![]() ![]() So why are ordinary drinkers and the experts so poor at tasting blind? Part of the answer lies in the sheer complexity of wine.įor a drink made by fermenting fruit juice, wine is a remarkably sophisticated chemical cocktail. Overall they would have been just as a successful flipping a coin to guess. People could tell the difference between wines under £5 and those above £10 only 53% of the time for whites and only 47% of the time for reds. In 2011 Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist (and former professional magician) at Hertfordshire University invited 578 people to comment on a range of red and white wines, varying from £3.49 for a claret to £30 for champagne, and tasted blind. But the link only existed for people trained to detect the elements of wine that make them expensive. In 2008 a study of 6,000 blind tastings by Robin Goldstein in the Journal of Wine Economics found a positive link between the price of wine and the amount people enjoyed it. When the same wine was presented as plonk, the critics were more likely to use negatives such as weak, light and flat. When tasting a supposedly superior wine, their language was more positive – describing it as complex, balanced, long and woody. He presented the same Bordeaux superior wine to 57 volunteers a week apart and in two different bottles – one for a table wine, the other for a grand cru. French academic Frédéric Brochet tested the effect of labels in 2001. Hodgson isn't alone in questioning the science of wine-tasting. ![]() It's part of my academic background to find the truth.'' "They say I'm full of bullshit but that's OK. His studies have irritated many figures in the industry. But Orley Ashenfelter, a Princeton economist, invented a simple mathematical formula based on weather data to predict the price of vintages, which mimicked the predictions of Parker’s system. Robert Parker, above is the world's leading wine critic and his score is key to determining the price of a new vintage. "We have won our fair share of gold medals but now I have to say we were lucky." "I think there are individual expert tasters with exceptional abilities sitting alone who have a good sense, but when you sit 100 wines in front of them the task is beyond human ability," he says. Hodgson went on to analyse the results of wine competitions across California, and found that their medals were distributed at random. A few points may not sound much but it is enough to swing a contest – and gold medals are worth a significant amount in extra sales for wineries. Some of the judges were far worse, others better – with around one in 10 varying their scores by just plus or minus two. A wine deemed to be a good 90 would be rated as an acceptable 86 by the same judge minutes later and then an excellent 94. Results from the first four years of the experiment, published in the Journal of Wine Economics, showed a typical judge's scores varied by plus or minus four points over the three blind tastings. In practice, most wines scored in the 70s, 80s and low 90s. In Hodgson's tests, judges rated wines on a scale running from 50 to 100. They read like a who's who of the American wine industry from winemakers, sommeliers, critics and buyers to wine consultants and academics. "Chance has a great deal to do with the awards that wines win." "Only about 10% of judges are consistent and those judges who were consistent one year were ordinary the next year. "The results are disturbing," says Hodgson from the Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt County, described by its owner as a rural paradise. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine. ![]() Hodgson's findings have stunned the wine industry. ![]() The last was in Sacramento earlier this month. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. So drawing on his background in statistics, Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions.Įach panel of four judges would be presented with their usual "flight" of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. ![]()
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