The rules of the wine tasting were simple. Twenty five of the best wines under twelve dollars were nominated by independent wine stores in the Boston area. The Globe then assembled a panel of wine professionals to select their top picks in the red and white category. All of the wines were tasted blind.
The result is a beguiling list of delicious plonk. But I was most interested in just how little overlap there was between the different critics. In fact, only one wine - the 2006 Willm Alsace Pinot Blanc from France - managed to make the list of every critic. Most of the wines were personal favorites, and appeared on only one of the lists.
So much for objectivity. But results like this shouldn't be surprising. I've blogged about this before, but it's such a cool experiment that it's worth repeating. In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.
The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.
What these experiments neatly demonstrate is that the taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of our inputs, and cannot be solved in a bottom-up fashion. It cannot be deduced by beginning with our simplest sensations and extrapolating upwards. When we taste a wine, we aren't simply tasting the wine. This is because what we experience is not what we sense. Rather, experience is what happens when our senses are interpreted by our subjective brain, which brings to the moment its entire library of personal memories and idiosyncratic desires. As the philosopher Donald Davidson argued, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish between a subjective contribution to knowledge that comes from our selves (what he calls our "scheme") and an objective contribution that comes from the outside world ("the content"). Instead, in Davidson's influential epistemology, the "organizing system and something waiting to be organized" are hopelessly interdependent. Without our subjectivity we could never decipher our sensations, and without our sensations we would have nothing to be subjective about. In other words, we shouldn't be surprised that different people like different bottles of cheap wine.
PS. A lot of this material appears in my book, so check it out if you want to learn more about Escoffier, olfaction, umami and subjectivity.
Comments
I have read about those experiments on your blog and elsewhere, and while I'm tickled by the explanation commonly given, I'm not sure it's right. Are the critics actually imagining the experience they are describing, or are they fabricating one on the fly rather than admit they don't taste a difference between two wines? Even if they had suspected that the purpose of the experiment was to serve the same wine in two guises, the risk to professional credibility of being the only critic unable to tell two very different wines apart is much greater than the risk of appearing "tricked" into seeing distinctions that aren't there. Maybe the methodology accounts for this -- haven't read the studies, only descriptions of them -- but I would be much more convinced by a study that served blindfolded critics white wine at room temperature to see whether they realized it was not a red.
Posted by: Nic D | November 2, 2007 10:25 AM
PS For instance, studies have shown that financial managers who saw the stock bubble coming and pulled out of the market in, say, 1999, were fired when the market kept rising; but managers who left their clients' money in the market kept their jobs and are probably still employed today, since there were too many people who were wrong to fire them all and they could all claim that nobody in their profession saw the bubble coming (not after those people had been weeded out, anyway). Those who had been right were not rehired. There are many situations where it is better to be wrong in good company than correct alone, even if third parties suffer as a result.
Posted by: Nic D | November 2, 2007 10:29 AM
This is amusing. However, these studies are tremendously biased. I don't mean to excessively defend "wine experts", but let's think about this.
It is obvious that white wine does not taste like red wine. A blindfolded tasting, if the experts knew that the wine might be white or red, would almost certainly show that experts could distinguish white from red to a high degree of accuracy. Coloring white wine surreptitiously introduced a very serious visual bias. Note that if it was a good white wine, we should not fault the experts for rating it well, even if they were tricked by food coloring. Not also that "jammy" and "fruity" are qualities that a white wine could have. No-one said it was "tannic", apparently, or used any other words that are completely incompatible with the chemistry of white wine
Likewise, it's usually very easy to tell the difference between cheap table wine and expensive wine (regardless of which you like better, they are different). There are objective reasons for this. Expensive wine is made from different varietals than "box" type wine, the grapes are MUCH more extensively pruned, and it is grown in different places. One can taste the difference. Here the experts did better. Sixty percent of them identified the wine as not "worth drinking" even when the intense visual bias of an expensive bottle was introduced. Whether or not one agrees that cheap wine is not worth drinking, they actually resisted the biasing variable to some degree.
Twelve dollar wines are a different category again. They tend to be made from the most highly-regarded varietals (the ones whose names you've heard), but they aren't pruned as extensively, nor grown on historic wine fields in every case. However, if price is correlated with quality we would expect them to all be similar in quality. The "random" choices of experts actually suggest that the market may be able to distinguish quite well. If similar priced wines are similar in quality, at least in this category, then near-random results of such a survey is what we would expect. All that has been shown is that among wines in the same price category, most are not reproducibly distinct from the others in terms of perceived quality.
My interpretation is that although tasting wine is a very subjective experience, there are reproducible differences between some wines, and the market seems to be able to sort them out.
The conclusion that all perception of wine quality is arbitrary and non-generalizable is NOT warranted here.
Posted by: harold | November 2, 2007 1:25 PM
I agree with Harold's comments with one exception:
The subjectivity of wine tasting is inversely proportional to the amount of wine knowledge possessed by the taster.
Those that have mastered wine and its components as well as how those vary with farming practices, climate, soil and all that goes with terroir and vinification methods are more likely to objectively examine a wine rather than give a subjective impression or reaction to the given wine.
