TN: California cabs <$50 and <15%

[John_Morris]

@Pat Burton

I think there is a very fine line one draws between tasting an opened young bottle as well as an older one and using that info to determine (e.g.) drinking windows.

I don’t follow that.

[John_Morris]

@Robert Alfert

Fantastic thread. I need to track down some Smith Madrone. Thanks, John!!

Definitely a wine for you – the man who liked the Le Puy.

[Mike_Kuller]

@John Morris

My monthly blind tasting group did current-release California cabernets this week. There were two criteria: They had to be under ~$50 and under 15% alcohol. Thanks to all the Berserkers who made suggestions for wines to include.


• Because my scores fluctuated over those three days, I’ve put the wines in bands rather than given them hard numbers. We had only six people at the tasting, so the group scores were too tightly clustered to mean much.

I’d be interested in seeing the group scores. Tightly clustered hints at agreement.

[John_Morris]

@Mike Kuller

@John Morris

My monthly blind tasting group did current-release California cabernets this week. There were two criteria: They had to be under ~$50 and under 15% alcohol. Thanks to all the Berserkers who made suggestions for wines to include.


• Because my scores fluctuated over those three days, I’ve put the wines in bands rather than given them hard numbers. We had only six people at the tasting, so the group scores were too tightly clustered to mean much.

I’d be interested in seeing the group scores. Tightly clustered hints at agreement.

Or completely randomness. In this case, most of the wines had both very high and very low rankings.

And there were only six people, which really made the group scores meaningless.

[Mike_Kuller]

@John Morris

@Mike Kuller

@John Morris

My monthly blind tasting group did current-release California cabernets this week. There were two criteria: They had to be under ~$50 and under 15% alcohol. Thanks to all the Berserkers who made suggestions for wines to include.


• Because my scores fluctuated over those three days, I’ve put the wines in bands rather than given them hard numbers. We had only six people at the tasting, so the group scores were too tightly clustered to mean much.

I’d be interested in seeing the group scores. Tightly clustered hints at agreement.

Or completely randomness. In this case, most of the wines had both very high and very low rankings.

And there were only six people, which really made the group scores meaningless.

Since everybody has different tastes and looks for different things in their wine, sometimes some have both and high and low scores (like in the example I gave you of our cab tasting).

In my 8 year 6 person wine tasting group, the group scores are everything. Otherwise what’s the point of tasting with a group?

[John_Morris]

@Mike Kuller

In my 8 year 6 person wine tasting group, the group scores are everything. Otherwise what’s the point of tasting with a group?

If you have people with very different palates, the group scores are pretty meaningless – an average of apples and oranges. To me, it’s more meaningful to have scores of people with similar palates, which is why I mentioned how my opinions in this tasting did line up with a friend in the group with similar preferences. If I’m the outlier vis-a-vis people I tend to agree with, it gives me pause and may make me retaste the wine.

For two years, we did collect everyone’s rankings and a member with a stats background crunched them. For a few months it looked like there were correlations between different individuals. But after a year or so, everything reverted to the mean and there were no correlations.

Group scores are certainly not the point of our group! It’s sharing the wine and the company, and sharing thoughts, and debating the wines. And sharing the costs.

[Matt_Mauldin]

Visiting Smith Madrone in late May- looking forward to trying that 2014.

[GregT]

Otherwise what’s the point of tasting with a group?

So you can enjoy telling the others what dolts they are?

Not to get consensus - what would be the point of that? I just like to see what people pick up, but I’ve never been in a group where there was typically broad consensus all the time - that would be a boring group.