However, opponents of this approach have always rightly criticized that you cannot drink points. In fact, a high rating says a lot about where a wine stands in terms of quality on a global scale, but how well it performs in its respective style, category or price range is something the reader has to figure out. Also, he has no guarantee that he will like a highly rated wine, while he might miss many wines completely that would exactly meet his taste but remain unnoticed due to low ratings.
And that's no wonder, because we as tasters feel the same way. We have to rate wines highly, which we might not like at all, but which, neutrally considered, are high class. Likewise, we have no choice but to rate lower wines that we like exceptionally ourselves if they cannot be rated higher according to objective quality parameters (such as complexity, depth, or length).
We've been racking our brains on how to address this dilemma since Wein-Plus came into existence. The situation is getting even worse since a large part of the critique organs in the wine sector are pushing a score inflation that has nothing to do with reality anymore and hardly provides the reader with results that can be taken seriously. In this business model, which is all about making producers and advertisers as happy as possible without any effort, the reader plays only a secondary role.
With the introduction of the "Favorite wines" we are taking a different approach. With the heart, we only award wines that we personally find particularly tasty. In our opinion, these are always the finest and most interesting wines of their respective style, origin or price range. This can be the rare and expensive top product of a legendary winery as well as the stunningly drinkable, inexpensive entry-level wine of a completely unknown producer, a wine with 96 points as well as one with 84. By doing so, we also try to give back to the lower scores and the wines considered with them the importance and attention they deserve according to the original idea of the 100-point system, which unfortunately has been completely watered down by most users of this system in the meantime, in many cases even led ad absurdum.
Of course, there is still no guarantee that a wine with heart will taste good to all our readers, but it is guaranteed to taste good to us. Consequently, the wines that we present to the subscribers of our tasting package up to 5 times a year are selected exclusively from the pool of our favorite wines. Because it has always been true here: only what we ourselves like to drink comes in the package.