Bordeaux: How does Tim Atkin first category fit to the Global Wine Scores?

Tim Atkin just published his scores for Bordeaux En primeur wines 2016 (http://www.timatkin.com/reports/2016-bordeaux-special-report). He also published his own classification of Bordeaux wines based on his tasting experience in this region for more than 30 years. This classification has 5 different categories of 20 wines each and concerns 100 producers in total (like the 1855 classification).

We compare his 1st category wines (corresponding to the “premier grand cru classé” ) with an average of his own scores for vintages from 2010 to 2016 with an average of the Global Wine Score(GWS) for the same period.

The table below presents this data.

The table shows that the average issued from Tim Atkin’s scores from 2010 to 2016 includes 3 wines ranked beyond the 20th rank (Mouton Rothschild and Ducru Beaucaillou 22th and Pichon Baron 39th).

Concerning the Global Wine Score average, five wines are beyond the 20th rank (Angelus 21st, Montrose 22d, Pichon Baron 24th, La Fleur Petrus 34th and Pichon Comtesse 39th).

We removed from this study Chateau Canon because Tim Atkin rated this wine only in 2016 and gave a very high score (98) which leads that wine on the top of our ranking. Since the other wines are based on an average calculated on 7 vintages, it would have been unfair to compare them with Canon.

Tim Atkin scores on the last vintages fit very well to his 1st category wines. The Global Wine Score is also very close to his category. Few exceptions exist in both cases, but fortunately, this article shows that appreciating a wine is not only about wine scores :).