In various movies, there’s a wine connoisseur who can amaze the hoi polloi with his ability to identify wines by taste.
Is this sort of thing actually possible in real life? (Minus the leg, of course.)
I know two people who can do that.
There was a story by Calvin Trillin in the New Yorker a while back in which he gave a blind taste test to “experienced wine drinkers” and asked them just to identify whether it was red or white. The success rate was only 70%. This article (in French) describes the same test given to 10 grand sommeliers and gives a 60-70% success rate.
If there really are people who can do it, they must have superhuman senses of taste and smell. And amazing memories.
I’ve seen it done with remarkable accuracy by the wine pundits including the absurd Jilly Goulden (“Mmm, Mmm, I’m getting crocodiles, glossy olive green crocodiles and smudgy black car tyres, with an afternote of teak reclining chairs and wrought iron bedposts!”) on the BBC’s Food & Drink show.
Attempt something like this only if you want to look like a complete idiot. In a **totally blind ** tasting, most professionals will be lucky to get the country right, much less the chateau and vintage. Unless it is a very well known and distinctive wine/vintage, such pronouncements are a crapshoot.
Yes, there are some people that can tell by taste what a wine is. I went through sommelier training given by The Court of Master Sommeliers. Part of the training is blind tasting, where you are goven a glass of wine, and asked to identify the varietal (grape or grapes), the appelation (Napa or Veneto), and approximate age (within 2 or so vintages). After tasting thousands of wines a year for 5 years, I can say that it is very difficult to do so. (I average about 60% on the grape, a little less on the appelation). Maybe that is why there are only ~110 Master Sommeliers in the world. For part of the MS exam, I believe you are given 6 wines in a timed test. You must identify the factors above, AND give your reasoning for each. (i.e. I think this is a Albarino from Rias Baixas because of the earthly citrus tones, flinty finish, star bright color, etc.) If you get the wine wrong, but your reasoning is sound, you get it right. Nobody is perfect. After tasting so often , you do develop quite a memory.
I should add that the tests I’ve seen, where almost 100% accuracy (right down to the vineyard and the year) was achieved, the tasters were not blindfolded, so they did have visual clues too (which are not unimportant), but they were not allowed to see the bottles at all, obviously.
It would amaze most people what you can tell about a wine from just looking at it. You can get an idea on it’s relative age (from the color), the relative quality of the wine (from the alcohol content- “the legs” when you swirl a wine tell of its’ alcohol content*), the grape varietal (again from the color-more likely that you can eliminate many varietals). The smell (nose) adds another dimension to the test- you can smell the difference in oak, malo-lactic fermentaion, etc. The Master Sommelier instructors say that 60% of identifying wine is in the appearance and nose.
- Higher alcohol does not always mean higher quality, but more times than not, it is a good indication. If you have 2 Napa Cabs at the same price, and know nothing about either, it’s a good bet that the 15% alcohol bottle is better that the 12.5% alcohol. (White Zin is about 9.0% FYI).
I always have trouble buying this. Sure, type of grape and approximate age I can buy…it’s the specific location that throws me. Sure that might have been possible when most wines came from specific European locations (It’s the 1298 Benden, Weyrleader!) but nowadays? Good luck to them.
Let’s see what they do with my collection here. I have wines from small (and to my palate worthy) vineyards in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland.
And good luck to them with Mead and the berry wines I like to have on hand.
Interesting – it looks like 3 out of the 58 American Master Sommeliers are in Boulder, CO and 2 more are in Aspen. Maybe we should call ourselves the Wine Snob State. 
But even if they can identify wines by taste, isn’t this just a parlor trick? The Master Sommeliers claim that a restaurant who employs one of their graduates will have remarkably better wine service, but how often is a fine French restaurant going to get a crate of wine marked “inconnu” and require their Master Sommelier to identify it? Of what practical value is this skill to a restaurant, anyway?
Philistine!
I do agree this had to be a lot easier when the wine world was “smaller”. When you throw California, Chile, Argentina, Australia, etc., in to the match it has to be very, very tough. Sure, you should be able to get the grape and many of the details which Caymus28 mentioned, but it’s just so much information to maintain in your head.
