Blind wine tasting

Last updated

Blinded wine tasting is wine tasting undertaken in circumstances in which the tasters are kept unaware of the wines' identities. The blind approach is routine for wine professionals (wine tasters, sommeliers and others) who wish to ensure impartiality in the judgment of the quality of wine during wine competitions or in the evaluation of a sommelier for professional certification. More recently wine scientists (physiologists, psychologists, food chemists and others) have used blinded tastings to explore the objective parameters of the human olfactory system as they apply to the ability of wine drinkers (both wine professionals and ordinary consumers) to identify and characterize the extraordinary variety of compounds that contribute to a wine’s aroma. Similarly, economists testing hypotheses relating to the wine market have used the technique in their research. [1] Some blinded trials among wine consumers have indicated that people can find nothing in a wine's aroma or taste to distinguish between ordinary and pricey brands. [2] Academic research on blinded wine tastings have also cast doubt on the ability of professional tasters to judge wines consistently. [3]

Contents

Technique

Blind tasting, at a minimum, involves denying taster(s) the ability to see the wine label or wine bottle shape. Informal tastings may simply conceal the bottles in a plain paper bag. More exacting competitions or evaluations utilize more stringent procedures, including safeguards against cheating. For example, the wine may be tasted from a black wine glass to mask the color [ citation needed ].

Biases

A taster's judgment can be prejudiced by knowing details of a wine, such as geographic origin, price, reputation, color, or other considerations.

Scientific research has long demonstrated the power of suggestion in perception as well as the strong effects of expectancies. For example, people expect more expensive wine to have more desirable characteristics than less expensive wine. When given wine that they are falsely told is expensive they virtually always report it as tasting better than the very same wine when they are told that it is inexpensive. [4] French researcher Frédéric Brochet "submitted a mid-range Bordeaux in two different bottles, one labeled as a cheap table wine, the other bearing a grand cru etiquette." Tasters described the supposed grand cru as "woody, complex, and round" and the supposed cheap wine as "short, light, and faulty." [5]

Similarly, people have expectations about wines because of their geographic origin, producer, vintage, color, and many other factors. For example, when Brochet served a white wine he received all the usual descriptions: "fresh, dry, honeyed, lively." Later he served the same wine dyed red and received the usual red terms: "intense, spicy, supple, deep." [5]

Historical results

Professional tasting judges

Perhaps the most famous instance of blind testing of professional wine tasters was the so-called Judgment of Paris, a wine competition held in 1976 wherein the French judges blind-tested wines from France and California. Against all expectations, California wines bested French wines according to the judges, a result which would have been unlikely in a non-blind contest. These results were both highly controversial and influential. The event had a revolutionary impact on expanding the production and prestige of wine in the New World. [6] They also "gave the French a valuable incentive to review traditions that were sometimes more accumulations of habit and expediency, and to reexamine convictions that were little more than myths taken on trust." [7] (The Judgment of Paris was described in the 2005 book Judgment of Paris by George M. Taber and depicted in the 2008 movie Bottle Shock .)

In 1999, Richard E. Quandt and Orley Ashenfelter published a paper in the journal Chance that questioned the statistical interpretation of the results of the 1976 Judgment of Paris. The authors noted that a "side-by-side chart of best-to-worst rankings of 18 wines by a roster of experienced tasters showed about as much consistency as a table of random numbers," and reinterpreted the data, altering the results slightly, using a formula that they argued was more statistically valid (and less conclusive). [8] Quandt’s later paper "On Wine Bullshit" poked fun at the seemingly random strings of adjectives that often accompanied experts' published wine ratings. [9] More recent work by Robin Goldstein, Hilke Plassmann, Robert Hodgson, and other economists and behavioral scientists has shown high variability and inconsistency both within and between blind tasters; and little correlation has been found between price and preference, even among wine experts, in tasting settings in which labels and prices have been concealed. [10] [11]