These people know and detect aromatic compounds which are hallmarks of various processes in the growing and production of wine.
Posted by: Arthur | November 5, 2007 11:44 AM
Regarding Brochet's second experiment, you say "... experience is what happens when our senses are interpreted by our subjective brain, which brings to the moment its entire library of personal memories and idiosyncratic desires." This is doubtless true, but from your description of it, apparently not what happened here: personal memories and idiosyncratic desires, even if influential, evidently took a back seat to one or more social cues, i.e., the labeling of the wine by others as 'grand-cru' or 'vin du table'. That social cues play an important role in perception is nothing new. Brochet's experiment, rather, grabs out attention primarly because of the way the limitations of the experts as a result of such influences are clearly (and hilariously) revealed. Perhaps what this experiment also demonstrates is the importance of the web of beliefs, practices and attitudes which constitute our collective efforts to sort out social and other biases over time.
Posted by: John Duff | November 5, 2007 11:48 AM
Brouchet's experiments, by themselves, certainly don't establish that the taste of a wine is subjective. In both cases an alternative explanation would be that the conditions Brouchet manipulates effect the abilities of the subjects to pick up on objective taste properties of the fine.
And - perhaps less plausibly - with respect to the first experiment, you might think that the flavour of a wine is some multi-modal property. That's certainly true with respect to the smell and feel of a wine - perhaps it could be true of colour too? Then changing the colour of the wine would impact it's taste (just as changing the smell or texture of it would).
Posted by: gabriel | November 5, 2007 7:36 PM
Oops, that should be 'its'. I blame it on the fact I'm two thirds of the way though a bottle.
Posted by: gabriel | November 5, 2007 7:39 PM
I have a treat for those of us who are interested in this topic as it deals with coffee.
http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/espresso-sensory-selling.htm
Posted by: Captain Ahab | November 6, 2007 10:32 AM
Very interesting experiment. I wish more experts had to endure such blind tests.
Not to nitpick, but the correct French grammar is not "vin du table" but "vin de table".
Posted by: Michael G.R. | November 6, 2007 10:57 AM
This is why sites like TasteVine are going to make wine much more accessible to the world. By actually matching people's tastes within varietals on a more comprehensive level than just "i like this", "i don't like this", you can start to pair people together who actually taste and enjoy wine the same way as one another. Then, on a grand scale, people can learn from each other's random luck of choosing a good or bad wine.
Posted by: Russell Jones | November 6, 2007 11:11 AM
I did my own version of this in High School. Its amazing how many 16 year olds will get drunk off a few cases of Buckler (Non-alcoholic Beer) if they labels have been removed.
Posted by: C Foley | November 6, 2007 11:14 AM
While there may be some that pretend that wine reviewing is an objective pursuit, I would disagree wholeheartedly. Like music or film reviewing, it's all about subjective impressions. The task of the consumer is to find a reviewer whose tastes are related to their own (though perhaps even opposite). Take Gene Siskel for example, whenever I read his review of a given movie, I knew I would enjoy it if he hated it. This made his reviews quite helpful to me, though our tastes were opposing.
A good reviewer tries to describe the qualities of the piece that they are reviewing, but those are always tainted with personal taste. One man's "bloated sweetness" in another's "vivacious flavor".
Posted by: John Sawers | November 6, 2007 11:16 AM
I love the idea of the experiment, it's really cute, clever and original. Great idea, smartly executed.
I'm not going to argue or anything, but that entry deserves to be in something like Freakonomics.
Well Done.
Michael.
Posted by: Michael | November 6, 2007 11:27 AM
For the Brochet red wine vs white wine experiment, it should be noted that that white wine and red wine were probably served at very different temperatures, if they weren't to arouse suspicion. The same glass of wine tastes significantly different at 45 degrees than it does at 60 degrees. A lot of characteristics of white wine are hidden by their cold serving temperature, which is often a good thing.
One can't reasonably say the glasses of wine were identical except for their color, unless they were served at the same temperature. I can't find a mention of the temperature in the original study.
Posted by: Janette | November 6, 2007 12:06 PM
These are the same types that call themselves audiophiles, and push expensive (unecessary) items to make music sound better. Wooden blocks, $10,000 speaker wire, $1000 power cords.
Posted by: Alex | November 6, 2007 12:09 PM
I used to think that "wine experts" were only slightly apart from the audiophile community, but my own personal experimenting seems to indicate otherwise...
For the last few years, my wife and I have thrown a yearly "blind" wine tasting party (really just an excuse to get drunk). We invite a number of couples over, each is assigned "red" or "white", each couple brings two bottles as directed one "cheap" (under $10) and "nice" (over $15). We then place all the wine in separate bottle-bags with numbers attached, and do rounds of taste tests.
Everyone has a score card upon which they try to guess the varietal and cheap/nice status of each numbered bottle.
Most of the people we invite are like me, not much of an expert, and our guesses are not very accurate. However, one of the friends that attends *is* a "wine expert" and he consistently guesses the correct varietal (I'd say at 90% or more), and is almost as accurate with the cheap/nice rating.
