Jancis Robinson tastes Naked Wines

I got to see a lot of British friends while I was on Naked Wines UK Tour this summer.  Even Jancis Robinson, the queen bee herself attended our London tasting.  And she had exceptionally positive things to say about the innovation at Naked Wines and also the quality of wine.

Overall quality of Naked Wines

“There are no duds, even if most of the offerings are of solid rather than mind-blowing quality – but the range is really interesting (see, for example, boutique Chileans, dry Germans, the stunning value Strathbogie Pinot and Slovenians). And if you search for GV (good value), you will find some VGV and the odd VVGV. But please be warned that not all of these wines will still be available. You can check at www.nakedwines.com.”

Jancis correctly points out that the entire range at Naked is solid quality and there are many hidden gems with very good value.  She also acknowledges that the listed prices are 30% higher than the discounted price available to the thousands and thousands of Naked Angels, paid members of the site.

Impression of the Winemakers

“We were allowed in early at the beginning of the tasting session and it was rather sweet to see this collection of mainly young men, all in the same Naked Wines T-shirt, chatting excitedly with each other, rather like freshers on their first day at university.”

I did like this bit about how the winemakers (myself included) were standing about the room before the tasting like a bunch of first years at university. 🙂  It’s a remarkably accurate description as the whole tour reminded me a lot of college.  Roaming around a new environment with a bunch of great people I just met.  Free shirts.  A bit of drinking. 🙂

O’Vineyards Tasting Notes

I don’t cater my winemaking to specific journalists, but it’s always really nice to hear that very accomplished wine pros who have been around the block like what I’m doing. 🙂

O’Vineyards, Trah Lah Lah 2008 IGP La Cité de Carcassonne 16.5 Drink 2011-2015
Made by Ryan and Joe O’Connell. 65% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon. Deep crimson. Nicely integrated. Sweet start and attractively dry, lively finish. Still a bit chewy but chock full of life. 13.5%
£12.99 Naked Wines
O’Vineyards, O’ Syrah 2008 IGP La Cité de Carcassonne 16 Drink 2011-2014
Dry and minerally. Really rather smooth and well mannered.
£14.99 Naked Wines

And I’m not the only one she liked. As mentioned above, no duds in this tasting. The Languedoc did exceptionally well as we represent an important part of the Naked Wines portfolio. Winemaker Ben Darnault got one of the many Good Value awards in Jancis’ notes for his highly drinkable “Very Languedoc” Minervois. And Hegarty-Chamans put forward some nice wines that raised her brow. Always interesting things to drink in the Languedoc. 🙂

As some of you know, I’ve been doing semantic analyses of wine reviews we receive online.  Mostly, I’ve used this data to make silly computer-generated wine reviews.  But today I’m going to use the data to talk a bit about word clouds and word frequency.

the most used words in 100 point parker rated wines, compiled by tom wark of fermentation blogRobert Parker’s most used words

Robert Parker is one of the most influential wine critics on earth and he popularized a one hundred point rating scale which dominates the US wine market.  An American named Tom Wark did some data gathering about Robert Parker’s perfect scored wines.  Basically, he looked at the 224 wines that had received a perfect score of 100 from Robert Parker.

Wark published the list of words that appear the most in tasting notes for 100 point wines.  This should give us some insight into what sort of characteristics appear in wines that Parker thought of as perfect.

For words like “Elegan” or “Intens”, the reason they cut off like that is because Wark grouped Intense, intensely, intensity, and other nearly identical words into one word group labeled simply “Intens”.  Fair enough!

What we get is that Parker uses the word rich a ton when he tastes a wine that merits 100 points out of 100.  Intensity, concentration and spiciness also come up a lot.  Minerality, massiveness, balance, complexity and length are also in there.

I think this is a really fun idea.  Because I’m a data nerd.

Customer comments – Tastes Like Wine

So Parker often describes “perfect” wines as rich, intense and concentrated.  What words do my customers use most?

wine tasting notes word cloud compiled by wordleYes, rather hilariously, the most used words are Taste Like Wine.  Not together mind you.

So I did an analysis of customer comments regarding Trah Lah Lah 2008 on Naked Wines, an online wine retailer that represents and promotes us in the UK.   The word cloud above is a graphical representation of the words used most frequently in reviews, and the most common words appear in larger font size.  I generated the word cloud above using wordle, although I did move some of the words around in a graphic program later on to emphasize the tastes like wine joke. But the size of the words is accurate!  I just moved them to the top of the cloud. Wordle also automatically removes definite articles, personal pronouns, possessive adjectives and certain other words that are more about syntax than meaning.

