Conventional wisdom in the wine industry is that 90 points is the breaking point when it comes to a critic's rating: Over that magic number means you can't keep a wine in stock; under it means you can't give a wine away.

The 100-point rating system is the brainchild of übercritic Robert Parker, who developed the method in the mid-1970s for his newsletter, The Wine Advocate. Parker experimented with other ratings, including letter grades and a 20-point scale developed at the University of California–Davis, but ultimately created his own.

Any American who had gone through grammar school easily understood his system: A 95 is good, while a 75 is not. You get 50 points just for showing up.

Wine Spectator and other publications quickly adopted Parker's system, and today the 100-point scale is ubiquitous. "The entire process of making and selling wine today revolves around the scores," says Tyler Coleman, author of Wine Politics. "Parker has steered people toward finding good wines, but what's gotten lost is that it's just an opinion. When you give a wine a number, it takes on a patina of objectivity."

Occasionally critics seek out a wine to review on their own, but most often, wineries or distributors submit samples for ratings. Despite the system's importance, some winemakers don't send their wines in for review at all. "That's a game we refuse to play," says Pete Hedges, winemaker for Hedges Family Estate in Red Mountain, Washington State's hot new wine-growing region.

The Hedges' wines are good, even great. Before they stopped submitting four years ago, several of their reds broke the 90-point barrier. But the company is not opting out of ratings because of a fear of poor reviews, but on principle: Scores are a dangerous game, subject to the personal palate of one critic.

Pete Hedges' nephew, Christophe, who manages sales and marketing for Hedges, is an early-30s hipster, idealistic about terroir and determined to undermine the system in his own way.

"We want to maintain our own integrity, but also inspire a score revolution," he says. "My dad calls high-scoring wines 'bimbo wines' because they're good for cocktail parties but not marriage. We want to make the kind of wine that's beautiful for the long haul."

Anthony Nicalo, president of Farmstead Wines, an importer of handcrafted wines from small European producers, also champions subtler wine. "We don't submit any of our wines for review because we feel the scoring system tends to favor power and extraction over subtlety, complexity, and finesse," Nicalo says. He wants customers to evaluate his wines with food and around the table rather than in a clinical setting.

The problem, Coleman says, is when a critic tastes 100 wines in a morning, the bigger, bolder wines inevitably stand out and get bigger scores. "The methodology stacks the deck against delicate wines," he says.

Click Here: 5 Great Wines That Have Never Been RatedOther wine producers have made a deliberate business decision to not submit their wines. When Karl Lawrence Cellars began making cabernet sauvignon in the Napa Valley in 1991, "we had to choose which master to serve," says Ric Henry, a partner.

"Should we serve the critics and become dependent on that roller-coaster ride, or should we serve our clients?" Henry says. "Most wineries were trying to please the critics and put as high a price on the wine as they could. We decided to make really great wine at an unbeatable price so our customers would market for us, word of mouth."

Henry says Karl Lawrence Cellars wants to cultivate customer loyalty, not flash-in-the-pan buyers who chase scores. "I'm a season-ticket holder with the Oakland Raiders," he says. "In a good year or bad, I stick with my team. That's the kind of customers we want at Karl Lawrence."

Phil Woodward, president of Woodward/Graff Wines in Sonoma, California, doesn't submit Graff Family Wines because he thinks there's too much bias and risk involved.

"When you're small- to medium-size, you have more to lose than to gain if you submit," he says. Instead, Woodward prefers to work with local journalists who like to tell a story rather than rate wine. "There are a number of good wine writers around the country. I love it when they write about what we're trying to do here."

With buyers so focused on scores (many wine-store owners lament the customers who walk in and ask for 90-point wines, regardless of the taste), it seems like career suicide not to submit. But Henry reports solid, repeat business and regular growth at Karl Lawrence.

Christophe Hedges says not submitting has had a positive effect on Hedges' sales. When he takes a sample to a wine retailer, "the last thing I'd do is bring in a laminated sheet with someone else's opinion," he says, adding that wine buyers are professionals who prefer to form their own judgments.

"I have much better success without a score," Hedges says, "because they know I trust their palates."