I realize it's not exactly double-blind testing, but it does seem to indicate that some people, either through training or just superior natural taste/smell, can distinguish many of the wine qualities in dispute.
Posted by: mystikphish | November 6, 2007 1:27 PM
If anyone had bothered reading the original paper, they would realise that it was 54 not 57 subjects and that they were undergraduates from the Faculty of Oneology, not "wine experts". Also, participants were asked to use a list of existing adjectives to describe the wine, not come up with them extemporaneously.
It's still an interesting experiment but these facts change the interpretation of the results pretty dramatically.
Posted by: Shalmanese | November 6, 2007 1:58 PM
Shalmanese,
Please provide the url of the original paper.
Posted by: Arthur | November 6, 2007 2:15 PM
Wine tasting is very subjective, this is true.
However the meaning of 'Wine Expert', or the definition of expertise in general, is not so much about objectivity as about experience. What wine experts are really good at is judging the labels, not judging the taste.
Of the two skills, judging labels is much more valuable since it can be done without opening the bottle (or even seeing the bottle, in the case of selecting from a wine list).
Having said that it is still frustrating that objective tasting remains so elusive.
Posted by: Tim Hollingsworth | November 6, 2007 2:17 PM
These experiments strike me as rather silly. They don't really qualify as experiments but more like surveys of opinions. There has been no standardization of tasters and terms used nor does it appear that any really statistical analysis has been done. Please have a look at some of the real sensory analysis techniques used in experiments at an actual research institution like University of California, Davis. At the other extreme sit down sometime with a half dozen Master Sommeliers or even just 5 or 6 senior servers from a top end restaurant in SF or NY. I used to observe, on a weekly basis, the top 3 servers and Sommelier blind taste 5 wines from our list of 500 and get at least 2 dead on, and 4 correct down to the varietal and region. There was not always perfect consensus but still it was amazing.
Posted by: Vitis01 | November 6, 2007 2:27 PM
*really* should be *real* or maybe *rigorous*
Posted by: Vitis01 | November 6, 2007 2:39 PM
Dress it up all you want, its still liquor. Everyone thinks there are these refined people in these enclaves of society that have these lavish high faluted lifestyles, when in reality what is usually the case, one of the members of a certain family was clever and hard working and amassed a fortune and the people that were once hard working stiffs now surround themselves with supposed status symbols but they still sex it up and they still like to get drunk ... they are just related to this one person that was clever and hardworking ... thats about it really.
Posted by: Nicholas Lawson | November 6, 2007 2:47 PM
I find it very amusing that some self-anointed wine snobs are getting defensive over this experiment.
Posted by: Nate | November 6, 2007 3:30 PM
Googling leads to some other references to Brochet's 2001 study with 57 participants drinking the same wine from two different bottles, but a detail that is missing from this blog's account of the study is that a week passed between drinking the first (cheap looking bottle) and the second (expensive one). I suspect that is an important detail, and if they had been tried on the same day at least some of the 57 testers would claim that they tasted similar or the same.
I can unfortunately find no mention anywhere on the web (older than this blog post) about Brochet doing a study with food coloring. I would really appreciate it if you could provide a verifiable source for this claim, as if it is true it makes a great story but if it is an urban legend I don't want to repeat it. Thanks!
Posted by: Finite | November 6, 2007 3:39 PM
A recent similar experiment showed that kids consistently preferred foods that came in McDonalds packaging. This was then claimed to show how susceptible kids are to marketing. It is clearly not just kids who are susceptible to being influenced by labels, presentation, and packaging.
Posted by: Kevin | November 6, 2007 3:59 PM
Mythbusters did something like this except with Vodka. All the non-experts couldn't tell the difference between the cheap and expensive vodka. The one expert they did have could tell almost perfectly. Now, double blind testing of 'which kind is it, white or red' would be pretty darn interesting. I can't imagine that an expert would not be able to tell the difference because I most certainly can tell easily between white and red (can't stand red). They're totally different. I am very surprised one of the 'experts' didn't at least detect some oddity with the red. Very interesting.
Posted by: Jim | November 6, 2007 4:49 PM
This is what marketeers understand, and ordinary people don't. And they use this knowledge to devastating results. This applies to all high end luxury goods: from cars, to handbags, to antique items, to High Art. If there is one thing you got to take away from this blog post it is this:
people enjoy things more when they are mentally tuned into it.
Part of the process of marketing involves framing an object into an object of rarity and desire and exclusivity. Psychologically, people actually do enjoy an object more once these suggestions are made to the mind subconciously. The enjoyment is real. Since enjoyment is essentially a mental construct.
Posted by: Chui | November 6, 2007 5:18 PM
To the anonymous poster:
Why are people who truly know wine and who employ critical thinking in analyzing a research paper called "Snobs"?
Would you call the best doctor or lawyer in their field a "snob" because they are experts? Would you call someone a “snob” because they correctly point out a flaw in an experiment, its conclusions and interpretation?
