Monthly Report - February 2023

This is a bit Mr Grey – I do not think they quite understand the “blind tasting” concept…

Trust me.  I am with you all the way on this.  [So let me put you in on a very big secret.]  It is almost all totally irrelevant.  It is the most ridiculous load of old codswallop that has ever been spewed forth as facts and skills – even if there was a competition on the “Love Boat” (Series 5, Episode 3), which makes it seem all so so plausible.

Now before everyone suddenly realizes how crazy that statement actually is (yes, I mean, come on, it was even on the “Love Boat” for heaven’s sake), I will set out the ground rules for my babble above.  The tasting and understanding of “wine” is an essential skill for those who make it, and it may come as a surprise, many of the skills wine makers have lie in knowing what faults that they are smelling and tasting rather than what a finished wine tastes and smells like.  This is the skill set that top wine makers have harnessed, they can pick up any fault from 100m and in wine shows for example, that is almost the first half of the event – the latter half being which of the “unfaulty” wines they enjoyed the most (for whichever reason is currently in vogue).  Good wine makers are a bit like good doctors, they know the healthy lifestyle their patient should adhere to, can spot a problem (fault) with their patient early, know the best pathway to fix the problem causing the least discomfort – thus they are the very skilled guys and gals.

For those in the promotion of wine, be it wine critics, wine writers, wholesalers, sommeliers, retailers – even me dear comrade – we are only able to “taste” wines more clearly simply because we are having to actually drink and promote the product day in and day out.  Ten thousand hours of anything will make you at least proficient.

But let us get back to the irrelevancy of it all.

From the Masters of Wine tasting exam, ~10% pass – of the Chief Sommeliers tasting exam in the US, ~8% pass.  Now why would that be?  We have a group of people that have spent tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars knowing all there is about what wine could be in the glass in front of them and 90% of them are utterly useless apparently.  

I will tell you why, it is simply a curated version of pure luck that the 8-10% “guessed” correctly a wine variety and region, and all of the “wrote” tasting descriptors they used matched the ”wrote” tasting descriptors as answers – not much more to say really.  Basically, a slightly modified version of pure chance.

Any normal run of the mill Blue Poles imbiber that drinks a few bottles a week with meals and company may end up tasting from 200-300 bottles in one year.  You do this for a decade and add in a few wine tasting trips, and by the end you might get to have experienced 4,000-5,000 bottles.  Some special occasion wines also would have popped up - someone has cracked a “Grange” or Chateau Latour (ooohs and ahhhs), and maybe a wine event/dinner or two where you get to experience some special bottles.  Where does this place you on the quantum of wine knowledge?  Can you spot a South African Pinotage?  Argentinian Malbec?  St Emilion vs Pomerol Bordeaux? – not that likely, and why would you?  Would you even spot another “Grange” if put blind in front of you?  Most probably not as the one you tasted was from a specific vintage, stored in a certain way and drank in a specific place and time – all unique.  After a decade you may have drank from many many bottles of wine, but most would be wines you have bought and enjoyed from the wineries you support – so to know all of this world of wine stuff is basically a “blind folly”.

Ignore it.  If you get roped into some learning circle, use it to define what you like and dislike – it is an opportunity to discover, not dissemble.  For those who do the courses and spend the time and effort to build up to the point where you attempt to spot the difference between St Julien and Paulliac, bless them, but it is all irrelevant in the big picture as any pairing of those wines could be mistaken by the most renowned taster at ANY point in time.  So do not stress, the differences are so ephemeral as to be imaginary 90% of the time.

I have been fortunate enough to taste many awesome wines.  If they were put in front of me blind to describe and accurately guess what they were, I most probably could not do it.  But the wines themselves will still be delicious bottles of booze.  By spending time with quality wines, sharing them with friends and family, and taking mental note of the essence of the wine in which someone, somewhere put the effort in to grow and vinify the grapes for you to enjoy is sufficient as a wine tasting set.

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