Monday, February 13, 2012

Results of the "Red or White?" Test


On Saturday we held our blindfolded "Red vs White" test. Test takers could smell and taste, but not see, three wines. My group proved that experience in wine drinking is very helpful. Whereas college enology majors at Cal Davis failed the test (thereby causing the school to--very unscholarlyly--refuse to even confirm the test took place), and whereas about 70% of "wine experts" get the wine colors right (if the tester is not trying to fool them), look at this: Fully 86% (18 out of 21) of our group got the three wine colors correct! Super-skillful--you guys beat the experts!

Our group also tried to identify the wines' varieties, while blindfolded and while knowing nothing beforehand about the wines, and that proved much more difficult (for sure, I cannot reliably do it). Nobody got all three right (the wines were Owen Roe Cabernet Sauvignon, Chehalem Dry Riesling, and Anderson Family Vineyards Pinot Gris, all served at room temperature of about 64F in unmarked identical bottles). However, FIVE of our group got the "Riesling and Pinot Gris" varieties correct; congrats to Andrew, Lisa M, Joyce, Alex (who works at Penner Ash), and Margaret; and Lisa C. got the Cab and Pinot Gris correct. That was really impressive -- 29% of our group was able to identify two of the varieties. Assuming that "common and near-common" wine varieties encompasses perhaps 20 wine varieties, then the ability to detect two of the wines' types would arise by chance only 1/20 x 1/19 of the time, which is about 0.26% odds! That took demonstrated skill on the part of those tasters.

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