"Italian hotelier Alessandro Rosso is not afraid of a challenge. When the owner of the sleek Italian hotel group, Town House, decided to open a new flagship hotel in Milan, he didn't just want to create the best hotel in town. He wanted to create a hotel so good, it needed a whole new rating system. That's how the world's first seven-star hotel was born." Sydney Morning Herald, January 7th, 2009.

Where can we now go after Parker introduced us to the 100 point wine judging scale? You may think that a Parker rating is all judges will ever need but alas it has already broken down. I examine pages and pages of wine reviews every month and hardly any wine is pointed below 87/100. Wines that have no reason at all to be judged above 70/100, including I'm sad to say a great number of roses, pull down points that must surely make the authors blush. All that pointing wine out of 100 has achieved is an inflation in scores for mediocre wines. It's too much to expect a decade or so of deflation so we must think of a new way to bring back a meaningful standard.

Thus I found the following story from the Sydney Morning Herald, January 7th 2009, most helpful.

"Until now, the best hotels in the world have been awarded five stars. This may come as a surprise to readers who have treated themselves to a stay at a so-called six-star hotel but, officially, there's no such thing. The term was first applied to Burj Al Arab in Dubai, not by the hotel but by visitors and journalists as a way of describing the property's extra level of luxury. Since then, the term has been bandied about with increasing frequency. However, until now, there's been no official standard to distinguish an "ordinary" five-star hotel from one that offers an even more indulgent experience."

So far so good but if you want to go above six stars as the Italian hotelier Alessandro Rosso wished to do; how do you go about it?

"Rosso found a simple solution - he hired a company to create a new ranking system. Swiss company SGS specialises in management systems, audits and certifications. After analysing various structural and service aspects, it used the findings to create a set of detailed technical specifications that became Rosso's blueprint to deliver the world's first seven-star hotel."

Now we have the answer but exactly what sort of brief do we give SGS? Surely we cannot give them a brief for a 1000 point system as soon all the best wines and much other junk would be clustered from 900 to 999. And again we would have no room at all for the truly exceptional.

Those who have taught wine tasting often ask the group of enthusiasts who have gathered to learn, an opening question such as; what do you know about wine? Remarkably a great number of people respond by saying; I do not know much about wine but I know what I like. This is an excellent response and I believe shows a way forward.

We must go back to a simple yes-no system. I like-I don't like. A two point system. With time this can be expanded to a three point system which allows those who know nothing, or are afraid of making a judgement, or simply do not wish to embarrass the host at say an important dinner party, to give wines two points and thus are never right or wrong. This has immense appeal and also takes us back to a happier time before analytical judges and wine writers began to grade wines, a feature I also note may well be linked to price explosion.