Think wine connoisseurship is nonsense? Blind-tasting data suggest otherwise

By THE DATA TEAM

“WINE tasting is bullshit”, proclaimed Robbie Gonzalez of the i09 blog a few years ago. Citing a series of academic studies, he argued—in rather more colourful language than their authors’—that there was no substance to the assessments of a wine′s quality made by wine “experts”, or their overblown language. In an article published in the latest issue of 1843, our sister magazine of ideas, lifestyle and culture, our data editor set out to disprove this widely held view. He attended an annual blind-tasting competition between students from Oxford and Cambridge universities, and found that the participants performed impressively well at identifying grape varieties and countries of origin using only their senses of sight, taste and smell.

For sceptical readers interested in taking a bigger swig of data, the main results of the 2017 Varsity blind-tasting match, held on February 15th, are depicted above. Two teams of seven tasters each (including one reserve per side) were presented with 12 wines, six whites and six reds. The judges granted each taster between zero and 20 points per wine, depending on how close (in their estimation) the drinkers’ guesses were to the correct answers, and how convincingly they explained their reasoning. However, we prefer a simpler scoring system: one point for getting the country of origin right, another point for getting the grape variety right and a judicious half-point of partial credit only in a handful of specific cases.