The Good and the Bad of Marketing Wine Scores

Enough ink has been spilled over the value and future of wine scores to fill the fermentation tanks at every Gallo facility in the world.

We don’t need to regurgitate the reasons why Millennials aren’t responsive to scores, or why you would never give a score to a priceless work of art hanging at the Louvre, so why a bottle of wine?

We do need to admit, however, that scores still matter to a wide swath of wine consumers. Demonizing scores across the board is shortsighted. If you know your audience, you should also know how hard to push scores and through which channels. Wine marketers must balance appealing to those buyers and prospective buyers who rely on scores and those who could potentially see your use of scores as old-fashioned.

Here are some things to consider as you figure out how to weave scores into your overall marketing strategy.

1 – Scores and social media sometimes don’t mix.

I still occasionally see social media posts in which the winery has graphically attached a score or medal to a bottle shot and shared it across ALL their social media networks, from Instagram to LinkedIn. This practice indicates a lack of strategy.

Each social network must be considered on its own terms. Instagram, for example, skews young, and the whole point of it is to create aspiration through captivating visuals. If you’ve determined that your audience there is receptive to score-related posts, try to create a more action-oriented visual than the bottle sitting on your tasting room counter with a caption announcing the score.

Why not stage a shot of two smiling wine enthusiasts in a beautiful setting, with one holding the prized bottle and one holding a freshly poured glass? Another idea is to have the winemaker do a quick video announcing the score and telling an interesting (and brief) story about the wine’s production. The short video could be a teaser for a longer video which you’ve posted to your YouTube account. You can include the link to the longer video in your Instagram profile using Linktree.

Facebook is a much better platform for posting the link to the review containing the score plus the photo/video you created to add life to it.

LinkedIn is primarily a B2B platform, so posting a link to the review on your company page could draw the attention of retail and restaurant buyers who may be following you. Most retail outlets still heavily use scores to promote items in their inventories.

2 – Scores can never be the foundation of your brand.

In its simplest form, your brand is the promise you make to your customers by way of your products. Your brand values could include items such as quality, value, dependability, scarcity and luxury, to name only a few.

While consistently good scores can help validate many of these values, there comes a point of diminishing returns. With the number of publications granting scores, the vast improvements in wine quality across the board, and the reality that thousands upon thousands of wines receive scores in the 90s, boasting your 92-point Chardonnay from Wine & Spirits will soon seem stale, if it had any luster in the first place.

The voice of the critic can never be a substitute for YOUR voice. How are you engaging your audience through content? Is your brand consistently represented across all customer touchpoints? Would your level of customer service get the same 98-point score as your Syrah? These considerations are critical, and if you think a high score will make a customer overlook any failings in these areas, think again.

3 – From the standpoint of the tasting room, scores should not necessarily be at the core of your sales pitches.

Again, you have to know your audience, but touting a 94-point score from a publication the customer may have never heard of can sometimes do more harm than good. What if the customer doesn’t really like the wine? Will that customer then feel diminished for not liking a wine that received a respectable score?

Tasting room guests run the gamut of experience, and it takes work to assess their needs and begin to build something of a relationship with them. Throwing scores around without making the connection first can seem tone deaf and at worst a bit lazy. Scores can certainly be kept in the tasting room host’s back pocket, but they shouldn’t necessarily be part of the opening pitch.

While it’s a bit fashionable to bash scores across the board as a marketing tool, it’s important to understand that they still have some utility with certain customer groups. There will come a day when scores truly do not matter, but that day is not here yet.