Double Blind Tastings, What is their purpose?

WINE TALK
21

Matthew. Why would you be irritated? Are DRCs too good (and pricey) to enjoy without knowing it’s a DRC? Would you be irritated because you wouldn’t be able to appreciate it without knowing it? Would serving one in a flight detract from the experience? Wouldn’t serving it in a flight help highlight how good it is? And if it’s that good, why wouldn’t it stand out in a blind flight?

RT

22

Brian;

Thoughtful question with the CA cabs. I would have considered both methods to be single blind, since you knew you were drinking Ca cabs.

Is one of the methodologies considered double blind?

23

As an example, there are some wines that take more time to evolve. JJ Prum rieslings are a good example. Often they don’t show well in single-blind tastings of young Germans. There are lots of Burgundies that fall in that category. If you taste them without knowing what they are, you may shrug and think they suck. With the knowledge of what they are, you may say, “Oh, this usually doesn’t show well at this age,” and look at the wine in a different way.

24

I honestly don’t know. My questions were real, not rhetorical. At this point, my best guess would be that they would both be single blind, but to varying extents. Hopefully somebody chimes-in.

25

Maybe we should all agree on terms so we’re not talking past one another. It’s important to remember that the blind term refers to the knowledge of the experimenter (organizer for our purposes) and the knowledge of the subject (tasters in our terms). A blind testing means that one party doesn’t know which of N items they’re getting, a double blind test means that neither party knows.

The methodology says nothing about having a list of wines around. After all in double blind drug tests everyone knows that some of the people are getting the drug under test and some are getting a placebo, it’s just not known who’s getting what. So…

Non-blind. Obviously, where everyone can see each wine’s label and knows which one is which in the tasting.

Single blind: All wines are bagged and labeled by the organizer. The rest of the group does not know which wine is which.

Double blind: All wines are bagged by one person and labeled, out of sight of that person, by someone else. The group does not know which wine is which, the person who did the bagging has no idea of what order they’re served in, and the person labeling the wines doesn’t know which wine is in which bag.

Organizing a tasting like that described by Gordon has nothing at all to do with the methodology - that’s just a poorly done tasting.

26

Your argument teaches me one thing: Single blind is the way to go.
[thumbs-up.gif]

Is triple blind when you don’t even know if its wine? grouphug


Oh, yeah…HAPPY NEW YEAR!! [basic-smile.gif]

27

Personally, I would be irritated because I’ve never had one. [swearing.gif] I like Burgundies but don’t love them, so chances are I’m not forking over the money to taste DRC any time in my life. Love them or hate them, they ARE benchmarks for Burgundy, and as a wine professional I would hate to have the opportunity to savor it lost because I had my evaluator’s hat on. To me the enjoyment of doing double blind tastings is subjectively looking at the wines an inch and a mile wide; a truly great wine like DRC (or 1st growth BDX, or Sn Qua Non, or Conterno, or Donnhof, or …) deserves more introspection, going an inch wide and a mile deep. It seems you can provide a wine that would be more than representative of whatever theme you were creating without having to resort to puting such epic wines in.

Of course, if you are fortunate enough to have multiple bottles and vintages of these gems, do whatever your pleasure is with them. (Grumble, grumble grumble…)
PS: not jealous, just sassin’ ya.

28

John, we’re in fundamental agreement here. Where our positions differ seems to be with respect to “tasting” and “drinking”. At many wine dinners and tastings I attend, the best you can do is get a snapshot…and if you’re lucky, a couple of brief glimpses over the course of an evening. These brief encounters are certainly not ideal, but I don’t see how tasting blind would make them less so.

RT

29

Triple blind is where no one knows and no one cares. Sometimes called blind drunk. :slight_smile:

30

One funny thing that always pops up in blind tasting discussions is how people use the term “double blind.” Some (like Rick) use it in the same sense that a psychologist would use, that neither “researcher” or “subjects” know what the wine is. Others use double blind to mean no one (except arranger) know what region/grape/etc is being poured. Others use double blind to mean not knowing the individual wines (with single blind meaning you know the wines, but not which is which), but feel you can have a double blind tasting of Barolo, for instance.