Posted by: Arthur | November 6, 2007 5:43 PM
I've suspected for a while that a lot of "wine talk" amounts to free-association. Even so, this seems more mischevious (indeed) than damning.
Certainly, there is a core of expertise available, if you're willing to go to the trouble of "training your tastebuds" (that is, learning the significances and associations of various tastes and odors). But most people just aren't on that level, so they ought to just stick with "try it, see if you like it". Especially with twenty-dollar wines... the point of those is that they won't be the "pedigreed" sorts, nor the bottom-of-the-barrel junk, but there's a lot of room between those extremes.
(Janette: Several members of my family drink their red wine with ice cubes. Reportedly, my stepmother caused some consternation when she visited France! ;-) )
Posted by: David Harmon | November 6, 2007 5:56 PM
Harold: Nice facade, but your prose reveals you don't really know much about wine, do you?
Ask yourself this: Why is a $12 wine a $12 wine?
and: If a $2 and a $200 wine, both say "Cabernet Sauvignon" are they made from the same varietals?
finally: Can you name a white varietal that has "jammy" as a common descriptor?
If you don't know the answers to those, you might want to avoid pontificating in an area foreign to you.
Cheers!
Posted by: Uncle Phil | November 6, 2007 6:08 PM
I'll bite.
1. It seemed to me that Harold was rather offering a hypothesis about why mid-priced bottles of wine are mid-priced in line with the results of the experiment, but at odds with what the blogger suggested we could conclude; that dialectical position doesn't require putting forward any view about why wines are priced as they are.
2. Dunno, but yes if they both are what they say they are.
3. Harold just suggested that a white wine could be 'jammy'; there are such whites, and it is somewhat irrelevant whether they are common or not.
Posted by: TrollFeeder | November 6, 2007 7:34 PM
or, re 2., if so then both are the same varietal, rather than made from the same, if we want to be pedantic about it.
Posted by: TrollFeeder | November 6, 2007 7:41 PM
I love this topic. Here is a version from another blogger with some more information, including the requested citations. I enjoyed reading the New Yorker article which is linked towards the bottom of the post.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001005.html
Just for posterity, the Brochet study is at:
doi:10.1006/brln.2001.2493
Posted by: Handles | November 6, 2007 9:41 PM
A couple things about wine. First, the best wine to drink is the one you like. Second, the wine you should be drinking as your "daily" wine is the wine you feel you can afford to drink every day. Those two things in themselves are subjective as they depend completely on the subject, you.
A couple things about "wine experts". A wine expert is someone who chooses to call themselves a wine expert. The successful ones (professionals) are the ones that can do that and make money at it. Their opinion (outside of their own head) is worth exactly what anyone is willing to pay for it.
Sommeliers (current day wine professionals) originally were in charge of procuring and storing food stuffs for courts. Wine was one of those foods. Their ability to buy and keep wine (and other food) that was palatable to their master was the ultimate test of their abilities. Tastes changes through time, so a sommelier who likes their job will change their opinion accordingly.
Asking a panel of wine professionals to choose from a pile of
"What these experiments neatly demonstrate is that the taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of our inputs, and cannot be solved in a bottom-up fashion."
While that may be true, I believe they more strongly demonstrate that wine professionals, when left without any guidance at all, will usually tell you what they think you want to hear. It's how they make money.
Wine could be objectively tested for acidity, sugar content, a list of aldehydes and polyphenols present. After all those stringent scientific tests, you would have to pour the wine into the imperfect human body. Might as well save yourself some time and effort and just enjoy wine for what it is. A very tasty drug.
Posted by: FromFrance | November 7, 2007 1:14 AM
A couple things about wine. First, the best wine to drink is the one you like. Second, the wine you should be drinking as your "daily" wine is the wine you feel you can afford to drink every day. Those two things in themselves are subjective as they depend completely on the subject, you.
A couple things about "wine experts". A wine expert is someone who chooses to call themselves a wine expert. The successful ones (professionals) are the ones that can do that and make money at it. Their opinion (outside of their own head) is worth exactly what anyone is willing to pay for it.
Sommeliers (current day wine professionals) originally were in charge of procuring and storing food stuffs for courts. Wine was one of those foods. Their ability to buy and keep wine (and other food) that was palatable to their master was the ultimate test of their abilities. Tastes changes through time, so a sommelier who likes their job will change their opinion accordingly.
Asking a panel of wine professionals to choose from a pile of less than $12 wines is kind of like asking art professionals to choose from a stack of cartoons. Cartoons are art. We read them every day. Some are better than others. But anyone who doesn't understand the subtly bizarre connotation inherent in asking art professionals to judge them simply doesn't understand art, or misunderstands the purpose of comics.
"What these experiments neatly demonstrate is that the taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of our inputs, and cannot be solved in a bottom-up fashion."
While that may be true, I believe they more strongly demonstrate that wine professionals, when left without any guidance at all, will usually tell you what they think you want to hear. It's how they make money.
