How we review
Every wine on Winetrust carries a score out of 100. This page explains where that number comes from, so you can decide how much weight to give it.
Nothing below 87 is listed.
We taste more wine than we sell. A wine that scores below 87 under our rubric doesn’t get a lower shelf or a clearance tag — it doesn’t appear at all. The catalogue is the shortlist. And if a wine we already list falls below 87 when we re-taste it, it is removed, with the note published for anyone to read.
The scale.
Wines are scored against a fixed, weighted rubric — not impressions:
- Flavour — 50 points. Nose 15, palate 25, finish 10.
- Structure — 25 points. Acidity, tannin, alcohol, oak.
- Balance & harmony — 15 points. Whether the wine works as a whole.
- Presentation — 10 points. Condition, colour, packaging at the price point.
The total is computed from the component scores. Nobody types “94” into a box.
What the number tells you to do.
A Winetrust score is purchase advice, not decoration:
- 93+ — Cellar-worthy. Buy a case. Exceptional quality, suited to drinking now or ageing.
- 90–92 — Buy a case with confidence. Excellent wine. A confident purchase, without reservation.
- 87–89 — For the table, not the cellar. Good wine for drinking now — not one to age.
- Below 87 — you’ll never see it.
How we taste.
Minimum two bottles per wine, on separate occasions, scored independently and averaged. If the bottles disagree by three points or more, we source a third before publishing. Every review carries one named reviewer — a person, not a panel — and we note how the wine behaved over the days that followed, because that is how you’ll actually drink it.
We taste unblind, and we say so. We know the producer, the vintage and the price, because context — the region, the year, the winemaker’s intent — informs an accurate reading. We would rather be transparent than perform objectivity. Where a bottle was provided by a producer or importer rather than purchased, the review discloses it.
Price never touches the score.
The score measures quality only. Whether a wine is worth its price is a separate judgement, published beside the score as a value rating — Poor, Fair, Good or Exceptional Value — so a $30 triumph and a $300 benchmark are each read on their own terms.
Scores age, like the wine.
Key wines are re-tasted twelve months after the original review. If a wine has moved two points or more, the score is updated — and the original stays in the review’s history, in public. If it has fallen below 87, it leaves the catalogue.
Keeping ourselves honest.
Score inflation is the quiet disease of wine reviewing. So we publish our target distribution: roughly 40% of reviews at 87–89, 40% at 90–92, 15% at 93–95 and 5% at 96 or above — and we audit the spread annually, in public. If more than a third of our reviews are landing at 93+, the problem is our scoring, and we’ll say so.
Every wine scored. Every score explained. Every bottle answered for.
