Methodology
Asia Wine Review scores wine for the people who actually drink it here: independently, blind, and on one transparent scale.
The 100-point scale.
A score is a single number out of 100. It is the panel's judgement of quality in the glass on the day, nothing more.
Every wine that reaches 85 earns one of three awards, set at fixed thresholds. The threshold belongs to the wine, not the critic: the same number always carries the same award.
A wine below 85 is not published. That is not a failing grade; the wine is simply absent.
Quality, not reputation
The score measures quality in the glass on the day. Not rarity, not price, not the name on the label. A grower’s first vintage and a blue-chip estate meet the same bar.
Thresholds never move
The bands are fixed and never curved to a category or a vintage. A 92 in a weak year and a 92 in a great one carry the same Silver.
Nothing below 85
We are a guide to what to drink, not a catalogue of everything tasted. A low score tells a reader little and does a producer real harm, so feedback goes to the producer directly.
Four critics, one final call.
Every wine is tasted by a panel of four: one Category Lead, two Panel Critics and one Chief Judge.
The Category Lead holds that category and is accountable for it. The Category Lead makes the final call on the score that is published.
Any critic on the panel may write a tasting note that is published alongside the score. A wine's notes are not limited to the Category Lead's voice alone.
From glass to published score.
Every wine goes through the same five steps.
- 1Catalogued
An independent cellarmaster catalogues every bottle, so the panel never knows the producer or the price of a wine before tasting it.
- 2Tasted blind
Critics know the category they are judging, such as Burgundy, Champagne or Bordeaux-blends. They never know the producer or the price. This applies to every wine, in both tiers.
- 3Given equal time
Every wine in a flight gets the same window to taste, to debate as a panel and to write notes. No wine is rushed and none is lingered over.
- 4Judged on two axes
Nose: aromatic intensity, clarity, complexity and typicity. What the wine tells you before you taste it, and whether that promise is honest. Palate: structure, balance, texture, length and the capacity to age. How the wine carries itself, resolves and lingers. The published number is the composite judgement. The internal breakdown is not published, because a score is a verdict and not a formula to reverse-engineer.
- 5Decided and published
The Category Lead makes the final call. At 85 or above, the score is published with the critic's name and a tasting note. Below 85, the Category Lead writes direct feedback to the producer.
Two tiers: by style, by origin.
We organise scoring into two tiers. This is an organisational structure, not a ranking of prestige. A Tier II wine is not a lesser wine; it is judged on a different axis.
Asian buyers learn and approach wines in terms of style more readily than simply geography. Tier I follows that instinct.
Everything else is judged where it comes from, the structure most useful when style is inseparable from place.
Select a category to see its scores.
Every score is attributed to a Category Lead.
The primary score is the official record. It is the number in the database, it anchors every ranking, and it underwrites every trade licence. One wine, one official score, one Category Lead accountable for it.
The commercial and editorial sides of AWR are separated by structure, not by promise. Submission fees cover the logistics of tasting and nothing else. Trade licensing grants commercial use of scores that already exist; it cannot commission, alter or withdraw them.
The Asian palate.
A wine does not taste the same to everyone, and it should not be described as if it did.
Asia Wine Review exists because the wines this region drinks have, until now, been scored almost entirely through a Western lens: its reference points, its food, its idea of what a wine is for. We start from a different table.
Writing through an Asian palate means descriptors that reach for the fruits, teas, spices and aromatics a reader here actually knows. It means pairing context built around the food that is genuinely on the table, as the frame and not an afterthought. And it means market relevance: judging availability, value and ageing against the realities of buying wine in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Mumbai.
This is not a regional edition of someone else's authority. It is a position: that the world's wine deserves to be judged by the palate that drinks it.