As experienced drinkers know, finding a particularly wine “cheap but surprisingly tasty” is not actually rare or surprising, and expensive, award-winning wines sometimes disappoint. Much of this is due to the complexity of wine taste & aroma, which can make professional wine judging a difficult task indeed. But is it effectively random? This interesting article suggests so:

Wine-tasting: it’s junk science

Experiments have shown that people can’t tell plonk from grand cru. Now one US winemaker claims that even experts can’t judge wine accurately. What’s the science behind the taste?

Every year Robert Hodgson selects the finest wines from his small California winery and puts them into competitions around the state.

And in most years, the results are surprisingly inconsistent: some whites rated as gold medallists in one contest do badly in another. Reds adored by some panels are dismissed by others. Over the decades Hodgson, a softly spoken retired oceanographer, became curious. Judging wines is by its nature subjective, but the awards appeared to be handed out at random.

So drawing on his background in statistics, Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions.

Each panel of four judges would be presented with their usual “flight” of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific.

The first experiment took place in 2005. The last was in Sacramento earlier this month. Hodgson’s findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine.

“The results are disturbing,” says Hodgson from the Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt County, described by its owner as a rural paradise. “Only about 10% of judges are consistent and those judges who were consistent one year were ordinary the next year.

“Chance has a great deal to do with the awards that wines win.”

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis

particularly wine = particular wine

I’m not a wine drinker but I’ve always suspected this.

Something about the words they use to describe the experience.

>Something about the words they use to describe the experience.

While wine descriptions can sometimes be a little far-fetched, that’s a reflection of how complex the tastes and aromas can be. But it also means that judging can inevitably be unhelpfully subjective.

All industries set up their own awards and they are all shams right down to CWA pumpkin scone tasting at Royal Easter Shows.
Most wine tasters are punced up metrosexuals, they use words like Burnt, Oak and Fruity, they use these words from a life spent wanking, I’ll use them as a punch line.

“But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time.”

And how long had it been breathing in between? How well do the tasters’ palates recover between wines? Crackers only do so much.

Skeptic Pete said:

I’m not a wine drinker but I’ve always suspected this.

Something about the words they use to describe the experience.

I agree with this but each specialty has its own vocabulary for putting things into words that are difficult to describe

Angus Prune said:

“But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time.”

And how long had it been breathing in between? How well do the tasters’ palates recover between wines? Crackers only do so much.

If he knew anything about stats, over 8 years he would compensate for that

It’s the reason why I stopped judging. The external factors to tasting (mood, physiology, personal preference, price, whether you brushed your teeth or not, etc) far outweigh the factors inherent in the product, whether wine, beer or whisky. The judging literature and the odd experiment have been clear about this for a very long time.

On top of that, the training courses for judging are less about palate development and identification of flavour components, and more about history and other received wisdom

This doesn’t mean that there is no difference between poor quality product and good quality product. When all things are considered equal, the differences are clear. It’s just that it’s nearly impossible to hold things equal.

I’m glad I undertook the training and the judging experiences, but only for my own personal benefit, and be able to provide fellow brewers with advice about improving their product…

Has anyone here tasted a wine that the wine waiter has poured from the just opened bottle and said that is crap wine, get me another bottle?
I remember taking a local scrubber to a restaurant in town in a desperate effort to get into her pants and the waiter poured a bit of wine for me to taste, I was all of 18, I wouldn’t have know Grange Hermitage from Cold Duck FFS.

My personal opinion is that yes some talented people have good palates and can describe tastes and are discerning. But it is ever so easy to make stuff up and be confident that no one will call you on it cos they are making it up as well, and just saying stuff like hints of burnt blackberry cos its Mabo.

Lol Skunky

Schnapps attracts the same sort of wankerism as wine. I have observed people professing to be experts in schnapps (not professionals) raving about a sample from a bottle that was made up from commercial alcohol, water, artificial flavour and colour, and glycerine, by me, out in the back room of the shop, 5 minutes earlier. I wasn’t doing the sales. There is skill in that part. :)

Thinking of analogies…

Could you similarly argue that golf courses are poor measures of golfing talent, and that tournament winners are effectively random since golf courses cannot bestow consistent scores on the players?

Soso said:

Thinking of analogies…

Could you similarly argue that golf courses are poor measures of golfing talent, and that tournament winners are effectively random since golf courses cannot bestow consistent scores on the players?

