jdaw1 wrote:Some totalling by Mike, though of what nobody knows.
This sheet is the vital evidence for judging the hypothesis on the sweet-spot vintages! The hypothesis was that the 66, 70 and 77 vintages are all currently in a very good place, and in fact might be considered to be all equally in the sweet-spot for consumption. That's not to say that 77 is as mature as 66 and will not sustain present performance for another 11 years and thus fail to achieve what 66 has now. Just that they are all in a good place now, with perhaps a degree of difficulty in preferring one above another.
Well, you can interpret the results for yourself. The scoring allowed for 1 point per person per bottle, and with 11 people voting on 12 bottles, that meant a total of 132 points. If each vintage turned out to be equal, they would each have had 44 points in total.
The scoring sheet shows that the 77 vintage took 35½ points, the 70 vintage took 47½ points and the 66 vintage took 49 points. For me then, the conclusions are:
- all 3 vintages are wonderful, otherwise one would have scored in the teens or twenties
- of the twelve bottles, only the D70 was not at it's best
- even though T77 and W66 only scored 6, they were still very fine, but just the bottom of the pack in a very strong field
- interesting to note that Graham and Taylor were jointly more preferred than Dow and Warre
- and who would have bet that of the four 77s, the unreliable D77 would take the medal!
