Confirmation bias or value price point?

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Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/1/2024 2:05:12 PM

capnfutsal

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I just looked at my last reviews and most scores over the past few months have been around 90. Is this a confirmation bias on my part, or a real reflection of the value that I usually pay for? Or am I overthinking on this slow holiday?? :O

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/1/2024 2:15:45 PM

Blue Shorts

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The rating system is skewed. Most of us would not even buy wines that we would rate below the mid to high 80's, or even 90, so of course most of the ratings are in that range.

Personally, I only purchase wines that I would rate at 90 or above. Some, of course, are disappointments and I rate them lower. The range of good wines is only around 15 points in a 100 point system.

< Message edited by Blue Shorts -- 1/1/2024 2:17:50 PM >

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/1/2024 2:53:59 PM

JaynPam

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Probably a bit of both: a skewed system and confirmation bias. Also, I find that people often don't pay much attention to what the scores are supposed to mean. A score of 90 is supposed to be an excellent wine. It is possible that the wines you are drinking are all excellent...but are they really?? If they are, clue me in, especially if they are value oriented!

Also, your definition of excellent may be different from mine, and others. I rarely rate a wine a 90 as I feel most wines are very good and it would need to blow my socks off to be excellent.
Still, the ratings are fun, and do give me a clue about the wines.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/1/2024 3:10:01 PM

DoubleD1969

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Based on the notes that accompany the scores, there is definitely a bias. While most of us won’t buy a wine that was rated below 90, the bottle would still need to perform at that score. But bottles and palates can vary. The bottle may be in a dumb phase. Bottle may be over the hill. Bottle may have been stored poorly.

I’ve reached the conclusion that scores, including mine, are inherently flawed, which is why I no longer assign one. I’ll just write the notes.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/1/2024 5:51:16 PM

skifree

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It is always a good question to ask yourself when scoring - is this bottle of wine good, very good, excellent, or outstanding?

IMHO there is a bias towards scoring a wine similar to the way others have scored it - Oh look, the last 4 people have scored it a 92, that sounds about right.

Personally I appreciate a review that scores a wine an 88 but describes it in a way so that I know I would like the wine - "very good" really is praise.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/2/2024 9:56:20 AM

ChrisinCowiche

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I effectively use a 10-point scale, 85-95, maybe that is 11 points, but some wines do turn it up to 11. Those get a 95 from me. And like others have said, I venture to buy only wines that fit my palate and that I would score above 90. Buying from mostly known producers year after year can confirm that "home palate" and some inherent bias.

Some people can visit tasting rooms and write notes/scores on dozens of wines in a day, and I appreciate that, but I don't have the palate stamina or desire to taste that way. If it rates 90+, hopefully more like 92+, in a tasting room, I buy it and I'll rate it similarly later from my cellar. There is for sure a bias in tasting room environment, btw; friendly, relaxed, ready for GREAT wine!, so that is what your palate thinks it is getting, especially by the third or fourth (tenth?) tasting room of a day.

Over the holidays I bought a bunch of de Negoce wines, why I don't know exactly, but it has been a good experiment actually. My ratings on those so far have been 85-94, in my "normal" range, but also getting some honest (for me) wines in the sub 90 range. Still technically sound wines, so "good", but not very good and far from my best wines from my existing cellar. The bad news some of those I now have 11 bottles left, the good news, some of the better bottles, I now have 12+ bottles because I did overbuy on a few that were proven, by my own palate, as winners before they came up as case sales at end of year.

< Message edited by ChrisinCowiche -- 1/3/2024 12:55:14 PM >

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/2/2024 12:34:50 PM

DrBad

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I've said this many times before but will say it again: I pay for CT and my scores and reviews are mostly for me. I know what my scores represent and they are a good way to quickly peruse past bottles and decide if I want to buy more. My reviews can help decide if I should open the bottle or give it more time. I'll use others CT-ers scores and reviews for the same purpose, especially written reviews to get the current state of the bottle. Number scores are less useful for this.

Like Chris, I mostly know what I'm buying and so most of my scores will be in an expected range.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/2/2024 5:45:00 PM

grafstrb

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For the most part, once you've been at this hobby for awhile you get pretty good at buying wines that you end up liking.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 7:40:42 AM

Echinosum

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quote:

ORIGINAL: capnfutsal
I just looked at my last reviews and most scores over the past few months have been around 90. Is this a confirmation bias on my part, or a real reflection of the value that I usually pay for? Or am I overthinking on this slow holiday?? :O

Humans, including experts, are mostly not very good at assessing things consistently. Neither consistently with themselves, nor consistently with other experts. Confirmation bias is only one of the problems in achieving consistency. You would be a rare person if you avoided such problems in making assessments.

If this is a subject that interests you, and you are kind of well-informed layman that can read popular science/math/econ, then an excellent starting point on this subject is the book Noise: A flaw in human judgment by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel prize winner. I read this book and went, I wish I'd read this book 30 years ago. But as it was only published in 2021, I didn't have that option.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 8:32:43 AM

DoubleD1969

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quote:

ORIGINAL: grafstrb

For the most part, once you've been at this hobby for awhile you get pretty good at buying wines that you end up liking.

Your tastes haven't changed over time?

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 9:42:22 AM

grafstrb

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DoubleD1969

quote:

ORIGINAL: grafstrb

For the most part, once you've been at this hobby for awhile you get pretty good at buying wines that you end up liking.

Your tastes haven't changed over time?