I participate in 3 tasting groups. One is typically set up where the host supplies the wines, we know nothing in advance. We usually do flights of 2 or 3, with tasting/guessing and then the flight unveiled. Sometimes the flights are mini-verticals, sometimes mini-horizontals, sometimes 3 wines from same region, sometimes wines with no real relationship. We generally taste from several regions in a night. But all members are very experienced, and I’ve never had an experience such as Gordon discusses with bizarre orders (by the way, if one did Reisling followed by malbec by stickie by sauv. blanc by cab it would suck if you could see the labels, too). This format is quite challenging, and quite fun.

Another group typically picks a theme (usually a region or variety), we bring our bottles wrapped. Also fun.

The last group doesn’t usually do blind. We sometimes do, usually within the constraints of a horizontal. 1998 Bordeaux, we generally know most of the wines included, but not order.

Each has their advantages. The “I know nothing” going in is great for concentrating you (and in my case humbling me- I’m not an especially gifted taster). But as in the DRC example, sometimes you spend more time trying to figure out a wine than enjoying it. In the first group I mentioned, we typically drink very very good wines, but not stuff that sells for thousands of dollars. But one generous host did a flight with 2 red wines. Most of us quickly thought Bordeaux, and we loved wine A and liked wine B. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out. Turned out it was '59 Mouton and Lafite. Everyone loved the Mouton from the start, but I admit to wishing I had been able to spend more time appreciating it than trying to guess what it was.

I like doing a mix of formats. I try to be accurate re my thoughts before unveiling when I do notes, but it’s really immaterial- no one is buying from me. I guess if I had to choose a format for a pro critic I’d say blind within a defined peer group (2005 Cotes de Nuits, 2004 Chianti, etc) would be my preference. But notes from critics like Kolm and Gilman tasting in cellars (not blind) are probably the most valuable to me.

31

I hear you and although I love Burgundy and great wine, I’ve learned that sky high prices may not always directly correlate with quality and personal preference.

So you’re willing to assume, based on reputation alone, that it is “the benchmark” and by default…“your benchmark” without evaluating it? Would you do the same if the bottle cost $200 and not $2000?

Good point about the inch deep and mile wide. But wouldn’t that apply to most tastings, blind or not? Based on a number of reviews I’ve read about DRCs, “epic” may not always be the most accurate description, unless the definition is limited to price and prestige.

Wish I did, and if I had multiples…I’d probably put one in a blind tasting!

RT

32

The “double blind” tastings I have been to at one location are set up as follows:

-8 wines - all the same varietal, all the same vintage
-everyone knows in advance which 8 wines are being tasted
-the host decants each wine into an identical container, where the wine remains throughout the tasting
-the 8 wines are given sticker labels which identify the wines as numbers 1-8
-someone else arrives at the tasting and takes a letter code from A-H and randomly affixes one of those letter labels over the numerical label, and takes a notepad and makes note of which letter was affixed over each number

  • the wines are then poured into 8 identical glasses at each seat at the table
    -the wines are tasted in silence, ranked by each attendee in preferential order 1-8
    -each attendee announces their rankings aloud, and a scorekeeper records the rankings
    -a discussion takes place, with each person saying the merits of the wines and reasons for their own scoring
    -the scores are tabulated - the consensus winner will have the lowest score
    -the notepad with the key to the number/letter combination is given to the host, who only knew which wine was originally given which number
    -the preferential rankings are revealed by winery name

This has worked well for me and for many regular attendees. It is not a goal to guess which wine is which, but rather to determine which wines are regarded as the consensus favorites. The price is listed on the scoring sheet next to each winery name so that after the wines are revealed, attendees can calibrate their taste assessments of each
wine with the costs of those wines.

The title of this thread asked what the purpose is…in this case, these tastings are often for current releases, and it allows attendees to taste and make purchase decisions in a neutral setting without having to purchase 8 bottles of wine.

33

Dale,

I agree ther’s confusion about the terms - but they DO have defined meanings which I gave above. That people misuse the terms doesn’t mean much to me - if someone is going to say "double blind tastings are useless!’ or ‘only double blind tastings are valid’ they need to use the terms accurately or the discussion is meaningless. It’s like saying blue smells louder than cinnamon. I can make that sentence make sense if I want to redefine what smell and louder mean but it’s better to just use words according to their common meanings.

