What Are 100-Point Rated Wines Actually Like? (All Merlot?!)

We’ve all seen them, the elusive 100-point rated wine. This selection of top-rated Merlot wines taught us a lesson about point scores and Merlot. Want to learn more about wine? Join Wine Folly → wfol.ly/newsletter

Chapters:

0:15 - The General Opinion of Merlot
1:05 - What We’re Doing Today
2:06 - The Wines In The Blind Tasting
2:08 - Pétrus 2012
2:19 - Masseto 2015
2:31 - Pétrus “Saute Loup” 2014
2:40 - Vérité “La Muse” 2016
2:53 - Kapcsándy “Roberta’s Reserve” 2011
3:10 - Château La Conseillante 2020
3:23 - San Giusto A Rentennano “La Ricolma” 2018
3:35 - Castello di Ama “L’Apparita” 2015
3:49 - Château Lafleur “Le Pensées” 2020
3:59 - Duckhorn “Three Palms” Merlot 2019
4:20 - The “Veblen Effect”
4:50 - Merlot Regions: Tuscany, Bordeaux, North Coast California
5:38 - Disparity Between Wine Ratings and Anchoring Bias
6:32 - The Results: Which Wines Performed The Best?
7:33 - Conclusions

Notes and Sources

See full listing and tech sheets for all wines here: winefolly.com/videos/what-are-100-point-rated-wine…

Special thanks to J-L-C for opening up their cellar for this tasting. We couldn’t have done this without you.

The way the tasting was set up was 2 single blind tastings with reveals between each tasting. Tasters knew what bottles were being tasted but not the order. You could call it a “casual” blind. The goal wasn’t to identify the wines blind, but to obfuscate the brands so that the price bias was less present.

Masseto was mentioned as being in Bolgheri. Technically, the wine is a Toscana IGT and the new winery (as of 2019) is located in Bolgheri. The vineyard is Toscana IGT.

Château Lafleur “Le Pensées” is indeed a second wine of Château Lafleur. On their website it says “a much coveted second wine”

San Giusto - In Italian the “gi” is pronounced like “j”

We were not paid by any winery mentioned or included in this video.

Sideways Movie 2004 excerpt cited with fair use. All ratings cited with fair use (e.g. ratings not used for marketing purposes).

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