They have, and you bring up a good point. Yes, I did have my fair share of purchased that I ended-up not liking on account of my tastes having changed. But they weren't bad purchases at time of purchase.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 2:10:48 PM

davo22

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The 100 point system is so fundamentally flawed. Not even sure how meaningful it is now, or maybe ever has been? My sense is a lot of individuals and wine critics/reviewers are just pulling numbers out of the air to fit their own view of how a score should be awarded. It's all pretty arbitrary. Seeing $12.95 wines get 97 point ratings is just absurd. Similarly seeing people giving wines they don't like (or where the bottle is flawed) a 50 is equally absurd. This is something I notice becoming far more frequent on CT and skewing down some scores.

The 20 point UC Davis system (as used by the Jancis Robinson team) where the 20 points are partitioned into individual objective assessments (colour, aroma, balance, etc.) probably produces a far more realistic rating/score and at least has some objectivity behind it. If I see a 20 point rating of 18 or 19 I have a lot more confidence that it's likely to be a pretty fine wine in comparison to seeing a 95 (pulled from some wine brochure) plastered on a label or store shelf.

I usually assess wines on the 20 point scale and then multiply by 5 when I have to give someone or CT a 100 point score.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 2:28:19 PM

ChrisinCowiche

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One of my favorite PacNW wine reviewers was Rand Sealy, and he used the 20 point scale. 17 and over were sure winners, 19+ were always stellar wines. Rand passed away last fall, but I always found my palate aligned with his and his descriptors were always on point.

It's a new year, so obviously worthy of another round of discussion on Points/No points.

I find value assigning scores a) for my own use/gauge of wines I want to re-visit, buy more or avoid and b) critics or other CT tasters that have similar palates/cellars. Sometimes I weed out CT tasters (50 or 100 points scorers), but the algorithm weeds those out anyway with enough scores, or subtract points with some critics (Jeb Dunnick most commonly for me), but I'll keep doing it and using them because it gives me guidance. Shelf talkers or scores printed on labels/stickers are worthless imo due to pay to play. So, I use some numbers, and not others.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 5:53:52 PM

khmark7

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quote:

ORIGINAL: grafstrb

For the most part, once you've been at this hobby for awhile you get pretty good at buying wines that you end up liking.

I dunno, Burgundy can be quite frustrating at times.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 6:13:46 PM

grafstrb

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quote:

ORIGINAL: khmark7

quote:

ORIGINAL: grafstrb

For the most part, once you've been at this hobby for awhile you get pretty good at buying wines that you end up liking.

I dunno, Burgundy can be quite frustrating at times.

Agreed 1000%, but that's because my pocketbook is unable to support my knowledge base in Burgundy. The QPR is so freaking poor in Burgundy that I've nearly completely given-up --- I'll still take a flyer here and there, but I'm well-aware that I'm almost always rolling the dice with far too little bankroll to back me.

< Message edited by grafstrb -- 1/3/2024 6:14:20 PM >

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/3/2024 9:32:45 PM

jmcmchi

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quote:

ORIGINAL: davo22

The 100 point system is so fundamentally flawed. Not even sure how meaningful it is now, or maybe ever has been?

I usually assess wines on the 20 point scale and then multiply by 5 when I have to give someone or CT a 100 point score.

A yes, flawed because it is at most a 50 point scale

B multiplying by 5 won’t work: a 17 isa very solid rating, way better than an 85 as used here

The 100 point scale seems to be based on the US academic scoring system, where anything below 70 is a fail…..by contrast, in Europe a 70 in my day was a top rating

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/4/2024 7:25:06 AM

Ibetian

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We’ve had score discussions many times, and to my knowledge no one has ever switched sides as a result of the debate.

I subscribed to Jancis’s Purple Pages for a few years some time ago. She used the 20-point scale, but rarely scored 20 or below 15 (the worst score I ever saw was for the 2003 Pavie, about 11 or 12, causing a kerfuffle with Parker who rated it 100) so she practically used a 5-point scale. And she liberally used + or -, so she fundamentally used a 15 point scale from 15- to 19+.

So granted the 100 point scale is really a 15-point scale, but so is the 20-point scale, at least as used by Jancis at that time. For the tiny sliver of the wine world that critics review, they seem to need about 15 degrees of freedom.

All scoring systems have flaws, as do most human creations. Until I retired a year ago, I worked with numbers all my life, so I find numeric scores quite useful. Yes, some folks are easy or tough graders. But on average, I find the CT consensus scores pretty helpful, along with the notes. One example: the trend in scores. If a wine that needs aging has its most recent several scores trending up, that’s a sign it is at or nearly maturity. Combined with info from the notes including decant time, I find this quite useful.

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/4/2024 7:51:14 AM

KPB

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I've had the same thought. My feeling is that on the whole, I judge wines based on what's in the glass and that my scores tend to be 89-100 because I pick carefully before buying. But sometimes I ask myself whether I'm drinking an 85 or 87 point glass of wine and just reflexively scoring it higher...

One thing that helps for me is to revisit the wine a day later from the partial bottle and see whether my opinion has changed overnight!

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RE: Confirmation bias or value price point? - 1/4/2024 7:58:38 AM

DoubleD1969

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I’m a numbers guy too, and I used to think that scores were a great way to quickly ascertain how the wines were drinking. Then I realize a lot of the scores were based on palates that didn’t align to mine, or didn’t match the notes, or were trying to project what it would be down the road, etc. I also realized that these were the same mistakes I was doing with my scores.

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