In reading the case for today's class it seems to me that the wine industry has traded one essentially arbitrary classification for quality (and therefore associated price) for another: The old growths classifications and now Parker's 100 point system. My point is not that the two "grading" mechanisms are the same, but only that two bottles that are equally well liked by the public/ your average (or even advanced) consumer can sell for different prices because of their classification, or score according to one set of taste buds.
I wonder what more "meritocratic" processes the industry could implement that might gain traction that could encourage the development of wines to meet the tastes of the consumers and not one person's (Parker). One potential would be to create scores that take an average of larger groups of critics to create an aggregate score, or better yet to score the wines not on a 100 pt scale, but on a rubric that gives a consumer more guidance as to what to expect and not just a seemingly objective (but entirely subjective) score or ranking.
I think this opens the door for a company like VinoVolo (who could utilize the data that they can collect about the consumer on their app) to more "truthfully" rank wines and give a consumer a better idea of the quality and type of wine they're about to consume or have consumed.
Nat - I love the idea of VinoVolo creating customized rankings based on past user preference. I also really like the idea of moving from a unitary standard (i.e., a number between 80 and 100) to a rubric that could rank wines across several spectrums (i.e., "value," astringency, regional prestige, fruitiness, price, etc.). If we think of critics as proxies for indications of expected consumer satisfaction, wouldn't such a rubric-based approach be a better (that is, more accurate) approach, since it would allow a consumer to pick a wine based on their personal preferences and according to the qualities that matter most to them?
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