I have always wanted to do a blind wine tasting. Clearly, I’m not the only one based on the enthusiastic response from everyone I invited, whether they could come or not. Blind is how they taste for the wine publications, labels covered, no idea what the wine is, who made it, or what it costs. I thought it would be interesting to taste wine without the clues you get from the bottle- oh that’s a cheap, crappy brand, I know I won’t like it; or wow this looks expensive, bound to be good. So, you wine lovers out there, do you think you would be able to pick out the expensive 90+ point cabernet from a pack of under $20 wines? The answer, at least for this wine lover, was no. And that was only one of the evening’s surprises.
This turned out to be a fun evening, and easy to put together. Here is my recipe for an enjoyable evening.
Ingredients:
- A theme. Sure, you could tell people to bring any bottle of wine, but focus makes it more manageable. Most of our friends seem to be red wine people, but there are a few who prefer whites and some lovely flexible ambidextrous wine drinkers. For my first foray I decided to keep it simple by focusing on a red and a white – popular, easy to find varietals in an assessable price range- Cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay under $20. Other options would be to pick a country, a region, or some food the wines should pair with. Most blind wine tasting party ideas I found online (see below) focus on the “guess the varietal” concept. I thought that might be intimidating for some people, maybe next time.
2. Guests: My goal was to assemble a group of between 10 and 14 people to allow for enough variety of wines and tasters. It helps if all the guests are interested in or at least like wine, but if there are a few along for the food and the company, no worries. Remember this is a party….
3. Wine: as the host you want to “seed” the tasting with some wines you think will be interesting. We provided 2 whites and 2 reds and decided to throw in a ringer, a more expensive Cabernet, curious to see if it would stand out. For the others I went to Costco and read the shelf cards looking for what sounded like tasty wines in the price range. Some of the Kirkland wines have gotten good ratings, but thus far the ones I have tried have not impressed me. Maybe I would have a different opinion if I don’t know what it is?
Prep:
- Invite people, ask each couple to bring an appetizer and a bottle of one of the wines.
- Get bags to cover bottles- I bought burlap drawstring bags from Amazon that came with tags. Brown lunch bags and a sharpie would work. Since I thought I would do this again, I invested the big $25 for reusable bags. Be green, save the planet and all. We will not factor in the mountains of cardboard Amazon uses or the fuel consumed by the delivery vehicles that seem to circle our neighborhood constantly. Anyway….
- Create a ratings sheet for guests to record their thoughts on the wines and make copies. Have writing implements ready.
Instructions:
- When guests arrive, have them dress up their wine bottles and get them opened.
- Pour some sparkling wine (something different from whatever is being tasted) as a warmup while people are arriving.
- Once you have most of the guests and enough bottles, mix the bottles up and number. If more bottles appear it may be best to wait until you think everyone has arrived to number the new bottles.
- Give any instructions, point out the ratings sheets and have guests get started.
- When people are finished tasting each wine, remove the covers. I had index cards available and asked guests to write down where they bought the bottle and how much if cost. Go back and retaste as desired!
Results: Here are the wines and the averaged ratings, along with prices and where purchased. Drumroll please…
Observations:
I was curious how people selected the wines they brought. Some brought a bottle they knew they liked, others went to a favored wine store and asked the proprietor to pick the “winning” wine. A few were determined to “win” the blind tasting, whatever that means. When I attempted to inject logic into the discussion, you know there isn’t a prize here, right. The reply was Ah, Barb, have you met these people before? Well, good point, next time maybe I will have prizes.
So, what strategy worked best in terms of picking “winners”? The ask a wine professional strategy – specifically Linda Collier of Colliers Wine Cellar in Greenville, DE who selected the two top scoring wine in each category. Anecdotally, the least successful was past experience. There were several comments of the “I’ve had that wine before and I liked it, nobody seemed to today, even me” variety. And people rated the identical chardonnay differently.
Was this fun? Yes, absolutely. Is this a scientific, reliable method of objectively selecting good wine? No, for a lot of reasons; differences in temperature, how treated, etc. For example, in defense of the Chappellet, 2018 is young for that wine, numerous contributors to the cellartracker.com data base noted that it needed several hours of decanting due to its youth. Most wine isn’t designed to age, this one is.
In conclusion: Don’t overthink it. Unless you really want to get wine geeky and assemble a group of like minded guests, then by all means go for it and please invite me. Otherwise just have fun with it and let me know how it goes.
Other ideas for a fun evening:
Back in the day, and I am not saying when that day was; a friend of ours hosted regular spur of the moment dinner parties, something I have wanted to do ever since. Maybe I will get around to it soon, especially since he wrote a book and blogs on how to do it. Check out Impromptu Friday nights, A Guide to Supper Clubs. https://impromptufridaynights.com/ His next book is on Wine Groups, stay tuned!
Wine tasting party ideas: There are loads of ideas for different ways to host a wine tasting party, below you will find a few.
Explorer Barb 