I ate dinner last night at Purple in Bellevue, Washington. Purple is a wine bar and restaurant (their description) and it was good. (The ambiance was loud industrial metallic space, I probably would have liked it a little mellower.) The menu had lots of cheeses, fish etc, and a good prix fix three course dinner which I had. There was a long wine list with lots of regional PNW wines, and a few imports. I have been jumping at every opportunity to try different New Zealand Pinot's so I ordered the 2007 Craggy Range.
After trying to write a few wine descriptions, I have concluded I need my own wine scale. Wine Spectator and Robert Parker pretend they rate wine on a 100 point scale, but really they rate wine on a 15 point scale. Go find a rating under 85. most ratings in my experience are between 87 and 93, so I guess it is really a five point scale with outliers for really bad and really good.
This is my five point scale
Orgasmic - Wine where you schedule an event to drink it, close your eyes as you sip the wine and the palate is the taste version of technicolor. (Wine that makes you think you have taken a hallucinogen when you drink it.)
RFG - You can translate the acronym. This is wine worth paying real money for and savoring, even drinking on special occasions. Especially good for its region or varietal.
Good - Maybe there is a cooler one word description. This is wine that is very enjoyable, worth savoring a little bit and does not feel like a compromise to drink. Clearly the people who made this wine knew what they were doing and used good fruit.
Drinkable - Not memorable, but very enjoyable, usually a value priced wine. There is a lot of $10-$15 bottle wine. This is the good wine at that price.
Tolerable - This is the wine where you take your first sip and say 'I wish I had opened something else' Sometimes it is expensive wine that is not worth the money, other times less expensive wine that really does not impress. Not bad enough to pour out, but not wine you would buy again (unless it only cost $2/bottle).
So after having defined a scale, where does the Craggy Range fit? The Craggy range was 'Good' On this scale the Seresin I wrote about a few weeks back was RFG, and the Williams Selyem Sonoma Coast is RFG. The Craggy Range had good berry fruit and decent structure, but not enough structure. A little flabby. It was very enjoyable, and I did savor it. A couple of people at dinner remarked that it was good, and I would buy it again. But I would rather have the Seresin.