Wine could be objectively tested for acidity, sugar content, a list of aldehydes and polyphenols present. After all those stringent scientific tests, you would have to pour the wine into the imperfect human body. Might as well save yourself some time and effort and just enjoy wine for what it is. A very tasty drug.
Posted by: FromFrance | November 7, 2007 1:16 AM
Oops, the blog software sanitised the link :P. Here it is: http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/Morrot.pdf
Posted by: Shalmanese | November 7, 2007 1:31 AM
Nice article.
There is a strong technically basis for a wines flavour, texture etc.
However, to explain why the exact same vintage Barolo is much less enjoyable at home than on the Amalfi coast requires a small leap of faith for the more technically minded.
Posted by: jason | November 7, 2007 4:18 AM
I have never met so many misguided replies to a blog item in my life!
This is an excellent article which has very little indeed to do with wine-tasting. Carefully read, Jonah is telling us about the subjectivity of experience and the difficulty in separating out sensations from judgments. ONE example of that happens to be the Brochet study to which he refers.
Maybe it's time you gave us a new blog on wine critics with misfiring frontal cortices Jonah?
John
Posted by: John Eaton | November 7, 2007 1:19 PM
No difference between determining good wine and good art. Once we watch a million 4-year olds create Kandinsky-like paintings because they're capable of it, we know we're not dealing with people with full decks, but only critics with egos, attitudes, biases, and a need to be like their colleagues.
Posted by: bully | November 7, 2007 3:55 PM
In early 1990s I read an article in the Fragrance magazine - that was about blind testing of perfumes. A group of professional "noses" (not all of them working for perfumes industry though, some were from wine testers, cheese testers, or even florists) tested a number of rather well-known perfumes. Now, half of them did not recognize the #5 Chanel - some even described this lagandary scent as "cheap", whereas everybody decided that the Procter & Gamble Old Spice Gents was (a) expensive and (b) ladies' perfume!!!
Posted by: Paul | November 8, 2007 7:15 AM
I like how people who drink wine every day aren't considered alcoholics.
Posted by: Adam | November 8, 2007 10:36 AM
The problem here is simple - alcohol tastes bitter, regardless of how well it's processed. Expensive wine and mid-range wine taste almost identical, only the cheapest wines taste really bad. Sure, there are different 'flavors', but that's like comparing apples and oranges. It all comes down to personal prefernce in the end.
Posted by: Don | November 8, 2007 10:54 AM
I saw this at digg and looked at a couple of comments. 2 comments before this one, Adam wrote:
"I like how people who drink wine every day aren't considered alcoholics."
Thats a matter of culture. I drink at least one glass of wine per day and im no alchoolic. im from portugal, we fortunatly have some of the best wines. the culture here is to drink wine much more than drink beer.
I like how ppl that thinks THEIR way of seeing things is the correct one. how narrow minded.
Posted by: joao pedro | November 8, 2007 11:08 AM
I don´t understand it... I am not at all an expert in wines, not even a conossieur, I seldom drink them (a bottle each two months or so) but how can someone ever confuse the taste of a white wine with a red one?... it would be like confusing apple juice with orange juice, it dosen´t matter the "color", the flavor is really different... and, by the way, whites have no bouquet (the smell you get in your nose when you exhale after drinking the red wine)... so? experts? not even habitual drinkers of wine I would say.
Posted by: Sam | November 8, 2007 11:19 AM
The same holds true for cigars even among those that consider themselves afficiandos. Give a person 2 identical cigars. Tell them one is a high end cigar such as a Avo and the other is a cheap brand such as a montecristo. They will mostly respond that they enjoyed the "high end" cigar more and attribute more pleasant flavor and aroma to it. At the same time they will tend to state that they found the "cheap" brand harsh and stale. Works with cars as well. People will attribute better handling, more comfort, even more leg room to the car with the higher end brand even if the specs state otherwise. People will tend to focus on the positive aspects of that which is important to them. Many people in the wine/cigar/car world idolize status and thus will attribute more positives to the "high end" even if the quality isn't really there. It's a way they justify spending 2-3 times the money on something that isn't significantly better that a cheaper alternative.
Posted by: Rob | November 8, 2007 12:28 PM
Anytime I am introduced to someone who is designated as an "expert", I brace myself for the delivery of a load of BS.
What is particularly fascinating to me is the lengths to which many of the "experts" will go to defend their "expertise" and to chastise anyone who is skeptical of their expert abilities (i.e., non-believer).
It seems to me that the world today is overflowing with a cadre of "experts" who spend a great deal of time delivering the aforementioned "load of BS".
Posted by: DocChuck | November 8, 2007 12:35 PM
lame...drink beer.
Posted by: Tom | November 8, 2007 12:35 PM
I see a lot of skeptical comments here saying what a "good" wine expert can or should be able to do in various circumstances and easily tell red from white or expensive from cheap. That's a nice theory, but I'm a "put up or shut up" guy. If you have links to such tests that they've passed please post them. Every test I've seen has shown the "experts" can't do what you say. This article lists two alone. I'm always open minded to be convinced either way so I welcome such demonstrations. But these claims are just useless unless you can demonstrate it.
