Questioning BevMo's wine ratings

Walk down the aisle of any Beverages & More store and you'll be confronted by boxes and bottles of wine -- and a bevy of wine scores. There are 89 points for the Sterling Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc and 90 points for a Beaulieu Vineyards Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon.

Wine merchants across California display various wine ratings to inform customers and promote their wines. There are ratings from Wine Spectator, from Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate and others.

But nobody does it quite like BevMo, and not everyone likes the ratings that figure prominently on the fast-growing chain's wine shelves, in its radio spots and in its sales promotions.

Most of the scores are the judgment of Wilfred Wong, a veteran California wine competition judge and critic.

What many customers don't realize is that Wong is BevMo's hired tongue.

As the company cellar master, Wong tastes close to 3,000wines a year and distills his findings into the point scores and concise descriptions posted on cards in front of the bottles.

But are Wong's ratings and descriptions invaluable information for wine shoppers -- or advertisements masquerading as independent advice?

"For many wine lovers he is seen as a corporate tool. He writes reviews for a company that pays his salary," said Alder Yarrow, who writes the Vinography.com wine blog. But "he is not a shill. . . . He knows what he is talking about when it comes to wine."

It's a sensitive position that BevMo's top executives readily acknowledge could leave them open to charges of pandering to a wine for a profit. "If we were to impinge on Wilfred's credibility, it would be very bad for our brand," said David Richards, executive vice president of the Concord, Calif.-based chain.

That's why Wong reports to Richards rather than any of BevMo's buyers. "We have to give him independence within the organization," Richards said.

Despite some winery grumbling, BevMo has made the combination of point scores and the cards briefly describing the wines a central component of its marketing strategy. It found that shoppers gravitate to 90-point wines because they see the number as a quality threshold.

That's because wine labels feature a dizzying array of place names and grape varieties. Sometimes they are written in French, Italian or even German. Shoppers, confronted with thousands of wine choices, often welcome the point ratings as a way to decode what otherwise would be a complicated choice.