What are Wine Spectator points?

The Wine Spectator magazine has been read by over 3 million people around the world. The digital publications, apps, and events extend this global reach to more than 6 million wine enthusiasts.

Wine Spectator's tasting staff consists of 15 professional tasters and tasting coordinators. They work together to review more than 16,000 wines each year; more than 400,000 reviews are currently available in the online database, and Grandcruwijnen has a subscription here in which we are entitled to show the reviews in full. Wine Spectator mainly focuses on the American and South American houses and the well-known Italian, Spanish and French houses.

The wines are judged in independent blind tastings, which is the guarantee that our reviews are fair, objective and that a wine's reputation/price will not affect its score. Each taster relates to specific wines and regions; their initials added to their ratings.

In general, we can see that the Wine Spectator often is a bit more critical than Parker and Suckling and consistently tastes everything blind. Wine Spectator does not engage in en-scoop tastings (such as assessing wines that are not released yet). Not every vintage will be rated because the levels of houses being assessed are so high that a rating of a previous vintage is a pretty good indication. For that reason, we also show the most recent assessment of a vintage. It is also possible that there is already a newer vintage that has not (yet) passed the Wine Spectator panel.

Wine Spectator's 100-Point Scale