Posted by: Chad | November 8, 2007 1:19 PM
The entire point of tricking the experts both times was to show how they bend themselves to their own expectations or biases. People claiming that the dye initiates a visual bias or that the concept/design of the studies are wrong are totally missing the point of the studies.
The entire point was to see if the experts could be fooled or would fool themselves. And they did. Period.
Or, to use internet boorishness: PWNED! LOLZ!
Posted by: Inder | November 8, 2007 1:31 PM
I am a man of considerable means, with a PhD, if that excites you. Although I am no "Robert Parker" I do consider myself a knowledgable oenophile.
What never ceases to burn me is the complete lack of wine training even some of the finest restaurants provide for their servers.
My wife (much younger than myself) and I were at the vaunted Red Lobster in midtown Manhattan several weeks back and our waitress looked at me as though I had two heads when I quizzed her as to the vintage of some chardonnay that sounded promising.
I hate it when they insult my intelligence that way.
Posted by: DocChuck | November 8, 2007 2:57 PM
DocChuck: Since when is Red Lobster a fine restaurant? I would never expect some high school kid in a chain restaurant to know the difference between white and red except for the color, never mind the vintage of either.
Ever consider that perhaps you insulted her intelligence, Dr?
Posted by: Angela | November 8, 2007 3:34 PM
My name is chiffOnade and I am a PROFESSIONAL CHEF. I post many things on the internet (you can Google me if you like). I often post as "DocChuck" and "Angela" among scores of other screen names (like the two posts above).
My main purpose in life is to GET Sandra Lee and the real "DocChuck". You will be hearing a LOT more from me on this forum.
I am 48 years old, an italian immigrant, a convicted meth user, and my illegimitate daughter is in rehab after being released from prison . . . and I am PROUD to be posting on this forum. I have been divorced four times and my present boyfriend weighs 400 pounds (you can see his photos on MySpace . . . the real chiffonade) and he will whip anybody who makes fun of my tattoos and body piercings.
Keep that in mind if you email me at chiffonade@hotmail.com or chiffonade@yahoo.com.
Posted by: chiffOnade | November 8, 2007 3:53 PM
Who were these experts? I have shared company with people who are so skilled at wine that blindly they can taste a wine and tell you what type of wine it is, what varietal, what region it came from, and in some cases able to pick the appelation as well.
Someone capable of blindly diving the correct appellation for a wine is not going to make a mistake over something like white or red wine.
Posted by: Ryan | November 8, 2007 4:22 PM
My wife performs a Bea Arthur impersonation at many fine supper clubs in our little part of the world (Maryland to be exact). Since I can AFFORD it, I often pamper myself with fine wines and cognacs as I enjoy her show. One memorable night I enjoyed two bottles of 2005 Woodbridge Pinot Noir @ $12 a pop. As usual, I was delighted by my wife’s performance, but I was told that I became a bit overenthusiastic in calling for her encore.
I, of course, pointed out to the manager how unbelievably boorish it was to admonish me after I had just spent over $24 in his “restaurant” on wine alone. Along with the spinach dip and quesadillas it was close to $36!
As a paying customer of substantial refinement, I expect — no, I DEMAND — to be treated with RESPECT and VENERATION by ALL members of a restaurant’s staff. This is “especially” true when I have willingly paid their rapacious markup on fine wine.
Posted by: DocChuck | November 8, 2007 4:36 PM
Bollocks !
Posted by: Deepth | November 8, 2007 8:36 PM
Well i like the taste of balls in my mouth befor a nice glass of wine.
Posted by: Charles hoftmann | November 8, 2007 8:44 PM
Sometimes before anal sex with my boyfriend, i lube his penis with red wind because it gives me a nice tingleing sensation.
Posted by: Phat Tkock | November 8, 2007 8:49 PM
This is the point of " The Wine Dude " podcast - just try a wine and like it or not ... don't let anyone tell you what tastes good to you.
thewinedude.com
enjoy taking the snobbiness out of wine tasting
Posted by: Shawn | November 8, 2007 10:02 PM
This is the point of " The Wine Dude " podcast - just try a wine and like it or not ... don't let anyone tell you what tastes good to you.
thewinedude.com
enjoy taking the snobbiness out of wine tasting
Posted by: Shawn | November 8, 2007 10:04 PM
Ryan...often, varietals have distinctive characteristics. For example, if you get a nose of capsicum, you're probably talking cabernet. I don't doubt that some folks can carry this sort of talent to extremes.
But there are plenty of occasions where these rules get broken. Pinot noir sometimes has a strong green pepper aroma, and this will throw off almost any winetaster.
So it's possible to have a winetaster who astonishes you with his ability pin down varietals and regions, and then confuses a white wine with a pink.
I worked at a winery as a chemist. We'd have blind tastings for the hell of it. It was so common to see cheap wines rated above the expensive ones that we ceased to be surprised at these results.
Posted by: ngong | November 9, 2007 2:32 AM
It seems to me that a potent Cabernet Sauvignon Blanc, served slightly warmer than recommended, might well taste like a mild Cabernet Sauvignon served slightly cooler than ideal.
