Perspective

How AWR Scores Wines: Borrowed Structure, Asian Principles

AWR's Lead Founding Critic's note on the methodology that guides how AWR scores wines.

1 August 2026

Gerald Lu, AWR's Lead Founding Critic, scoring wines during AWR's Inaugural Tasting on 20th July 2026.

Scoring is a practice that goes back thousands of years, the word itself rooted in the act of carving physical marks into walls, stones, and trees to count, tally, and track. As it evolved into the modern world, writers and scholars began compiling tabulations to create rankings and hierarchical lists. Schools moved away from verbal assessment towards numerical scores tied directly to ranking.

In the world of wine, the UC Davis 20-point system was developed as a teaching tool, built to standardise how students and researchers assessed wine quality. It broke evaluation into weighted components — Appearance, Aroma, Structural Components, Overall Quality and Impression. Later, the Parker 100-point system emerged for the consumer, linking wine assessment to a scoring language most people already understood from school. One system operates on clear criteria; the other carries a clear association with quality perception in the popular imagination.

The Asian Imprint

光明正大 (guāng míng zhèng dà), which literally translates to as open as the light of day and being completely upright, is the idiom surfaced early in Asia Wine Review's founding discussions mid last year. This shaped every decision that followed for AWR.

Adopting the criterion-based structure of the 20-point system mattered because it makes evaluation visible: a wine either has or does not have each quality we set out to assess. Clear, concise, undisputed.

But where was the soul? What about the impression, the voice of the wine, the expression of terroir?

以人为本 (yǐ rén wéi běn), which translates to putting the people first, is what AWR set out to do. So the question became whether we should adopt a system our readers would already understand and relate to instinctively: the 100-point scale most of Asia grew up with through school and, since, through wine media.

Guiding Principles

AWR's scoring rests on the belief that every wine sets out to be perfect, and is only denied perfection by circumstance — a philosophy that parallels several Asian religious and cultural traditions around human nature. We deduct for flaws rather than search for merit to reward.

Where scores are debated and consensus is close, we practise generosity: in doubt, we err towards the higher score.

During tasting and scoring, absolute silence is observed, to prevent influence and groupthink. Tasting flights are capped at 12 wines, with a maximum of four flights per day, to guard against palate fatigue and to leave proper time for evaluation and discussion.

Why We Cap Scores at 85

Scores below 85 are not published. Every wine on the table represents someone's labour, and no one sets out to make a bad wine on purpose — so AWR does not use its platform to shame those that fall short. Wines below 85 receive direct feedback from the Lead Critic instead of a public score.

85–89 represents wines that are well made and true to purpose: balanced, typical of their grape and region, dependable.

90–94 represents wines with everything the 85-89 tier holds, plus something more — an additional layer of flavour, a finer edge of winemaking craft, a more considered polish.

95–99 represents wines that go beyond recognition into distinction — complexity, personality, and a winemaking voice singular enough to be remembered, discussed, and sought out.

A Closing Note

AWR's format and methodology may never be perfect. We keep working on it. What took a farmer generations of hard work, commitment, and passion should never be reduced to a number alone — and we hold that responsibility seriously in how we score, and in what we choose not to publish.

Perhaps man can never be perfect. But we can always strive for perfection.