Now, there is a huge difference between what Naked Wines customers say about Trah Lah Lah 2008 and what Robert Parker says about wines he rates as 100 points, namely because very few of the comments wine drinkers left on Naked are in “tasting note” form.  Instead of striving for journalistic, objective tasting notes about richness or spice, people tend to write about their whole wine experience.  It seems pretty normal that the most used words include “taste” “like” and “wine”.  😀   Personal pronouns and possessive adjectives (I, me, our, its) appear much more frequently.

Here is a list of the words that got used most (I think I might have taken out all the definite articles and certain words that only serve syntax) and the number of times that word appeared.

  1. I   94
  2. wine    52
  3. not    32
  4. really    23
  5. bottle    22
  6. we    21
  7. again    20
  8. you    20
  9. good    19
  10. very    18
  11. like    18
  12. some    18
  13. my    18
  14. taste    18
  15. buy    15
  16. french    15
  17. red    14
  18. more    14
  19. me    13
  20. just    13
  21. if    13
  22. well    13
  23. quite    12
  24. one    12
  25. first    12
  26. bit    10
  27. better    10
  28. too    10
  29. all    10
  30. wines    10

Is there a meaningful difference between Parker 100 tasting notes and Naked Wines customer comments?

So there is a huge difference in which words appear the most.  But is this a meaningful difference?  Well, for the most part, this is not a good comparison.  But it is a very fun comparison and it inspires certain ideas.

For one thing, why are tasting notes built the way they are?  Why do wine critics try to objectively describe flavors and odors in wines?

When they do try to refer to the overall experience of the wine, why does their vocabulary focus on richness, depth, complexity and so on? Wine drinkers don’t think this way (at least not according to this small sample from Naked Wines customer reviews of Trah Lah Lah 2008).

Again, this isn’t really a fair comparison because tasting notes aren’t the same as customer comments.  Tasting notes are specifically built to describe the experience of a wine.  Customer comments can be anything.  They can be about an overall experience, they can be about a specific pairing the person tried, they can be simpler statements (eg I liked it, I didn’t like it), they can be congratulatory or simply grateful (eg Thanks!, Good job, guys!).   This means that customer reviews won’t limit themselves to particular vocabulary like tasting note jargon.

Now, even if we limit the analysis of customer comments to only the descriptive words (like rich, intense, etc.) we get a list that’s pretty far from Parker’s. The most common are Really, Very, Good. 😀  Of course the statistics can be a bit misleading since Not is even more common than those!  The first descriptive words that appear on the list which might be described as more precise are “French” and “Red”.  😀

Also, I’m only using the 100 point scores from Parker but I’m using all comments for my Trah Lah Lah 2008 on Naked Wines. One might argue that the reason Trah Lah Lah comments don’t have the word rich is because the wine is not 100 points.  So I will admit right here and now that this is bad science.  This is not a perfect comparison.  However, it still illustrates my notion that wine critics use a vocabulary that is actually somewhat foreign to the average wine drinker.

You can also argue that wine drinkers lack the refinement or courage to say things like “intense and deep” while it’s very easy to say “tastes like good wine”.  But I think that’s my point.  Regular wine drinkers don’t necessarily understand or relate to tasting notes like “unctuous”.  Maybe wine communication should use vocabulary more familiar to wine drinkers.  How would most drinkers react if the back of a bottle said “This is a French red wine and it tastes good and could use some food”?

Apology and shaking my fist at Stephen Colbert

I was going to post these word clouds later with a lot more analysis of Parker’s reviews.. I would also like to do word clouds of Parker’s ediotrial content (instead of straight up tasting notes) and even do some for other critics and journalists.  But Stephen Colbert recently beat me to the punch and I hate it when Stephen Colbert steals my ideas!!! 😀

I promise to talk about all of this in more depth and with more rigor if I get chosen to present at SXSW in Austin next year. The talk I suggested is about data analysis, reinterpretation, visual representation, infographics, and all sorts of other stuff that might help people in non-verbal jobs like wine communicate with the rest of the world online.

