I do however think that some sort of numeric rating system would be helpful to distinguish exactly where we feel the product falls in the grand scheme of things. I agree with Elton that we should have a scoring key either on each post or in an easily accessible place where people can reference it.

Either way we go, as long as we are consistent we’ll be good.

otherwise i’m not sure a rating is necessary. I think more directional like “Buy it all” “Run don’t walk” “only if your choice is between this and a white zin that’s been left in your car for a week” “good for Sangria”

I personally like to spin it all positively since we all taste differently. I firmly believe that if it’s not corked, cooked or off there is a way to celebrate it! =)

Ex: Macallan Scotch – Bang / Buck = $1.40 = $1 (this over-performs for its price)

I had initially thought that we should rate wines separately in their respective price tiers but I think that still might be too ambiguous, and worse yet that only takes wines into account and not also spirits and beer. It’s “Drink With Aloha” not “Winos With Rainbows” (shoot, we should have thought the name through a little better!). I next thought that we should have a rating that gave an indicator as to the general style of the wine – like what http://www.vino100.com/ tried to get off the ground – but again I think that people want their information distilled down to a fine neutral spirit.

In the end my vote is to measure things on a “Bang for Buck” scale (call it what you will, “B4$”, “BfB”, “B/$”, etc.). I think an open ended scale to dispel any concept of absolute perfection in a beverage would be nice. Too many people are obsessed with a 100pt wine and what that means, and they end up sounding like Double Rainbow Guy ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI ).

The B4$ scale would be x/10, so a beverage like Miller Chill would get 0/10 or 1/10 whereas a beverage that is a break-even return on investment like Mollydooker “The Boxer” Shiraz would be 10/10. The open ended idea is that if a beverage is undervalued or over-performs for its price it would get a fraction that exceeds 1. For instance I would rate Segura Viudas Brut Reserve Cava a 15/10. Why is ten the baseline? If we set it at 100 people will immediately think of the WS/WA scoring system and their brains won’t follow us. If we set it at 1 then the numerical ratings will seem like splitting hairs. We could do a 20pt scale like my favorite wine website, http://www.thewinedoctor.com .

In the end if people see a rating of 10/10 or above they will know that we are stating that they will at least get their money’s worth out of what they are buying. Again I would caution the general public not to blindly buy based on our ratings without at least reading our quick recap (imagine the shock of buying a Chablis that is 15/10 without realizing that it is made of unoaked Chardonnay), but I think this would be an easy and intuitive benchmark towards estimating quality quickly.

Regardless of what we choose as our measuring stick we should hyper-link each rating to a pop-out page that explains our scale.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Should it be X/99Bananas instead? Let me know.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/140/60420

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonyslta55/page18.asp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwGFalTRHDA&feature=related