Crowd vs. critic: what the data says
Community ratings and professional scores agree less than you'd think. A look at the numbers — and what they mean for how you choose wine.
By The OENRA team
A 2024 study in the Journal of Wine Economics (Kopsacheilis et al.) compared crowd ratings from Vivino against professional critics across a large set of Bordeaux. Crowd ratings tracked the critics substantially — but less closely than critics tracked one another, and even the best-agreeing critic correlated only about r = 0.63 with their peers. Neither source is “wrong”: amateurs often rate immediate pleasure, while critics gauge structure and aging potential.
The lesson isn't that ratings are useless. It's that they're someone else's answer. The more your source resembles you — your palate, your preferences — the more its verdict predicts yours.
The best rating isn't the most authoritative. It's the one calibrated to your mouth.
Sources for the studies referenced across the Journal are collected on our science page.