How Best to Rank Wines: Majority Judgment

Abstract

Cassifying and ranking wines has been a favourite activity of men and women since time immemorial. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder) who died in the year 79 AD wrote in his treatise The Natural History (Pliny the Elder, circa AD 77–79):

Who can entertain a doubt that some kinds of wine are more agreeable to the palate than others, or that even out of the very same vat there are occasionally produced wines that are by no means of equal goodness, the one being much superior to the other, whether it is that it is owing to the cask, or to some other fortuitous circumstance ... The late Emperor Augustus preferred the Setinum to all others, and nearly all the emperors that have succeeded him have followed his example . The second rank belonged to the wine of the Falernian territory, of which the Faustianum was the most choice variety; the result of the care and skill employed upon its cultivation . To the third rank belonged the various wines of Alba . I am by no means unaware that most of my readers will be of opinion that I have omitted a vast number of wines, seeing that every one has his own peculiar choice . Indeed I have no wish to deny that there may be other wines deserving of a very high reputation, but those which I have already enumerated are the varieties upon the excellence of which the world is at present agreed.