Robert Hodgson, a California vintner and retired oceanographer noticed that the results of wine competitions were surprisingly inconsistent. With some expertise in statistics, Hodgson approached the organizers of the California State Fair wine competition in 2005 with a proposal. In the course of their routine duties, he would sometimes present the judges with samples from the same bottle three times without their knowledge. The judges were among the top experts in the American wine industry: winemakers, sommeliers, critics and buyers as well as wine consultants and academics. The results were "disturbing"... "Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine." The results were published in the Journal of Wine Economics [12] [13] [14] in 2008 and '09. Hodgson continued to analyze the results of wine competitions across the state and found that the medals awarded for wine excellence "were distributed at random". Although he concedes that "there are individual expert tasters with exceptional abilities", the objective evaluation of large numbers of wines as currently attempted at wine competitions is, he asserts, "beyond human ability". [3]

Non-professionals/consumers

Color bias

In 2001, researchers from the University of Bordeaux asked 54 undergraduate oenology students to test two glasses of wine: one red, one white. The participants described the red as "jammy" and commented on its crushed red fruit. The participants failed to recognize that both wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been colored red with a flavorless dye. [3] [15]

Geographic origin bias

For six years (1999-2005), Texas A&M University invited people to taste wines labeled "France", "California", "Texas", and while nearly all ranked the French as best, in fact, all three were the same Texas wine. The contest is built on the simple theory that if people don't know what they are drinking, they award points differently than if they do know what they are drinking. [16]

Price bias

Another well-publicized double-blind, but not peer reviewed, taste test was conducted in 2011 by Prof. Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire. [17] [18] In a wine tasting experiment using 400 participants, Wiseman found that general members of the public were unable to distinguish expensive wines from inexpensive ones. [19] "People just could not tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine." [20]

Expensive wines are an example of a Veblen good, a luxury good for which the demand increases as the price increases. Unlike with common goods, where demand goes up when the price goes down, Veblen goods, such as diamonds, mechanical watches, perfume and wines are more desirable for consumers when the price is higher. Consumer perceive Veblen goods as better quality, exclusive and associate them with status or special occasions.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Parker (wine critic)</span> American wine critic

Robert McDowell Parker Jr. is a retired American wine critic. His wine ratings on a 100-point scale and his newsletter The Wine Advocate are influential in American wine buying and are therefore a major factor in setting the prices for newly released Bordeaux wines. This made him the most widely known and influential wine critic in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sommelier</span> Person with proficiency in wine tasting

A sommelier, or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, normally working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service as well as wine and food pairing. The role of the sommelier in fine dining today is much more specialized and informed than that of a wine waiter. Sommeliers Australia states that the role is strategically on par with that of the chef de cuisine.

The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, also known as the Judgment of Paris, was a wine competition organized in Paris on 24 May 1976 by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant and his colleague, Patricia Gallagher, in which French judges carried out two blind tasting comparisons: one of top-quality Chardonnays and another of red wines. A Napa wine rated best in each category, which caused surprise as France was generally regarded as being the foremost producer of the world's best wines. Spurrier sold only French wine and believed that the California wines would not win.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stag's Leap Wine Cellars</span> Winery in Napa Valley, California

Stag's Leap Wine Cellars is a winery founded by Warren Winiarski in 1970 and based in the Stags Leap District of Napa Valley, California.

Warren Winiarski is a Napa Valley winemaker and the founder and former proprietor of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars.

Mayacamas Vineyards is a California wine producer located in the Mt. Veeder AVA in the Mayacamas Mountains within the Napa Valley AVA, bordering the Sonoma Valley AVA. The estate is known for producing wine of a more traditional style than the Napa trends of recent years that emphasizes power, weight, high levels of alcohol and extravagance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Odette Kahn</span>

Odette Kahn was a leading authority on wine and editor of the La Revue du vin de France and of Cuisine et Vins de France. She was a judge at the historic Paris Wine Tasting of 1976. Kahn was outraged at the results of the tasting, unsuccessfully demanded her ballot back, refused later to speak to organizer Steven Spurrier after the event, claimed fraud, and wrote disparagingly about the wine competition. This event was later portrayed in the movie Bottle Shock.

Christian Vannequé was a French sommelier and restaurateur.

A wine competition is an organized event in which trained judges or consumers competitively rate different vintages, categories, and/or brands of wine. Wine competitions generally use blind tasting of wine to prevent bias by the judges.

