Blind wine tasting

WHINE # 64

TASTING WINE OBJECTIVELY:  When I was in graduate school fifty years ago I studied the role of expectations in determining the outcomes of research.  Yes, I even wrote my dissertation on that subject.   What we expect to get frequently determines not only what we think we get but these expectations can even influence others’ behaviors.

This phenomenon holds true in the world of wine-tasting.   For example, If we know (or think we know) that the wine is expensive, we are much more likely to rate the wine as good or great as opposed to knowing (or thinking we know) that the wine is “plonc.”

For this reason the only way that one can objectively assess a wine is to taste it under blind conditions.   When we taste wines and compare wines under a true double-blind set-up we are not only being fair to the wines  that we assess, but we will have more fun,  and in the process learn a lot about ourselves and what we truly like and don’t like.

In this Whine I shall describe two blind wine tastings that happened at my house over the holidays.  I think you may find the results to be interesting.

RIPASSO OR DOUBLE-PASS WINES:  In Whine # 63 I wrote about Ripasso and Ripasso-type wines.  To make these wines, a second fermentation is introduced by pouring new wine over the fermented skins of semi-dried grapes.  Valpolicella is famous for making wines in this fashion.  However, the process is rarely used outside of Italy.  After describing one Australian “second-pass” wine that I had recently discovered, I asked my readers if they had ever run across any other non-Italian second fermentation wines.

Within a few minutes of posting my blog I got a response from my friend Nancy Sullivan who told me about a winery (Foreign Affairs) in Vinland, Ontario that specializes in this process.  I, of course, was very anxious to try this wine.

Since Foreign Affairs’ wines are not marketed in Nova Scotia, I asked my son to pick up a couple of bottles at an LCBO store and bring them home at Christmas.

On Boxing Day, eleven of us gathered around the table for a meal of prime rib (couldn’t face turkey two days in a row).  While my four young grandsons quaffed chocolate milk, the seven adults were each  presented with three glasses of red wine and were asked to indicate at the end of the meal which of the wines they preferred.  No-one, including me, knew what wines were in which glass,  but we did know that the three wines had all been made in the ripasso-style and that one was Australian, one was Italian and one was Canadian.  As an aside,  preparing these wines was easy.  I simply taped a sheet of plain white paper around each bottle and then labelled them “A”, “B”, and “C”.  Next my son taped over my letters and randomly labelled them “D”, “E”, and “F”.  This process is correctly called “double-blind”, as neither my son nor I knew what was in each bottle.

The three wines were:  Folonari Valpolicella Classico Ripasso,  Alfredo Dried Grape Shiraz, and Foreign Affairs Cabernet Sauvignon Double Pass.

To go back to expectations, as the meal progressed the seven of us settled on which wine we liked best and which wine we liked least.  Our biases clearly showed in that each of us identified the wine we liked least as the Ontario wine, even though we disagreed on which wine that was.

At the end of the meal all was revealed and it turned out that three of us chose the Australian as the best wine, three of us chose the Ontario wine as the best wine and only one person preferred the Italian wine.  Two of the three who chose the Australian wine picked the Ontario wine as their second choice.  To put it mildly we all were quite surprised to discover how well the Canadian Foreign Affairs wine did.

For those of you who live in Ontario, I strongly recommend you search through your local LCBO and try and locate a bottle of Foreign Affairs.  For me, I can’t wait until spring so I can visit the winery itself and try some of their other wines.

ARGENTINA 3, FRANCE 1:  In Whine # 59 I retold the story of Steven Spurrier’s 1976 world famous double-blind comparison of French and Napa Valley wines.  In this tasting French experts not only mis-identified the wines, they rated the American wines higher than the French wines in every category.  Once Time Magazine wrote about this event American wines not only gained the respect of wine lovers all over the world, they quickly escalated in price.  The movie “Bottleshock” is a wonderful telling of this milestone event.

Most years I host a Christmas wine tasting and this year I decided to do a Steven Spurrier type tasting, but with three differences.  First the judges were not experts but were my wine-loving friends; second the wines chosen for the event were more middle-priced than those chosen by Spurrier, and finally I decided to compare French wines with Argentinian wines.

Twenty-two people tasted four “flights” of wines.  In each “flight” a French wine was paired with an Argentinian wine of the same varietal.  The average price of the French wines was virtually identical to the price of the Argentinian wines, although some flights had a higher priced Argentinian wine and for some flights the higher-priced wine was French.

Needlesstosay my guests were only told that there was a French and an Argentinian wine in each pair.

In Flight One a 2013 Las Palmas Chardonnay faced off against a 2011 Macon Villages (also Chardonnay).  The majority of the guests preferred the French wine.

In Flight Two a 2011 Trapiche Gran Medalla (Malbec) was compared to a 2010 Trical Cahors (Malbec or what the French call “Cot”).  Here the majority of guests preferred the Argentinian Malbec.

Flight Three pitted a 2014 Las Moras DaDa (Merlot) against a 2012 Petit Cantenac St. Emillion (primarily Merlot).  Again the Argentinian was heavily preferred.

Finally Flight four had a 2013 Lorca Cabernet Sauvignon and a 2010 LaChapelle D’Escarac Medoc (primarily Cabernet).    The Argentinian wine was overwhelmingly preferred.

These results reinforced my preferences as I quite like French Chardonnay (particularly if from Chablis) and I certainly prefer almost any Argentinian Red to a French Red (if it is in the same price range).

One caution, however!  I am not claiming that Argentinian Reds are better quality than French Reds.  All I am saying is that most, but not all, wine drinkers who live in Antigonish, Nova Scotia generally find Argentinian wines to be more to their personal tastes.

I recommend that you do your own double-blind tastings.  Maybe you’ll discover what you really like, rather than sticking with what you think you should like.   I’ll even make a prediction.  If you do several of these blind tasting my guess is that you will discover that your personal taste tends to be for either Old World wines or for New World wines and that you will consistently prefer one style to the other.

OPIMIAN OFFERING C238:  My recommendations for everyday, inexpensive wines are a white (8424 Folies Parisiennes Sauvignon Blanc/Chasan) and a red (8449 Paulita Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon).  Only slightly more expensive are another white (8439 les Vignobles de Tim et Lou Viognier) and another red (8441 Chateau Brugayrole Corbieres)