyway, it is always a joy watching your videos!
Could not agree more ❤
Recently I find many wines with some sort of gold/silver medals on their labels, it seems that every single wine won some kind of competition...
So happy you made this video. I bought a case of 99 point LM wine a few years ago and it was absolute garbage (in my personal opinion obviously)