Either you are living on another planet or you make exceptional wine that gets buzz through visits and then word of mouth. You are the exception that proves the rule. On earth, every kind of product and service is being rated and ranked wiith numbers or one sort or another. With the rise of the Internet, this human characteristic to quantify is mushrooming. Even Amazon encourages its “members” to use the star system to evaluate their innumerble offerings.

A whole hell of a lot of people DO seem to need some “friggin” number to tell them that they like a wine. And in my experience, percentage-wise, a whole lot of commercial wine buyers are even more motivated by those numbers than consumers.

Yes, my bank established our credit line on fundamentals like a vineyard in a great site, efficiently developed with desirable varieties and well-farmed, like depth of grape growing and winemaking knowledge, controlled production costs, and quality in the bottle. But our bankers know as well as we do that our marketing efforts would be helped by a great tasting score.

A good score is more than a consumer guide – it is an invitation to the rest of the media to pile on. Often a good score is followed by more good scores, and maybe feature articles. A good score leads to media awareness, and that awareness gets discussed in wine circles – including by the newcomers on the interwebz. And especially in the circles of the gatekeepers who control consumer access to wines in the market.

Been watching this phenomenon for over 25 years. I can count the number of wineries that are sustainably profitable based on a 100% direct-to-consumer, zero media buzz business model on – oh, wait a minute – nope, can’t name one.

Anther foolish, self-fulfilling statement from a 100 0r 1,000-point rater. My itsy-bitsy wine company is becoming very well known without any scores. In fact, we all have a pretty good laugh in my wine world about the need for some numeric score by someone who knows NOTHING about cultvation or crafting of small-lot wine.

Steve, if I were a bank and all this winery had were high scores from two or three people, I’d kick their asses out in a heart beat and tell them to go get some solid reasons to loan. If you think of it from a bank perspective, you’ll see exactly how silly you look.

While you may have a command of the English language and you may be able to translate that onto your laptop in a format that people get, you’re out there mowing your lawn as your house is buring to the ground.

People don’t want some friggin number to tell them they like the wine. More and more and more visitors are out there doing their own research (visiting my tasting room) and buying lots and lots of my non-scored wine and taking it home to many little spots around this great Country. This is how to sell Sonoma County, not with some fucking number.

Give US a break.