Sincerely,
Makers of cheap wine, beer, and booze
And BTW - “BEGS the question” does not mean “RAISES the question”, which he clearly means in this case.
To “beg” a question is to ignore a question that begs, or needs, to be asked before you can accept the assumption on which you’re building your argument.
Article writing is b.s.
I found the article ‘entertaining’ - it did make me laugh from time to time. Is it ‘oversimplifying’ things? Of course - but is there some truth in what is being stated? Most likely yes.
The study done with the red dye in the white wine does not surprise me at all, nor does the Cornell study about food consumed in a nicer restaurant versus a fast food chain. No matter how much we may disagree, there is truth in that where we taste, who we taste with, what time of day we taste, the ‘look and feel’ of the bottle or the glass in front of us - these all do ‘affect’ the outcome of our tasting. Can some truly block all of these factors out and only describe what is in the glass? Of course - but the majority of consumers, and I’m assuming this includes at least some of us on this board, will be affected.
Cheers.
I thought I once read about how WS tasters “calibrated” themselves for some of the idiosyncratic factors Larry S. describes above. They pull out a previously rated wine and taste it non-blind and have its score on hand before they move onto the new wines blind.
Another memory pops to mind…at a wine appreciation course, the instructor mentioned that tasting is kind of like driving down the road. We may disagree with exactly where the center is and it is all OK, but if you head for the ditch you have a problem. In other words, yes there are physiological limits to our sense of taste that make fine delineation problematic, yet we still know what we like, and there is variety in wine flavors. You could devise these tests in a way that clearly show differences in taste, and make the reverse argument.
KF
Here’s a thoughtful, comprehensive response for those who still care about this issue: The Gray Report: Re: Wine tasting is bullshit
(Frankly, I think the whole discussion is boring.)
No doubt still an attention getting thread for some, after all these years, but really does anyone believe that the 20 or so 100 point scores handed out in the past year by the Grand Poobah were tasted blind? Wine is best enjoyed at table but surely it’s not always an available option for evaluating what’s on the shelves.
Calvin Trillin is about as far as you can get from a wine expert though I always get a kick out of his take: below a link to The New Yorker
Larry:
Out of curiosity, why do you say “of course”?
AFAIK, the precepts of sensory testing are universal, and call for a concerted effort to minimize all these possible confounding factors.
It doesn’t matter how accomplished the tasting panel is: if the samples aren’t presented and tasted in the same manner–blinded, same temperature, same glassware, same white-walled surroundings, etc-- then you’ve basically introduced unwanted variables and the legitimacy of your findings is easily called into doubt.
That doesn’t mean that wine tasting is BS, just that the scores from the “Grand Poobah” are BS…
That doesn’t mean that wine tasting is BS, just that the scores from the “Grand Poobah” are BS…
I quite agree S. Reynolds.
By the way I fixed the Calvin Trillin link above.
Which is why I question the validity of blind tasting results when applied to everyday wine drinking. I understand the concept of controlling as many variables as possible to minimize subjective influences. What evidence is there that the results of blind tasting are reproducible under the totally different conditions by which most wine is consumed?
I think this is an important point about tasting in a “sterile” environment. We don’t enjoy wine that way, and if my interest in wine ever devolves to a series of scientific experiments, I’m lost.
A benefit of blind tasting may also be to strip some prejudices. I have a couple of friends who just don’t think white wine is worthy. I’d love to try the red dye.
On the other hand, a few weeks ago, I hosted a blind pinot noir tasting which was in the direction of Decanter’s world taste-off from a few years ago. I first did this 7 years ago and this year included the last of the case from the winner in 2006. The competition this year was much tougher, but same wine (same vintage) was the winner in two tastings now and then. Is there something about my dining room and that wine, or was WS on to something when they rated it “blind” at 97?
Often overlooked but passingly mentioned in the article is the effect of tasting conditions. For me, the temperature at which a particular wine is served is crucial to its performance. Another factor is whether you’re indoors or outdoors. Still another is the root-day phenomenon (there’s an app for that).
