over $100 wine tasting night with interetsing results

[G_D_y_e_r]

@Carl Jensen

Every 2BC I’ve ever had was so bad I don’t see how anyone could mistake it for something other than absolute garbage. As soon as you open it you can smell it across the room - hot syrupy nastiness.

I’m not convinced from my experience at least with the red wine labeled Shiraz. 2BC Shiraz tasted against other cheap Shiraz blind placed fairly well. It had a wet dog smell, was light and slightly sweet. But the competitors were hot, over-extracted and syrupy.

I think tasting 2BC blind eliminates much of the bias where you expect it to be vomit inducing. Instead it turns out to be merely terrible, but also somewhat innocuous.

[Rob_MacKay]

I remember reading an article about price to quality recently where a bunch of subjects were given $100+ wine and $10 wine blind (same varietal, etc) and they all preferred the $10 wine.

However, the article went on to say that the subjects all had very little to no experience with wine. I’ve found with many of the dinners / parties / etc that we host, the people with very little wine experience like the simple fruity stuff and don’t have the experience or knowledge to appreciate the finer complexities and nuances of a fine wine.

Does that make me a wine snob? I hope so…

[BobMilton]

@B Stucker

@b hudak

@Berry Crawford

Ive thrown two buck chuck into blind tastings before. No one loved them but no one complained at the quality either. I also once snuck a Kendal Jackson Chard into a white burgundy tasting and people liked it.

I don’t think there is anyone who isnt effected by labels to at least a small degree.

I was at a tasting where someone not only inserted it blind, but talked it up (and truely believed what he was saying too [middle-finger.gif] ) that this was a fantastic, incredible wine. Even with the sell job, we took a sniff and tossed it out immediately.

I am glad you posted this because that was exactly the same experience I had when someone did this to me about 3 years ago, even to the point of him talking it up. He poured it blind against a $20 dollar or so Paso cab that was not very good. But the 2BC was undrinkable from the start. Syrupy sweet on the nose a taste that matched. My wife describes these kinds of wines as one that will give you a headache after one glass and I had to agree with her. Neither of us finished our pours. Since I had never had 2BC before but had heard that it was a decent wine, I was surprised by how bad it was. I have never tasted it since and have no desire to do so. There are plenty of lower priced wines that can show ell in a blind tasting, but from my one taste of it, I don’t think 2BC is one of them.

Jeez, I put a 2003 2 buck Chuck Cabernet into a tasting that included a 2001 Sterling Vineyards and a 2004 Joseph Phelps (just stock Napa Reserve). Of ten tasters, not one preferred either the Sterling or the Phelps! Granted, 2003 was the only good vintage of Chuck, but still this was against $50 competition!

[G_D_y_e_r]

@Rob MacKay

I remember reading an article about price to quality recently where a bunch of subjects were given $100+ wine and $10 wine blind (same varietal, etc) and they all preferred the $10 wine.

However, the article went on to say that the subjects all had very little to no experience with wine. I’ve found with many of the dinners / parties / etc that we host, the people with very little wine experience like the simple fruity stuff and don’t have the experience or knowledge to appreciate the finer complexities and nuances of a fine wine.

Does that make me a wine snob? I hope so…

This was the result of Robin Goldstein’s The Wine Trials. Experienced tasters preferred the more expensive wines, but average drinkers liked the cheaper ones. It’s not all that surprising. Tannins, acidity and all sorts of weird aromas are an acquired taste.

[Eric_Keating]

@Mike Heyse

I’m not surprised at all by these results, and I’ve been considering doing a more nuanced version of this “trickeration” but with the participants knowing that they’re being challenged to figure out, blind, which one costs more, and trying to control for as many variables as possible. “North American” opens the field up to a huge number of wines of different styles. (I’d like to know more details, if you don’t mind sharing… how many wines were tasted, were they decanted, over how much time, glasses, etc). So, I think to start we’re going to limit it to 6 wines between $10 - 100 ($10 - 20 - 40 - 60 - 80 - 100) all of the same varietal and all from the same AVA; hopefully all the same vintage, too.

And check this out… (though there are several flaws with the experiment they conducted):
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/06/the_essence_of_pleasure.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+scienceblogs/wDAM+(The+Frontal+Cortex)

When I do blind tastings, I use a similar format. Usually I have a couple cheapies, a couple mid-range, and a couple expensive. Most of the time the cheap wines are fairly obvious, probably get scored lowest 80-90% of the time, and they never win. The difference between say $40 and $80 can be a little tougher. But after several tastings in this fashion, it usually comes out about 60/40 in favor of the $80.

To sum it up… one sample testing can have odd results, but they tend to fall how they should after several tastings.