Help With Buying Wine

Wine Rating Services

If you enjoy wine but you are frequently uncertain as to what to buy, your best bet is to seek advice online by subscribing to a wine rating service.  Nearly all wine experts, with the exception of a few British holdouts, score wines using the 100 point scoring system.  Unless you are on a very tight budget, I would not buy anything below an 87.  Other possibilities are to build a relationship with an LCBO Vintages product consultant at your closest retail store.

Wine Align is a subscription service which provides a detailed product review of the bi-weekly Vintages release. Wines are rated by a panel of expert wine critics (John Szabo, David Lawrason, Sarah d’Amato and Michael Godel) using the standard 100 point scoring system. Also, Steve Thurlow publishes a monthly listing of his top 50 value picks on the LCBO general listing.  If reviewing their lists is too much of an effort, look into their Curated Cases program which makes the decisions for you.

The Wine Align product reviews are integrated with the LCBO’s inventory availability, which is updated daily, so it is very easy to set up your closest LCBO stores as favourites in your Wine Align settings in order to easily check the availability of any wines you may be interested in.  Periodically, Wine Align organize winemaker dinners for their subscribers.

The regular Vintages Release wine sampling sessions for wine reviewers were suspended as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and were never reinstated so reviews now take place after the Vintages Release instead of before and are somewhat dependent on the goodwill of agencies in providing samples.   As a result, the number of wines that the Wine Align team can review is now more limited.  However I have developed a partial solution for wines that they were unable to review.

The bi-weekly Vintages Release Catalogue publishes wine ratings from a wide variety of reviewers.  Based on a detailed review of comparative scores for the same wine, I have developed a conversion table below which indicates roughly how many points you would have to subtract from other reviewers’ ratings to calculate the corresponding Wine Align rating.  Where the differential for the other reviewer can vary widely, I have provided a range in addition to the average differential.

For those that primarily follow Wine Align ratings, this is a possible approach for figuring out what their rating would have been in situations where they have not provided one.  Please note that wine rating is an inherently subjective process and it is quite normal for raters to come up with different ratings for the same wine.

Vintage Assessments, compiled by Michael Vaughan, is another subscription service providing a detailed product review of the bi-weekly VINTAGES release. Ratings are based on a maximum of three stars ***. It also provides news of upcoming events.

Vivino

If you have enjoyed a wine at a restaurant or private household and want to buy some, the Vivino app can help you track it down if you can’t get the information any other way.  Once you’ve scanned the label, its image recognition software connects the photo to its database and tells you the wine’s rating based on customer reviews, and its average price.  Also, if you are at a restaurant and wondering which wine to pick, you can use Vivino to scan the wine list to see the rating and review of each wine on the list.  Vivino is free and both Android and Apple versions are available.

Vintage Wine Charts

Vintage wine charts tell you the average quality from the major wine areas by year.  You may find them useful if you are planning major acquisitions.  Of course, they are only a rough guide and won’t guarantee the quality of a specific wine.  Both Robert Parker and The Wine Enthusiast publish a detailed chart which is updated annually.