That said, I’ve only done a semi-blind tasting once, but the results were remarkable. Semi-blind because I knew what I’d poured into the decanters, but I didn’t know which decanter was which wine. Stripped of label pretense, the cheapest wine, a Kendall Jackson Vintner’s Reserve cab, beat out two much more highly rated (and expensive) bottles (a Ridge cab and a BV GdL cab). Among four tasters, everyone picked the KJ as the WOTN. I’d like to try this again, and I may do so this weekend. As another WB-er said on my blind tasting thread, tasting blind is humbling.
Examples like the dye test have been oft repeated with the same results. I’d like to try that one, too. Almost everyone here seems to think they’re a supertaster; I feel confident in my wine-judging abilities to spot a red from a dyed-red, but who knows? I feel similarly confident in my ability to separate the plonk from the divine, but the KJ test took that down a notch!
Anyway, read both the article and the blog response. Both are valid perspectives.
Just a thought: I don’t think the red dye test is a fair one; it certainly is not a blind one. People rely on --and trust–their eyesight more than any other sense, and will convince themselves that their eyes are right, not their nose and tongue. Blindfolding someone, then serving him a mix of red and whites, same glasses, same temperature, would be a far more interesting test.
But it’s called wine tasting not wine sensing. I think your point is valid, but both tests have value.
I’ve often wondered if Rudy wines are actually a win/win for everyone.
The buyer (especially in Asia where the “face” aspect is way more a part of why the wine is worth so much) gets to have his brain pleasure centers activate more because of the money spent, label, and prestige of the occasion, and also because the wine was often concocted by Rudy to taste pretty damn good, whereas otherwise the buyer more likely than not gets an old, dead mess, hardly worth the $ for the experience. And Rudy gets his money and Damien Hirsts.
(And Meadows gets to post a high score rating in his DB and also the prestige of having the reputation of being one of the few who’s ever tasted all those vintages. And Kapon gets to send out those ridiculous slang and nickname filled screeds. So actually a win for everyone except if you’re someone now priced out of the market for village wine of your favorite producer.)
This “red dye” test is always trotted out for these wine tasting refutation articles and its legend has grown immensely over the years. I believe this was actually done to a group of students, in a classroom environment by their professor. The legend has elevated them to a panel of experts, despite evidence to the contrary. Students in a classroom environment are highly suggestible, and hardly experts, but it’s been repeated enough now that it must be true.
When I see articles like this, I’m reminded of a local news report done at the time $2 Chuck was introduced. They blinded several “people on the street” with a few wines of the same variety but different price points. 9/10 put 2BC dead last.
This idea that there’s no qualitative difference between wines gets refuted all the time, yet these articles still roll out every few months, cherry picking their studies, and exaggerating this classroom experiment in Bordeaux.
The study says “subjects,” and doesn’t indicate much, if anything about them or their backgrounds. But to be fair, the study also notes: “In this experiment the perception of fragrance and taste conformed therefore to colour. This phenomena has been the object of an abundant literature (Maga, 1974, Dubose, 1980, Davis, 1981, Johnson, 1982, Zellner and Kautz, 1990 in the food processing field; and in the wine field (André, 1970, Williams, 1984). The principal conclusions of this work have also been practical: colourless syrups have disappeared from the market.”
All of this bluster about how these articles are BS reminds me of another common self-perception inability: most people think they’re above-average at just about everything. See Why We're All Better Than Average | Live Science Until you taste blind, try the dye test, etc, it’s all just talk. Illusory superiority.
So then you recommend tasting wine blind, as the only way to prove that wine tasting ins’t BS? I wonder if anyone here has thought of trying that.
Taking it to the extreme, eh? Superior! 
Why not try it (tasting blind, as well as the dye test)? See what happens? Scared? 
.gif ![[stirthepothal.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/f/f40faec63ca1018898a40805efbf9f0066a3d205.gif "[stirthepothal.gif]"){kind=small}