Score magic

You hear about it, but you don't quite believe it until it happens to you.  

I refer, of course, to the 90 Point Effect.

Ever since the news of the high scores for our Soaves broke early Sunday, assisted by Jeff's instantaneous emails to everyone he knew in the biz, the phone calls and emails have been whirring in.  "I want two pallets."  "I'll start with 20 cases of this and 25 of that." And so on and so on.  Many of these breathless messages from people who had been giving our man in New Jersey the cold shoulder.

And suddenly the word allocation is in the air. 

Heady stuff indeed for a startup importer.

No, Christy, we won't forget our early friends and supporters.  But you better place your order soon.   

Comments

[Mr Taz]

I'm finding it very interesting to observe you going through this process. So many bloggers (you may know one or two) rail against the influence of critics' points. As a consumer, I find they serve the purpose of directing my attention to wines that I might otherwise overlook. It's a situation of "so many wines, so little time". There's a time and budgetary limit to how many wines one person can try. So I rely on favorite critics (including some of the above-mentioned bloggers who hate scores), trusted shop personnel, and frequent tastings to find wines I like, and want to buy and drink multiple times. Ultimately, I buy what I like to drink, regardless of published scores. But, you have to start somewhere.

I would expect good wine shops to understand this and respond as you describe to "new" high-scoring, well-priced wines like yours. I would, however, hope they taste first to confirm for themselves the validity of the score before buying two pallets.

And, yes, I have secured my "allocation" of your soaves through one of those NJ retailers :)

[Strappo]

Very good comment, Taz. The consumer should rely on a variety of sources of info, info which is derived by various methods, including the final outcome of scores.

Now that I'm in the biz, I have to say that I'm a lot more respectful of the folks who need them to sort out the huge amount of data surrounding wine.

I must say I've grown pretty tired of wine fundamentalists of either the Big Sweet Zin persuasion or the It Must Smell Like Chicken Shit persuasion. I mean, do you like the stuff? Can you afford it? Basta.