I like the stories of people able to identify which side of the vineyard the grapes were picked on. Probably some truth once upon a time, but in the end… :dubious:
Where are the other 53? I’d bet the lion’s share are in California and NYC.
As to the practicality of the skill, there’s really not much. But it does train your palate, and the more subtle flavours one’s palate can identify the better one might match a wine with a meal/occasion/patron’s taste, which is in the end a sommelier’s job.
I think it probably is overrated, however, the ability to discern a particular vintage and vineyard may confer or imply other abilities than just the simple ability to identify bottles from which the labels have fallen.
There is one guy who can do this better than almost anyone else in world. He puts out the influential Wine Advocate newsletter and is probably the world’s most influential wine critic . His sense of smell and taste regarding wines reputedly borders or superhuman.
See http://www.erobertparker.com/info/harpersarticle.asp
Atlantic Magazine article “The Million Dollar Nose”
The Sommeliers job is not to identify unlabeled wines, but it is an invaluable tool for judging and evaluating wines blindly, say at a competition. The reason you taste wines blindly otherwise is to try to discern the subtle differences in a Sonoma Chard and a Napa Chard, for example. If you have the labels in front of you, you have a preconceived notion of how it should taste, but if you taste it blindly, you must rely on your senses to “see” the differences.
The sommeliers job is to oversee the restaurant or clubs’ wine program. The wine must be stored correctly, listed on the wine list properly, opened and poured correctly, in the right glass, at the right time in the meal, to the right person. If asked, the sommelier should recommend a wine to compliment a meal choice, or one that will compliment many diners’ choices. Older wines must be decanted properly, as not to introduce sediment into the guests’ glasses. The sommelier should taste wines of qustionable quality to see if they have spoiled. The list goes on and on…
On a personal note, last week I went to an upscale restaurant in a suburb of Cincinnati, one known for snobbiness (the suburb, and to a lesser scale, the restaurant). The enormously overpriced wines had no vintages listed, so I asked the server to check the vintages of four wines. All of the wines were in the 100-110 dollar range (I mention this because her eyes lit up when I pointed to them on the list- I thought I was making her night or something, and I would get good service from then on…). When she returned, she mentioned that all of the wines on the list were in the 1999-2003 range. I about laughed. This is where the sommelier should have stepped in (or wine manager, or bar manager, or whatever).
FWIW, I drank a bottle of Burgess 1994 Napa Valley Cabernet, and it was good.
I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. The correct answer is, “I drank a bottle of Burgess 1994 Napa Valley Cabernet, and it was like a gentle yet surprising massage of the tongue administered by laughing children during a warm spring rain on a Spanish beach.”
And anyone who delivers that line to me (regardless of the locale) is going to get a severe mocking for setting off my ‘pretentious’ alarm.
Actually, I did taste an excellent Australian last weekend at a locale wine shop (Marietta, OH: 12000 people 3 stores devoted exclusively to wine. This is a good place.).
Impressive stuff. Not overly sweet (though I like some sweetness, normally). First Australian I’ve tried in quite a while.
Well, what was it? That’s like saying “I saw a good movie, first one in a long time.” A Shiraz? Sauv Blanc? Well? Well??
There are people that can tell you much about the grapes used to produce a particular wine. I’ve seen it done.
Like caymus said, it’s just a matter of memory, and it’s probably not as quite as hard as you think it is.
There is a certain mystery to wine, but it’s not all that different than beer when you get to the core of things, and most people can tell a stout from a lager from a Belgain ale, right?
I’m literally immersed in wine every day. It’s how I pay my bills, it’s something I enjoy as a hobby and a libation, and it is definitley the culture of the area I live in, and I certainly do not claim to have this talent. But I’ve seen people that do. I work with them everyday.
If you know anything about viticultural areas and appellations and their growing regions (this is strictly for US wines, but other growing countries have similar conventions), what type of fruit flourishes in them, what a particular harvest year was like, and, as stated earlier, you taste enough, eventually you’ll be able to identify wine by taste/smell/color/feel.
I will agree, though, the wine producing world has grown in size tremendously in the last 100 years or so, which means one would have A LOT of tasting to do.
Poor things.
You get paid for bathing in wine? :eek: