Shelf Talkers Are Wrong Sometimes
Piece in the Washington Post about shelf talkers (the little cards on the shelves of wine shops calling out certain bottles of wine).
Jordan, a scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, rarely spends more than $10 on everyday wine. But this time he decided to splurge. Intrigued to learn more, he logged on to the Wine Spectator Web site. The description matched, but to his surprise, the Chateau Haut-Surget hadn’t received 90 points, but 86, a score given to “very good wine with special qualities,” but not “outstanding” ones.
The author of the article does a general survey and finds 25% of shelf-talkers surveyed were wrong, either showing incorrect vintage, incorrect score, or just showing some made up facts. Some errors are to be expected, merchants have enough to keep up with. But, our old adversary crops up to share in some blame too.
The owner of Silver Spring’s Beer Wine Deli, where Jordan found the inaccurate sign, said the wine’s distributor had posted it.
The distributor was clearly too busy lobbying to keep me from being able to have wine shipped to my home in Maryland. Can’t be bothered to check for accuracy.
