Buy Wine Online
Welcome to wine lovers everywhere; we’ve got some extraordinary advice for those who want to buy wine online. The truth is that each and every bottle of wine available is actually produced from a very small batch. The same vineyard might yield many bottles in the course of a year, but how many of them are the same vintage, the same acidity, the same pH?
Many people choose to buy wine online for investment purposes. If you buy a young wine from a promising vintner—or, more probably, one that already has established a good track record—you can put your purchases away for a few years. Assuming you’ve made a good choice, your wine will be worth more at a later date. It will be more mature and wine lovers will not be able to find many bottles of that wine, at that vintage, floating around.
Vintners in the Bordeaux region originated the practice of selling wine futures. The process is spreading among oenophiles everywhere, and it is another way to invest in wine or even trade it. It begins with the first tranche, called En Primeur among the French, and refers to casks of wine released to journalists and wine buyers in general. A price is set for the wine, and with a successful wine each consecutive tranche of that same wine will bring more money.
Wine scores have become a popular and effective way for investors to participate in the wine market without knowing the first thing about a good bottle. And just as with any form of trading, prices can be inflated artificially. It behooves the serious wine lover, then, to know what he’s looking for before he decides to buy wine online—or anywhere, for that matter.
The late novelist Robert B. Parker initiated a scoring system that has been imitated and appreciated by many other experts. Parker’s idea was that the best possible score for a bottle of a classic, great wine would range between 95 and 100. During the testing, participants would have no idea of the brands they were experiencing; their scores resulted solely from their opinion of the wine and with no other influence.
Keep in mind that he gave every bottle a 50 for starters—just for all the trouble suffered by the grapes. (Remember Lucy stomping the grapes on the old I Love Lucy show?) Next, he scored it up to 5 points for its appearance and color.
Then he considered aroma and bouquet, which could merit up to 15 more points. He used the word “aroma” when referring to a new wine’s young smell. As the wine aged and gained character, the aroma developed into a bouquet.
An additional 20 points were dedicated to a wine’s flavor and finish. Parker qualified those terms as the wine’s intensity of flavor as well as its balance and its overall effect on the taster’s palate. Last but not least, a wine could earn its last 10 points depending on its overall quality and its potential for improvement with time.
Parker himself has said, however, that no numerical system can outweigh your own preference for a wine. When you buy wine online, you should read its notes so that you know what nuances to expect—an oak flavor from wooden casks, perhaps, or a tinge of peach or cherry in the grapes.
Many other wine connoisseurs utilize similar scoring systems of 1-100. Other popular rating techniques include a 20-point scale and a 5-star system. When you buy wine online, you should look for a vendor that offers one of these rating systems. You cannot judge by price alone.
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