Watching Drops of God, a riveting but completely flawed wine epic, two tasters were asked to identify wines. I won’t give any clues as to why it was so flawed as people may not have seen it, and it is fun and worth watching, but….
Still, i am curious how many have you got right double blind, producer, vineyard, if more than one, and vintage
0, nadda
I’ve gotten the full details correct four times. Three were German wines that I was already otherwise familiar with, so not quite as surprising. The other was an ‘85 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo where I went through a lengthy mental checklist, and arrived at the correct wine.
At least 10-15 times, but that’s in large part because I’ve had so many wines in blind tastings. For about 10 years, I was part of a group that met weekly and tasted at least 18-24 wines blind each week. With that much practice, I often had the same wine with enough frequency to recognize it. I also had a fair bit of luck. Still, for every wine I nailed blind, I missed hundreds if not thousands.
One of my favorites was an early vintage of Numanthia when it wasn’t widely known and wasn’t available in the local market. I had recently read an extremely vivid tasting note from Manuel Camblor and his note was good enough that I was able to ID the wine blind without ever having had it before. I give full credit to Manuel for that one.
Never, but double blind tasting is something very rare for me, and I don’t think I’ve ever even attempted to guess a vineyard.
Worst: Missing Ch Musar’s Hochar pere et fils as a one-off blind challenge, just a week after it being the star of our tasting group’s monthly tasting.
Best: Guessing a Muscadet with IIRC “one to two decades age on it”. On the face of it, not that difficult, but it was only the 2nd Muscadet I’d ever tasted.
Funniest: sitting on a teams call with friends during lockdown, us with a glass of wine in hand. A friend guessed it as a chardonnay from the Macon. On the face of it, the guess purely by the colour of the wine in the glass (in the picture on the computer screen). In reality, if you know someone’s tastes, it’s a decent starting point for an educated guess.
I’ve nailed a couple, but a lot of it is having a sense of what someone might bring for specific wines too.
None.
How many have I tried to nail? Same answer.
How many could I nail if I tried? Again, same number.
I think if it could be a wine from literally anywhere it would be impossible for anyone to name producer, vintage, and vineyard if it wasn’t a well known or typical wine.
I’ve witnessed some impressive deductions
Serious question: what’s the value of being able to correctly ID wines in blind tasting? I get why blind tasting itself is important (eliminating biases, etc), but don’t see what the ID itself (beyond like a stylistic deduction) adds.
None.
I got lucky once at a Bedrock Tasting in the Vineyard. Chris was pouring us a new taste and I said “oooh, Russian River Valley” Chris hid the bottle and said “Keep going” I eventually narrowed it down to Bedrock Carlisle. Whaddya know, I was right, and there were witnesses too! 
Not much, it’s more of a parlor trick. But blind tasting can help you understand the characteristics of wines.
Two, but quite a long time ago – probably not as good now! The first was a 1988 Mouton, very soon after release. I don’t remember quite how double blind it was, we may have known the general category of the wines we were tasting, but definitely didn’t know which wines. The second was a Whitehall Lane Alexander Valley merlot that had a very characteristic eucalyptus note, and I’d had the wine before. Stuck out like a sore thumb.
Many many failures! I don’t even look at them as failures, just the way it is usually.
Exactly this for me.
100% this too.
Never been able to call producer. I usually never bother trying either. I’d like to think I am decent at calling region and vineyard though.
None, though I have tried at less than a handful of occasions. Looking at the stats here I’ll probably need a few more time to be lucky to nail it once.
Around fifteen times in 40 years. Slightly skewed because three of them were 1990 Montrose, which has a pretty strong signature. And once 2009 Cos d’Estournel which I figured out by context and the evil intentions of a friend who knew how much I disliked the wine.
That is a tiny fraction of 1% of the wines I have tasted blind.
No value. It’s fun, and brilliant if you succeed. Otherwise worthless.
One quote, I think it was Peter Sichel who said,
“One look at the label is worth thirty years of experience.”
The value is in trying to guess blindly is making you really focus and trying to connect what your perceiving to prior experiences. It’s the percentage of wins, so much as the process. And the number of bad guesses in helpful in keeping one modest and curbing the urge to be too opinionated.
I’ve heard it as the ‘process’ being more important than the result
i.e. being able to logically narrow down, filter out and even to keep a suitable degree of vagueness when what’s in the glass doesn’t obviously give itself away.
Like getting a hole in one at golf. Being able to hit the green reasonably frequently gives you a better chance of eventually getting a hole in one, but getting a hole in one is still very lucky.