What if we got rid of wine scores?

Have you ever tasted a 100 point wine? Does not matter who gave it the score, just matters if you have tasted it. What was the price before it was scored and what was the price of the bottle after it was given that 100 points?

I tasted the 2000 Leoville Las Cases at a tasting with some friends. I think I paid about $80 bucks for the bottle. Tasted great and we were all very happy with it. Hell, even the price was great. Sometime goes by and it was scored 100 points. Being that I was working at a retail shop I decided to pick a few extra bottles up. I went to grab them and got yelled at cause they were now 100 point wines and were being sold for over $300 each and even though we have a few cases, they were being sold to only our best customers. This just pissed me off since nothing happened other than someone giving it a score. I bought a few anyway, hell I already had a few cases but I was letting those age. I wanted a few now to drink.

What if the score was never given yet their was only a tasting note? Would the price of the wine still go up? Better yet, what if it was scored by two different people yet got the same score (off by 1 point). Does it matter who tasted the wine? Below are two different tasting notes with only 1 point difference. Could you justify spending $300 on a bottle from these notes or would the score help? What if we just did away with the score and made people read about the wine and let them decide what they like for themselves?

"Absolutely fantastic. This is one of the most exciting young reds I have tasted in a long, long time. It shows intense aromas of berries, currants and minerals, with hints of mint. Full-bodied and packed with fruit and tannins, its long finish is refined and silky. A benchmark for the vintage. Las Cases has always wanted to make first-growth quality in a top-notch vintage, and it certainly did in 2000. Best after 2012."

"This wine has put on weight and, as impressive as it was from cask, it is even more brilliant from bottle. Only 35% of the crop made it into the 2000 Leoville Las Cases, a blend of 76.8% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14.4% Merlot, and 8.8% Cabernet Franc. The wine is truly profound, with an opaque purple color and a tight but promising nose of vanilla, sweet cherry liqueur, black currants, and licorice in a dense, full-bodied, almost painfully rich, intense style with no hard edges. This seamless classic builds in the mouth, with a finish that lasts over 60 seconds. Still primary, yet extraordinarily pure, this compelling wine, which continues to build flavor intensity and exhibit additional layers of texture, is a tour de force in winemaking and certainly one of the great Leoville Las Cases. In another sense, it symbolizes / pays homage to proprietor Michel Delon, who passed away in 2000. Michel has been succeeded by his son, Jean-Hubert, another perfectionist. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2040."

Illustration by The New York Times