–This is part of an ongoing series about the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference
-David Schildknecht from the Wine Advocate responded to this post here

At the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference in Vienna, Elin McCoy spoke to us all about the future of the Ivory Tower wine critic. It was a keynote so we all got to sit in for the speech which addressed the rising number of voices in wine journalism and the effect that has on the old guard. Robert Parker got named specifically. (edit: I should mention that Elin knows her stuff. She literally wrote the book on Robert Parker.)

And Jim Budd uncovered an interview that Parker was doing just a week or so before where he shares his own views on the “white noise” generated by Internet wine writers. So this is a topical question being pondered around the world and it’s not limited to 200 wine geeks in Austria.

“”Taste a little less; think a little more.””
–Elin McCoy

Obviously, there was a lot of content to Elin’s speech, but I’ll focus on one key point that I think is getting overlooked in some of the recaps. Elin specifically defines the Ivory Tower critic as somebody who stays far away from production. They sit in a tower and taste. Now, she picks Robert Parker as a sort of icon of this style, but Bob still does travel to wineries (and he did this a TON when he first started). But she harps on him because his style is sort of characterized by focusing on tasting notes and points.

I feel torn because I wholeheartedly agree that the wine world is overly focused on the retail/consumer end of things. But does my opinion actually matter?  I left my life in the states, bought a vineyard, and live and breathe wine all day (as fanatical a wine nerd as it gets) so what I like in wine writing doesn’t necessarily correspond to your average consumer.  Aren’t publications that focus on tasting notes more useful to the average wine drinker?

Most people who enjoy an episode or two of Love That Languedoc aren’t always going to be able to go out and buy the bottles I’m tasting on the show. They might go out and try another Languedoc-Roussillon wine that is available, but my website cannot be considered a useful consumer guide. Instead it’s more of a regionally themed travel rag. Something that gives behind the scenes access and can make them dream a bit. Is this useful? Does this model even compete with the Ivory tower critic or consumer advocate?

Hell, is the Wine Advocate even an ivory tower publication? I understand David Schildknecht (who tastes Languedoc Roussillon for the Wine Advocate) is coming to the Languedoc this December [edit: he’s not coming til spring], as he does every couple of years. So if there is an ivory tower, he’s obviously not in it all the time. It remains to be seen if he’ll come all the way out to Carcassonne to visit me, but the point is he’s visiting somebody.

Elin McCoy got us all thinking when she proposed that the Internet’s many voices will usher in a new era of wine journalism focused on getting dirty and really getting involved in every part of wine. I hope this is true, because I’m like the exact opposite of an ivory tower critic (using her definition). I live in the mud with the winemakers, making the stuff. My writing and videos are unpolished and barely edited. So I hope to god she’s right–that people really want this uninhibited sort of wine story-telling. But I don’t know that I’m in direct competition with more practical published tasting notes and consumer guides. I bet there’s a place for everybody in this world.

And a lot of people will enjoy looking up to whatever towers are erected.  If you don’t believe me, check out Suckling’s new teaser which is literally just a montage of him scoring wines.

But then maybe his “I’m Here” video montage is an attempt to tear down the ivory tower stereotype. 😀

Anyway, there’s room for all styles of story-telling in wine.  And it’s silly to argue over who will be the most popular. Ultimately, the most viewed wine videos will always be of people performing party tricks or getting hit in the face and/or crotch, or sometimes all of the above!

How to find us

Domaine O’Vineyards, located in the North Arrondissement of Carcassonne, is just minutes from the Carcassonne train station, the Medieval City, and the Carcassonne Airport.
GPS coordinates: 43.259622, 2.340387

O’Vineyards
Wine, Dine, Relax at our Boutique Vineyard
Unique thing to do in Carcassonne
Wine Cellar. Winery Visits. Wine Tasting.
Wine & Food Pairing

North Arrondissement of Carcassonne
885 Avenue de la Montagne Noire
11620 Villemoustaussou, France
Tel: +33(0) 630 189 910

  1. Best by GPS.
    Follow the signs to Mazamet/ Villemoustaussou using the D118. At the end of the last straight part of D118, you will come to a roundabout with the Dyneff gas station.
  2. Take the exit towards Pennautier. Continue 500m to a small roundabout and go straight over.
  3. Look out for the second road on your right, Avenue des Cévennes which curves up hill (about 1km) to Avenue de la Montagne Noire on the left.
  4. At the last juction, bear left. the road sign “Ave de la Montagne Noire” (confusing as it seems to show a right turn)
  5. After another 500m you will see our red brick color building in the middle of the vines.
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