34

I completely agree, and I really don’t like huge extravaganzas where great wines are lost, or not given enough time to open up.

As for the format and knowledge of the wines being tasted, as I said, I find merit in all the approaches and I wouldn’t want to limited to any one.

35

That probably ought to be the definitions, but they’re often used in the other sense in wine circles: Single-blind = a list but no knowledge of which is which (which may or may not include the organizer; it’s easy to have a second person bag and order them so no one knows which is which). Double-blind: No knowledge of what you’re tasting (which is really only possible with a BYOB format).

36

I think John’s definitions are the most widely accepted definitions.

Personally, I think there should be 3 levels:

Single-blind: Everyone has a list of the wines, but the tasters do not know which is which.
Double-blind: The tasters do know the basic theme (whether it is broad like Red Bordeaux or more focused like 1996 Barolo or Giacosa Falletto Riservas), but the tasters do not know what the wines are within the theme.
Triple-blind: The tasters do not know the wines or the theme. But this does not necessary mean that there is not a theme.

37

fine… but those AREN’T what the terms mean. The fact that a lot of people use them that way doesn’t impress me - and it’s why, when people talk about the value of blind or double blind tastings some of us look at them like they’re on drugs - they’re using completely unique definitions that don’t mean what anyone else outside of the wine world means.

I’d bet when Paul J is advocating blind tastings he’s using the correct meaning, not something that’s been twisted by a bunch of wine geeks who don’t, frankly, know what they’re saying. Redefine terms all you want, but that hinders communications and, frankly, is just ignorant and the term triple blind will have people who do know what these terms mean doubled over in laughter. (there was a very funny article about a triple blind study in the Annals of Improbable Research (http://improbable.com/magazine/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) about a study where no one had any clue as to what was happening ).

38

Rick, just because the same words have a different meaning in some other context, doesn’t preclude wine folks from using it in a way that makes sense in wine. Wine tasting is not some experiment where the scientist is separate from the taster. The term double blind from science makes no sense in a wine tasting. It is not a useful distinction.

39

We may be dancing around some semantics here. I don’t see DRC as a benchmark for Burgundy because of the cost, I see the cost reflective of DRCs perceived place in Burgundy’s history. But pull them from the conversation and insert ANY perceived benchmark wine from a region. I look at double blind tastings as a way to fine tune a wine drinker’s palate, to drop some of our visual cues and focus attention to what out tongues, eyes, and noses pick up. It’s supposed to help us improve our understanding of a wine genre (be it grape or region) so that when we encounter a truly great wine we have a better frame of reference to appreciate it.
I teach a wine class at the local community college, and the ‘advanced’ class (relatively speaking) is essentially a double blind tasting each session, where the group gets 1-2 flights of a certain focus varietal, a set of tasting notes, and we discuss how we pick out which wines are which. Some people get really hung up on ‘matching’ their senses to the notes, but my goal is to get them to try and taste the wine for what it is, whether or not they enjoy it, and then decide if they may like something they didn’t expect to. It helps to cut through preconception. To me, this is the venue for doing a double blind, for leveling the playing field and judging wines on their essentials. Like I said, if you have the resources to line up iconic wines and evaluate them against other iconic wine in the cold analytical light of a double blind tasting, good on ya, mate. There’s a great bit of prose by Terry Theise on being asked to attend a vertical tasting of some top flight producer, and him choosing not to go because he looked at it as disrespectful to the winemaker, preferring to drink 3-4 of those vintage with friends over a good meal. I guess for certain wines i lean towards that side of romanticism.
Have to go now; I’m hearing the theme music to ‘Family Guy’ in the other room. Good night. Giggity.

40

Really great comments by all!

There still seems to be a little disagreement on what the term double blind actually means, but perhaps it’s sorting itself out. Based on the past supposingly double blind tastings I did, I was not impressed. That groups definition said the tasters could neither know the wines, or varietals, and that the tasting had to be multi-varietal. Glad that has been cleared up.

Thanks to all, and a Happy New Year!