But I don't read wine reviews for the rating. I have found certain key words which help me decide. I'm likely to at least slightly enjoy a Zinfandel described as having cassis or dark cherry notes. I'm likely to hate any white wine described as melony. But usually I either buy something cheap enough tht I won't mind if it's less than stellar, or something from a winery which has pleased me in the past.
Posted by: wondering | November 9, 2007 11:28 AM
@wondering
I assume you just mean Sauvignon blanc, not Cabernet Sauvignon blanc. I would say that they would still taste very different. The CS is fermented on the skins imparting heavy tannin character as well as being aged in oak. Also, SBs typically do not undergo malo-lactic fermentation and so have tartness more like an apple as opposed to the CS which will have converted its malic acid into the less harsh lactic acid.
I have seen old world Grenache tasted in black glasses be confused with Viognier by an experienced taster. It happens.
What makes wine technically interesting for me is that a well made wine will be a distinct expression of the grape varietal(s) it is made from. What varies will be an effect of the micro-climate that it is grown in and the influence of the winemaker. Learning what a grape is "supposed" to taste like allows a taster to investigate these other aspects. Average wine will not allow you to make this distinction but that does not mean that it is not enjoyable from a less analytical "yummy" stand point.
Posted by: Vitis01 | November 9, 2007 1:46 PM
I think I may have served DocChuck before. He asked for a glass of our "top shelf" Cook's (champagne). I brought it and he asked what vintage it was. I hesitated and told him it was a non-vintage bottle (I think all Cook's is) and he SLAPPED me and asked if I thought he was a stupid!
Was that you Doc? I'm sorry if security hurt you on the way out but that wasn't cool man.
Posted by: Vitis01 | November 9, 2007 1:56 PM
Well, actually, Vitis01 (also known as "chiffOnade" and "therealchiffonade" and "angela" and as the faux "DocChuck" you DID try to serve me once.
But, actually I wouldn't pay your asking price because you are 49 years old, fat and flabby, totally uneducated, and known around Clearwater as the tattooed "loser" with callouses on her knees.
Now, I suggest you run downtown, pick up your unemployment check, touch base with your probation officer, visit your daughter who is in jail on a meth conviction, and stop cluttering up legitimate BLOGS (unlike your MySpace crap) with your mindless chatter.
Your numerous aliases fool no one, Louise. You're still just a Brooklyn bitch who got dumped in Clearwater by "Mr. Right."
Posted by: DocChuck | November 9, 2007 3:07 PM
These so called experts were anything but.
Posted by: Wino | November 9, 2007 5:21 PM
Many years ago I went to a lecture about people's perceptions and expections of taste. In an experiment we were given different blancmange desserts to try. Obviously I don't remember the exact details but we were given various combinations such as chocolate flavour coloured pink, vanilla flavour coloured brown and so on, and we all failed miserably to identify the correct flavours!
Posted by: Rolf Howarth | November 9, 2007 5:26 PM
I think you should say "vin de table"
du table is incorrect
Posted by: marlwin | November 9, 2007 5:35 PM
Yeah, yeah, yeah...a lot of people can't tell the difference between chicken and steak. So they're ignorant boobs. Sure, it doesn't matter to them...but this does not mean steak tastes like chicken.
There are great number of people that can detect all the various aromas and tastes in a wine...and TELL you why it's good and why it's not. Of course, there are a lot phonies (like the so-called experts in the test) out there that will say anything...but people that can actually detect all the subtleties would call them out right away.
I'm gonna refrain myself from making a stereotypical comment here but I find it difficult to swallow when ignorant people find happiness in stories of 'experts' failing a test and then calling the whole wine tasting 'subjective'.
Here's one for subjectivity...the cheese in my Big Mac tastes like an excellent Gorgonzola cheese. I can say anything I want because, hey, taste is soooo subjective.
Posted by: Wino | November 9, 2007 5:47 PM
Anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE crab rangoon . . . especially the way the missus makes it!
Posted by: DocChuck | November 9, 2007 5:47 PM
I'm likely to hate any white wine described as melony
It's interesting to note the adjectives used to describe wines that are so rotten that they never make it out of the winery: mousy, cheesy, bready. There's that fingernail polish smell (ethyl acetate). Bandaid aroma (certain phenols). Vinegar. Mushrooms. "Wet dog in a phonebooth" is my favorite.
Posted by: ngong | November 9, 2007 7:17 PM
Hey Jonah, maybe time to haul out the banbat
Posted by: David Harmon | November 10, 2007 11:00 AM
A real wine experts are capable of telling the difference between different varietals, and even vintages, with nothing more than a wine enema.
Posted by: DocChuck | November 10, 2007 11:34 AM
"it's such a cool experiment that it's worth repeating."
Blah. It's not as cool as you make it sound, when is often the case when one leaves out the details. I read the Brochet paper, and what you have written here didn't happen.
Is your book this bad?
