Stas,
I read your report. I'm fine with identifying preferences, and making favorite lists is a pastime in many hobbies. But as a statistician, my problem is with your numbers. To put it simply, wine scores are garbage. And if you are basing your ratings on these scores, then garbage-in, garbage out.
Why is wine scoring garbage?
1) were the scores given wines given in blind tastings? If not, they are biased, which corrupts the stats.
2) are the scores reproducible? In general no, critic scores vary from bottle to bottle. Which leads to...
3) Is the 100 point scale overly precise? Yes, and this false precision makes it look like science rather than pseudo-science. It’s part of the con.
4) Is there consensus on what qualities make wine great, and therefore can be used as scoring criteria? Hell no, especially in Burgundy. Parker and his international style came close to converting the world to his idea of great wine, all power and extract. Where was his greatest failure and retreat? Burgundy, where character trumps power. How do you put character on a 100 point scale? Oak usage and stem usage are two choices which could impact score, but who is to say which decisions are better? If there was an objective truth, all the wine making would converge on that style. Happily, it doesn’t.
5) I could go on. But no, that’s enough.
Go to one of the Burgundy tastings frequently organized on this board. While folks certainly will express preferences, they spend more time making observations. And I’ve never heard anyone score a wine, at least not without irony.
Personally, I would argue that Musigny belongs in your Supreme category. The fact that it only has a weighting of 97.63 (talk about false precision!), won’t convince me otherwise. I’ve got 50 reasons, but a score ain’t one.
If you consider this list of 31 vineyards to be the best, I’m cool with that. If you want to follow Lavalle, Morris, and others, and create a best-of-the-best category, that seems reasonable. But why would you choose to break the best into four groups? Do you have a statistical reason for it? Or do you just think we need to go to a regional<village<premier<third<second<first<supreme?
It’s funny, I don’t hate your final list, I just have a few minor quibbles. But I am biased, I am shaped by the same group-think we all are, including the critics. So of course, critics perpetuate the group think in their scoring, and you perpetuate it in your summary. It makes me wonder, perhaps it’s all a very long con, started by some monks a thousand years ago. (Yes, I’m kidding, mostly.)
I’d happily drink any of the 31 wines with you. But I’d rather talk about the wine's qualities rather than its scores. That is the soul of burgundy.
