Community Tasting Note
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Vinewanderers wrote: 77 points
March 21, 2020 - The 2015 Domaine Tempier Bandol is a deep garnet wine with initial aromas of green olives, green bell peppers, smoked meats, manure and composted leaves. Once open for a few hours, the funk softens, and the wine reveals more menthol, blackberries, and tobacco. The palate shows menthol, olive bread, black licorice, and dark chocolate. The tannins are still a little robust and there is medium acidity and medium alcohol. The finish is earthy and slightly vegetal (not unlike Sonoma county Syrah). This wine needed the full 3+ hours of slow oxidation to show its full potential.
Original Score: 65
Grade: C+ (Top 70%)1 person found this helpful 3,902 views
3 Comments
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kuumies commented:
3/22/20, 11:46 PM - So...do I understand correctly that you hated this wine?
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Vinewanderers commented:
3/23/20, 7:46 PM - We are aware of how most critics use their 100-point scales. But when these critics rarely give wines under 88 points, it really becomes more of a scale out of 12, or 15, or so. We like to use a fuller range of the 100-point scale. As a result, our scores are deflated. Our numeric scores drop by 6 points for every letter grade (see below). Our grades roughly follow a normal distribution around a median grade of C+ or B−. Our grading system is as follows:
A Range: “Superlative”
A+ 100
A 94
A− 88 (Percentile = approx. 95)
B Range: “Superior”
B+ 82
B 76
B− 70 (Percentile = approx. 55)
C Range: “Satisfactory”
C+ 64
C 58
C− 52 (Percentile = approx. 5)
D Range: “Unsatisfactory”
D+ 46
D 40
D− 34
F Under 34
When scoring a wine, we each give letter grades to four weighted categories: aroma (35%), palate (35%), balance (20%), and finish (10%). These letter grades are then converted into the numerical scores above, and our scores are then averaged. The final score is truncated, which determines the “grade.” It may be convoluted, but for us, this helps us more rigorously compare a large collection of wines.
We’ll post our method to our profile soon. In any case, we refrain from entering a CT numerical score. -
kuumies commented:
3/25/20, 6:44 AM - Thanks for the thorough explanation! I hope you all the best with it and I certainly wish that you will not wake up to realize one day that it is just the same system with different names for the grades :) Besides the methodology I applaud you for your the note which is very comprehensive.