Posted by: Flern Gubbins | November 10, 2007 5:16 PM
I'm always impressed by the nastiness of the blogosphere. I've read the paper and this is an accurate description of the experiments. Brochet himself endorses this analysis:
"Tasting is [a form of] representation. Indeed, when our brain performs the task of 'recognizing' or 'comprehending,' it is manipulating representations. In reality, the taste of wine is a perceptual representation, because it manifests an interaction between consciousness and reality."
But I think all of these wine snobs miss the point. This isn't about wine. This is about the nature of perception.
Posted by: david johns | November 10, 2007 6:04 PM
Amusing that the comments include some excellent examples of wine snobbery.
I think it is likely that a blind tasting IS less likely to tell red from white, given the increasing spread of varieties and young vintages over the past twenty years, with people drinking reds I would consider less typical (my personal prototype for 'red' is cabernet sauvignon), there is more of a continuum, even overlap, of what is acceptable; flavors that in the past might be downgraded as poor or atypical are merely remarketed as novel, and indeed, it is the sizzle, not the steak, that is often being bought these days, and people are using a wider descriptive vocabulary, pro or con.
Posted by: bud | November 11, 2007 1:57 AM
Well of course it's subjective. Everything is subjective, from the war in Iraq to the sun coming up tomorrow. Consciousness filters everything, including Pinot Noir. However, in our subjectivity we often agree that one thing is better tasting, better built, longer lasting, more profound and worth more than something else. The auction of the senses.
Totally agree that projection is key to experiment. I once relabeled a wine bottle (here in Paris) with a hand written note "Margaux 1982" and left it on a table at a fairly yuppie-type party with maybe 75 people milling about, dancing. I watched with interest as one of the junior bankers looked at the label scotch taped to the bottle, sniffed, poured drank and poured himself another. Discovered by another junior banker, then another, the wine quickly disappeared. What was it? Some 5 euro bottle of pif someone had brought. The mystery and the label though were compelling. What I would like to know is whether these people "tasted" a Margaux.
Cheers,
MR/Paris, France
Posted by: Matthew Rose | November 11, 2007 10:14 AM
I've witnessed a room full of wine industry professionals taste a yellow jelly and a green jelly. Everyone in the room immediately picked lemon as the flavour of the yellow jelly. Initial responses for the green jelly were flavours associated with the colour green such as lime, apple, melon. It took a good ten minutes before someone mentioned pineapple, the correct answer. But then I guess they were 'wine experts' not 'jelly experts'.
Posted by: Rachel | November 12, 2007 10:42 PM
One time I memorized (word for word) the description of a coffee bean from a brochure at Starbucks.
Shortly after that I attended a dinner party one evening where a guy asked me what I thought of the wine we were drinking. I repeated the coffee bean description from Starbucks verbatim.
He told me it was an excellent description of the wine and that I really knew my stuff.
I never told him the difference.
Posted by: Gary Kelly | November 13, 2007 7:26 AM
Ha! This totally validates my entirely-label-based-method of purchasing wine!
Posted by: Laura | November 13, 2007 11:38 AM
Wine? I often use the descriptors "jamminess" and "melony" to describe the taste of feminine hygiene products - the most subjective of all tastes.
Although - if I've paid less than $12 for a "meal" - I admit I often detect a definite "skankiness". You definitely get who you pay for.
Posted by: lowlights | November 13, 2007 1:25 PM
Can anybody help me? My husband has many more delightful comments to make on this subject, but his head is shoved so far up his ass, he's unable to see the screen. Thx.
Posted by: MrsDocChuck | November 14, 2007 9:07 PM
Sadly, my wife is not the woman she used to be.
Her once girlish figure is now mannish and bloated, now that she has foresworn all carbohydrates. Her diet consists primarily of canned ham, pudding cups and her beloved Velveeta cheese.
She no longer enjoys wine, confining herself to clear liquor and diet Red Bull.
Posted by: DocChuck | November 16, 2007 2:35 PM
Here the experts did better. Sixty percent of them identified the wine as not "worth drinking" even when the intense visual bias of an expensive bottle was introduced. Whether or not one agrees that cheap wine is not worth drinking, they actually resisted the biasing variable to some degree.
No, you read that wrong. 40 experts said the "expensive" wine was worth drinking but only 12 said the "cheap" one was.
Posted by: NAME | November 19, 2007 1:31 AM
I recall reading of a wine expert being given a good quality white varietal and told that it was home made vegetable wine. He immediately expounded on all the foul false tastes, molds ect. that made the fake wine undrinkable.
Posted by: Lyle G | November 19, 2007 8:36 PM
I'm sure Doc Chuck looks a whole lot better after wine (as long as it's spiked with LSD).
Posted by: chiffonade | January 15, 2008 7:23 PM
I find that people have a similar problem when tasting blind as well. The mind plays a huge part in convincing people of a quality of a particular wine. I think that this is one of the reason's that restaurants can get away with 100% markup on a bottle of wine.
Posted by: Alan | February 26, 2008 7:55 PM
i think we should develop a silicon based sensor that could determine the quality of the wine.
Posted by: Melatonina | March 23, 2008 2:19 AM