The Varsity Blind Wine Tasting Match is a series of annual competitions in blind wine tasting between the Oxford University Blind Wine Tasting Society and the Cambridge University Blind Wine Tasting Society; the blind wine tasting teams of the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews; and the blind wine tasting teams of the University of Bath and Bristol University. It is sponsored by champagne house Pol Roger. The Oxford/Cambridge competition has run since 1953. The current Oxford/Cambridge convenor is James Simpson, Master of Wine (MW). Will Lyons is a judge for the Edinburgh/St Andrews competition

<i>Wine for the Confused</i> 2004 American film

Wine for the Confused is a documentary hosted by John Cleese. It is a light-hearted introduction to wine for novices. Cleese guides viewers through the basics of wine types and grape varieties, wine making, wine tasting and terminology, buying and storing wines, through direct narrative and interviews with wine makers and wine sellers. The film duration is 92 minutes and includes visits to wineries in California. The film concludes with a large group conducting a blind wine tasting. One of the tasting results was the fact that most tasters could not distinguish between red wine and white wine. Another was that most tasters rated an inexpensive wine equal in taste to an expensive prestige wine, and both of these out scored the rest of the mid-priced and high-priced wines in the blind test.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orley Ashenfelter</span> American economist

Orley Clark Ashenfelter is an American economist and the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. His areas of specialization include labor economics, econometrics, and law and economics. He was influential in contributing to the applied turn in economics.

Richard Emeric Quandt is a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning economist who analyzed the results of the Judgment of Paris wine tasting event with Orley Ashenfelter.

The Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) is a marketing service company that provides reviews for spirits, wines, and beers. It uses numerical scores and publishes books of its test results.

<i>Bottle Shock</i> 2008 film by Randall Miller

Bottle Shock is a 2008 American comedy-drama film based on the 1976 wine competition termed the "Judgment of Paris", when California wine defeated French wine in a blind taste test. It stars Alan Rickman, Chris Pine, and Bill Pullman and is directed by Randall Miller, who wrote the screenplay along with Jody Savin and Ross Schwartz. It premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wine tasting</span> Method of judging wine

Wine tasting is the sensory examination and evaluation of wine. While the practice of wine tasting is as ancient as its production, a more formalized methodology has slowly become established from the 14th century onward. Modern, professional wine tasters use a constantly evolving specialized terminology which is used to describe the range of perceived flavors, aromas and general characteristics of a wine. More informal, recreational tasting may use similar terminology, usually involving a much less analytical process for a more general, personal appreciation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aging of wine</span> Overview of the aging of wine

The aging of wine is potentially able to improve the quality of wine. This distinguishes wine from most other consumable goods. While wine is perishable and capable of deteriorating, complex chemical reactions involving a wine's sugars, acids and phenolic compounds can alter the aroma, color, mouthfeel and taste of the wine in a way that may be more pleasing to the taster. The ability of a wine to age is influenced by many factors including grape variety, vintage, viticultural practices, wine region and winemaking style. The condition that the wine is kept in after bottling can also influence how well a wine ages and may require significant time and financial investment. The quality of an aged wine varies significantly bottle-by-bottle, depending on the conditions under which it was stored, and the condition of the bottle and cork, and thus it is said that rather than good old vintages, there are good old bottles. There is a significant mystique around the aging of wine, as its chemistry was not understood for a long time, and old wines are often sold for extraordinary prices. However, the vast majority of wine is not aged, and even wine that is aged is rarely aged for long; it is estimated that 90% of wine is meant to be consumed within a year of production, and 99% of wine within 5 years.

