By the late 1970s, though, change was afoot. From September 1952 onwards, a young wine trade recruit called Michael Broadbent began taking ‘handwritten tasting notes, in excess of 85,000, in small, identical red books – 133 to date’ (as he wrote in the introduction to Vintage Wine in 2002). Broadbent came to use what he called a ‘“broad-brush” five star rating system’ – which, since no stars equated to ‘Poor’, could be construed as a six-point scale.
Hugh Johnson, a persistent critic of 100-point scale scores, also adopted a one- to four-star system for ‘general quality standing’ in his Pocket Wine Book (the 2022 45th edition £12.99, Octopus), with the stars appearing in red for ‘good value in its class’. Decanter magazine, founded in 1975, employed a 20-point scale for its tastings from the off: the norm for its day, and used by pioneer European critics such as Clive Coates MW and France’s Michel Bettane.
This story is from the March 2022 edition of Decanter.
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This story is from the March 2022 edition of Decanter.
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