There's a problem in wine: Over 75% of wines are never rated by experts. This is where crowdsourced ratings on Vivino become useful. But how do Vivino ratings compare to the experts? We analyzed over 5,000 wines combining for over 800,000 Vivino ratings and over 10,000 wine critic ratings to find out. We now know just how they compare.



The Robert Parker and Wine Spectator 100-point rating systems have been around for years. In the minds of many wine enthusiasts, these ratings are the gold standard in wine ratings. If a wine is rated 90-plus points by one of these critics, it's excellent/outstanding, worth purchasing and worth consuming.

The Vivino 5-star system is much newer, and for longtime wine geeks, it's hard to know how they compare to Robert Parker and Wine Spectator. Not anymore. We examined over 5,000 wines that had a Robert Parker rating, a Wine Spectator rating and a Vivino rating (with over 30 total ratings). This is how they compare:

If you've been using Robert Parker and Wine Spectator ratings to help you choose and purchase wines, you can now better rely on Vivino to help you evaluate wines that are not rated by these experts. Industry analysts estimate that at least 75% of all wines produced are never rated by any wine critic, let alone by the esteemed Robert Parker or Wine Spectator. Vivino helps fill this gap, to help you find great wines not rated by the critics.

In our investigation, Vivino ratings correlated strongly with both Robert Parker and Wine Spectator. In fact, Vivino ratings correlated stronger with these experts than Robert Parker and Wine Spectator correlated with each other.

What this means is that you can count on the crowdsourced ratings on Vivino to help pick out wines never rated by the experts (if the wine on Vivino has a good number of user ratings). If your standard is to only drink 90-plus point Robert Parker wines, then pick out wines that are rated 3.9 and higher on Vivino.

The experts can't rate everything. But 8 million (and growing) Vivino users just about can. Will a 4.0 wine on Vivino be the new "90 point wine"?