The Judgment of Princeton was a wine tasting event held on 8 June 2012 during a conference of the American Association of Wine Economists held at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. The purpose of this event was to compare, by a blind tasting, of several French wines against wines produced in New Jersey in order to gauge the quality and development of the New Jersey wine industry. Because New Jersey's wine industry is relatively young and small, it has received little attention in the world wine market. The state's wine production has experienced growth in recent years largely as a result of state legislators offering new opportunities for winery licensing and repealing Prohibition-era laws that have constrained the industry's development in past years. This event was modeled after a 1976 blind tasting event dubbed the "Judgment of Paris" in which French wines were compared to several wines produced in California when that state's wine industry was similarly young and developing. The New Jersey wine industry heralded the results and asserted that the rating of New Jersey wines by the blind tasting's judges was a victory for the state's wine industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beer tasting</span>

Beer tasting is a way to learn more about the history, ingredients and production of beer as well as different beer styles, hops, yeast and beer presentation. A common way is to analyse the appearance, smell and taste of the beer. Then a final judgement of the beer's quality is done. There are many scales for rating beer among beer journalists and beer experts. Different magazines and experts often use their own scale, for example the famous British sommelier Jancis Robinson uses a scale between 1 and 20 and the famous American sommelier Joshua M. Bernstein uses a scale between 1 and 100. However it is common for professional organisations such as the Wine & Spirit Education Trust to rate beer with verbal grades: faulty - poor - acceptable - good - very good - outstanding, corresponding to a scale from 1 to 5.

References

  1. ↑ Ashenfelter, Orley; Richard Quandt (1999). "Analyzing a Wine Tasting Statistically". Chance. 12 (3): 16–20. doi:10.1080/09332480.1999.10542152.
  2. ↑ Georgiou, Maroulla, "Expensive and inexpensive wines taste the same, research shows", PhysOrg.com (April 15, 2011).
  3. 1 2 3 Derbyshire, David (22 June 2013). "Wine-tasting: it's junk science". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  4. ↑ Chemical Object Representation in the Field of Consciousness – Frédéric Brochet
  5. 1 2 Downey, Roger (9 October 2006). "Wine snob scandal". Seattle Weekly. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  6. ↑ Peterson, Thane. The Day California Wines Came of Age: Much to France's Chagrin: a Blind Taste Test 25 Years Ago in Paris inadvertently launched California's fine wine industry. Business Week , 8 May 2001.
  7. ↑ Taber, George M. Judgment of Paris. NY: Scribner, 2005. ISBN   978-0-7432-4751-1.
  8. ↑ Ashenfelter and Quandt, Op. cit.
  9. ↑ Quandt, Richard E (2007). "On Wine Bullshit" (PDF). Journal of Wine Economics. 2 (2). doi:10.1017/S1931436100000389. S2CID   170562491. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 5 August 2016.
  10. ↑ Goldstein, Robin (2008). "Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a large sample of blind tastings" (PDF). Journal of Wine Economics. 3 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1017/S1931436100000523. S2CID   2491510.
  11. ↑ Goldstein, Robin (2010). The Wine Trials: 175 wines under $15 that beat $50-150 bottles in blind taste tests . New York: Workman. ISBN   978-1-6081-6007-5.
  12. ↑ Hodgson, Robert T. "An Examination of Judge Reliability at a major U.S. Wine Competition", Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 3; Issue 02 (Winter 2008), pp 105-113
  13. ↑ Hodgson, Robert T., "An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions", Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 4; Issue 01 (Spring 2009), pp 1-9
  14. ↑ Hodgson, Robert T., "How Expert are "Expert" Wine Judges?", Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 4; Issue 02 (Winter 2009), pp 233-241.
  15. ↑ Morrot, Gil; Brochet, Frédéric; Dubourdieu, Denis (2001). "The Color of Odors". Brain and Language. Elsevier BV. 79 (2): 309–320. doi:10.1006/brln.2001.2493. ISSN   0093-934X. PMID   11712849. S2CID   10002492.
  16. ↑ Liquid Assets - A fair competition, The Austin Chronicle, April 8, 2005.
  17. ↑ Expensive and inexpensive wines taste the same, research shows Maroulla Georgiou, phys.org April 15, 2011
  18. ↑ 5 Research-Backed Reasons Expensive Wine Isn't Always Better Libby Kane, Business Insider , July 2, 2014
  19. ↑ The Wiseman ‘Study’ – cheap versus expensive wine Jamie Goode, April 27, 2011
  20. ↑ Sample, Ian (14 April 2011). "Expensive wine and cheap plonk taste the same to most people". The Guardian .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.