As I settle down behind my laptop, after a couple of hours studying, I sip a glass of Pelorus, New Zealand's answer to Champagne. It is made by Cloudy Bay, a winery belonging to the LVMH group of luxury goods and therefore from the same stable as Veuve Clicquot and Moet.

Anyway, I digress. As I sip I study its slow, fine bead of bubbles, its slightly savoury nose, like buttered toast. The acidity hits the palate and the mousse creates a creamy sensation. This is about texture as much as it is about primary flavours, like citrus fruit and apple, naturally. And a real elegance. Can you really score this stuff, or should we just enjoy it for the pleasure it gives? And if we score it, how many points should we give it and what is that based on?

Wine tasting is far from an exact science, although some critics would want you to believe it is. There is one major drawback, you see, it is subjective. Objective tasting is impossible, if it weren't, critics would agree for a change. So why do we bother scoring then? I suppose scoring your own experiences can be helpful on deciding if you want to buy again, the wine you're drinking just now. But that's subjective, it is your personal judgement of that wine. And does it work? Well, that depends. We've all been there. The sun is beaming down on a seaside terrace somewhere on the Mediterranean coast. The wine bucket is keeping the local white nicely chilled and it tastes superb. Light lemon flavours, quite acidic, but oh so refreshing. Take it home and the refreshing acidity is more like vinegar, the whole thing rough as the proverbial badger's rear end and torrential rain and gales outside are not helping in conjuring up the images of that superb wine at the seaside. Wine in context.

Ok, so let's take out the context. Enter, the whiter than white tasting room. Surely now we can be objective? Erm, no. You see, I got up this morning not feeling so great. Had trouble sleeping and looking at me you'd say I had no more than two hours last night. That white tasting room is a bit too bright, reminds me of my last operation, and wine at this time in the morning doesn't seem like such a good idea anyway. The poor producer who has put this wine in front of me today might as well not have bothered, because very few things will impress me just now. Wine in context.

So, let's not bother then! Well, maybe. Then again, I recommend wines on this site all the time. What makes that so different? For one thing, they tend to be wines I enjoy first and foremost (in context most of the time). The WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) has its systematic approach to tasting, which helps break down the process into assessments of individual aspects of each wine. Add all those together, decide on the fact that everything balances and hey presto, one lovely wine. Sounds simple. What totally throws me is how on earth you could ever translate that into a meaningful score. The panel tastings on this site simply award points out of five to six similar wines, tasted in comparison. But please don't ask me to rate one wine 95 points and then ask me to explain why.

Personally I don't pay too much attention to scores. As long as the reviewed wine has been deemed of decent quality, I tend to pay more attention to my own nose and palate. So many wines that people write off because a certain critic only gave it 85 points might absolutely astound you. Maybe your palate is different from the critic's. Be adventurous, try new things, look for the unusual. Listen, read, sniff, gargle, spit (if you must) and learn, but don't slavishly do what someone else tells you to. God knows, they might be wrong.

And if all else fails there is always the Hugh Johnson method so poignantly described in his annual Pocket Wine Book;

The range of scores goes from 'One sniff' (Emphatically no thanks) to 'One glass' (tolerance, even general approval) to 'The whole vineyard' (the ultimate wine)