huevos con vino

I’m a database lover.  I keep all of my tasting notes and purchases in a spreadsheet.  I have done this sort of thing since I was about 4 years old when I received my first savings account register and some shares in GE.  I liked to track my minuscule dividend and interest payments, along with the perceived values of everything I owned that might be collectible.  Scary stuff to see for my parents, no doubt.

Now, as I ponder which Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon I should try for Wine Blogging Wednesday #34, I hit upon an idea.  I wondered which WA Cabs were rated highest by the community at CellarTracker.com.  So I ran a database query or two and came up with some interesting statistics:

• There are 2,550 separate tasting notes for Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon wines (excluding notes written for spoiled bottles but including notes without comments, just ratings).
• Of the wines that rate 97 points and above, all but one are from Quilceda Creek.  The only other wine that made it into the ratings stratosphere was a bottle of 2001 L’Ecole No. 41.
• There are 480 separate tasting notes for Quilceda Creek wines, nearly double the number of notes for any other WA Cab producer (Chateau Ste. Michelle is second with 258 notes and Columbia Crest is third with 257 notes).
• The average Quilceda Creek rating, among those reviews that include ratings, is 93.2 points on the 100-point rating scale.  Next best is Boudreaux Cellars at 92.9 points/review on average.  Creighton topped out at 95 points, but that was for one rating only.
• Boudreaux, Walla Walla Vintners, Betz Family, Ross Andrew, Soos Creek, Stevens, Pepper Bridge, Fielding Hills, and Fidelitas all have average ratings of 90+ points across all Cabernet reviews.  No other wineries scored that high across 10 reviews or more (Reininger came close with 9 scored reviews and a 90.1-point average).

Interesting, eh?  I realize that CellarTracker isn’t the authoritative site for determining which Washington Cabernet Sauvignon I should drink for WBW #34.  For example, a bottle of Kestrel received a score of 78, which probably hurt their chances at getting into the 90+ club shown above.  Abeja also missed the cut with an average score of 89.5 points per Cab review.

So, which wine will I try?  That’s the essential question, and I’m still not sure.  The best balance of high scores in reviews and sheer quantity of reviews is clearly Quilceda Creek.  Betz Family is a distant second, and from there the field clumps up again, with Pepper Bridge and Ross Andrew receiving the most reviews and highest average points.  The problem is that Quilceda Creek wines cost too much, Betz Family wines are also expensive and really young, and I tried a bottle of Pepper Bridge once before and didn’t really get too thrilled about it.  That leaves Ross Andrew as a possibility, but their wine comes from the Columbia Valley for the most part, and I’d rather try a Cab sourced from elsewhere in the state.

Ho hum.  Back to the drawing board, perhaps?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Wine Blogging Wednesday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.