John Dvorak is a proponent of French wine rating stickers. These are particular to French Bordeaux. Another popular wine rating system for buyers to consider are Parker scores from wine expert, Robert Parker.

“When you’re buying wine, particularly Bordeaux, you’ll often see wines with little stickers on them that say things like 91 or 92 points. Even better, you might find a small sticker that says “Macon,” which usually comes from a big tasting the French organize. These stickers are either gold, silver, or bronze, and they are meaningful and accurate indicators of why you might want to choose those wines.
Many wine organizations, like Wine Enthusiast and others, provide these stickers to wineries. If a wine scores high in a tasting, the winery gets to put the sticker on the bottle, and I’d say they’re generally accurate.
So, if you see a wine with a sticker on it, it’s worth paying attention to. These aren’t just bogus stickers that anyone can slap on, like “Instant Best Seller,” for example. It’s not like one of those. These are real stickers, and if they’re from French sources—such as the Macon sticker—they don’t include point totals. Instead, they use gold, silver, or bronze stickers. It’s best to stick to the gold ones and skip the silver and bronze.”

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[No Agenda #1725]