ROBERT PARKER, THE GURU OF WINE CRITICS, STEPS DOWN FROM RATING BORDEAUX. PERHAPS THIS IS THE RIGHT TIME FOR A UNIFORM POINT INDEX OF THE 13 MOST INFLUENTIAL CRITICS IN THE WORLD? THE UNIVERSITY OF BORDEAUX HAS CREATED "GLOBAL WINE SCORE"

Robert Parker, one of most authoritative wine critics, has stepped down from judging the latest vintage of Bordeaux, which, despite downsizing in recent years, remains without a doubt the number one reference for wine lovers and collectors around the world. Parker leaves a huge void that other internationally renowned critics like the Master of Wine Jeannie Cho, Parker’s successor Neal Martin and another Master of Wine Jancis Robinson, are called to fill.
Parker’s decision to stand down could be the right stimulus to building a uniform index, based on standardization in hundredths, of the judgments of the world’s 13 most influential wine critics. And this is precisely the project that Jean-Marie Cardebat and Emmanuel Paroissien of the University of Bordeaux have created, based on a rigid mathematical formula. The result is "Global Wine Score" (www.globalwinescore.com). It is a free site that, for now, has compiled judgments on the 2014 vintage of Bordeaux, crowning the Premier Cru Classe Sauternes Château d'Yquem with a score of 97.57, followed by Château Latour (Pauillac) at 96.77 and another Sauternes, Château Doisy-Daëne, at 96.31.
“What we would like to do”, explained the economists at the University of Bordeaux, “is to reduce the information asymmetry, and thus increase the efficiency of the en primeur market”. But also the secondary markets, as unlike existing models, such as "Wine-Searcher" (www.wine-searcher.com), this system ensures absolute transparency on how scores are calculated by aggregating the two systems, the European (mostly in twentieths) and the American (hundredths). The first step has been taken, now comes the hard work, i.e., systematizing the judgments on past vintages, starting of course from Bordeaux...