Yes, there is/was a blog post about this somewhere, it had different sports on a ‘randomness’ scale, iirc, Baseball is one of the most random sports when picking a winner, whereas Basketball was one of the least random. Golf was somewhere in the middle.

I saw a doco recently where they gave some wine experts red wine and white wine and asked for their comments, which were predictable.

What they didn’t tell them was that it was all the same wine, white wine, with some of it dyed with a flavourless red colouring.

Skeptic Pete said:

I saw a doco recently where they gave some wine experts red wine and white wine and asked for their comments, which were predictable.

What they didn’t tell them was that it was all the same wine, white wine, with some of it dyed with a flavourless red colouring.

That’s mentioned in the linked article.

Bubblecar said:

Skeptic Pete said:

I saw a doco recently where they gave some wine experts red wine and white wine and asked for their comments, which were predictable.

What they didn’t tell them was that it was all the same wine, white wine, with some of it dyed with a flavourless red colouring.

That’s mentioned in the linked article.

How could one get so pwned in a test like that, and not then hang up your tasting glass and spittoon for good?

And become an armpit sniffer instead?

>How could one get so pwned in a test like that, and not then hang up your tasting glass and spittoon for good?

It’s like that highly-paid professional tea-taster who was skeptical about the role played by aroma, but then couldn’t tell the difference between tea and coffee when they put a peg on his nose.

I’ve seen a guy tell what region a wine came from just by looking at the wine in a glass.

pommiejohn said:

I’ve seen a guy tell what region a wine came from just by looking at the wine in a glass.

He could probably see the bottle label reflected in it.

Bubblecar said:

pommiejohn said:

I’ve seen a guy tell what region a wine came from just by looking at the wine in a glass.

He could probably see the bottle label reflected in it.

nah. the bottle was in another room.

Was the region “cat’s nether regions”?

Divine Angel said:

Was the region “cat’s nether regions”?

LOL.

pommiejohn said:

I’ve seen a guy tell what region a wine came from just by looking at the wine in a glass.

I could believe that. Some of the ‘rosays’ in the south of France have quite distinctive colours.

pommiejohn said:

I’ve seen a guy tell what region a wine came from just by looking at the wine in a glass.

Was it more of a socioeconomic evaluation? “This guy’s a bit of a cheapskate, so this white is probably that NZ Marlborough sav blanc that was on sale last week…”

Angus Prune said:

pommiejohn said:

I’ve seen a guy tell what region a wine came from just by looking at the wine in a glass.

“This guy’s a bit of a cheapskate, so this white is probably that NZ Marlborough sav blanc that was on sale last week…”

What are you trying to say about me ? :)

I’d have thought that there are some brilliant wine tasters who know their stuff and some charlatans who like to feel important.

I do remember reading about a trial where they gave university students red and white wine while blindfolded and they couldn’t tell the difference, but that seems like giving formula one cars to P platers and asking them which handled best.

And from todays Drum

Finally research has proven what people of goodwill and honest intent have known all along: when a wine “expert” talks about wine, they are just making it all up.

…

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4780590.html

Skunkworks said:

And from todays Drum

Finally research has proven what people of goodwill and honest intent have known all along: when a wine “expert” talks about wine, they are just making it all up.

…

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4780590.html

alcohol shrinks the brain.

Anyway, what’s in the bottle under the label?
The wineries ship bulk wine all around the country mixing regions and varieties.

I recall decades past when it was shock horror announced(leaked) that Hunter Valley wines contained more than 60% wine from the MIA. It rocked the wine industry to reveal that what was on the label happened to be mostly a lie.

Today this is commonplace. Bulk wine carriers shunt the stuff back and forth. Mix and swap.
There are numerous so called wineries which are merely labeling sheds. They buy already bottled wine sometimes as clean skins but often as rejected batches from the nations larger exporters. They strip the labels and relabel with their own, they pull the corks and caps and re-cork/cap the wine with their own corks and caps, put it in a box with their name on it and send it off to wine judging to have gold medals to match the ones they have printed on the labels. They are elusive about where the grapes actually were grown and where the wine was made and bottled on the actual labels the wine drinkers read.

Then there are the bottling factories where bulk wine from various suppliers from various regions comes in one door and goes out another in bottles with more BS on the label than can be poked a stick at.

Which again goes off to be judged .. the whole thing is laughable and be very sure, a lot of people are laughing all the way to being millionaires at the wine drinkers expense. It is easy, just spend some money on wine at 20 cents per litre and sell it at $20.