Funny article. I don't really know enough about wine, but it seems like some sort of stretch. Or a misunderstanding of wine appreciation. My guess is most experienced tasters (say, Mike) would do well on a fair implementation of this test (as the author pretty much admits in the end,) but that doesn't mean the test makes any real sense.
I'm not sure there is an abstract "red wine flavor" that encompasses all of the red wine grown from all different grapes, in all different regions, using all different styles. Or, at least, what unites them all is very basic, and therefore not very interesting. Sure a red sancerre and a white bordeaux taste different. Different white bordeaux's taste different from each other too. Is there some important "redness" that unites a weird late harvest sweet Zinfandel from california more with a dry red from the rhone than with another sweet (white) late harvest muscat?
I think picking the color of a wine blind (while quite possible) isn't really interesting or important. Certainly not as important as being able to tell if a wine is corked or not; and also not as interesting as being able to articulate why you like one red bordeaux over another red bordeaux.
It's sort of like accusing baseball fans of being fakes because they can't tell from watching a game blind whether or not it's played on artificial grass. Or whether it's an AL or NL game. Maybe an expert could use clues to guess - but it's sort of beside the point of whether or not it's stupid to be really into baseball.
My guess is that the color question is merely the only obviously measurable aspect to a wine, so a non wine appreciating scientist would come up with this as a test. I'll bet people don't talk about that UC Davis test (or say it never existed) because of embarassment over this point. The test doesn't come any where near the heart of the issue of tasting wine. Sure, you should probably be able to call the color if you claim to know about wine, but it doesn't seem like a really big deal if you can't.
(Well, that turned out to be way too long for the simple point I was trying to make in response to an article I only skimmed that didn't seem to matter that much. But maybe that's what the web is for. Posting away...)
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I'm not sure there is an abstract "red wine flavor" that encompasses all of the red wine grown from all different grapes, in all different regions, using all different styles. Or, at least, what unites them all is very basic, and therefore not very interesting. Sure a red sancerre and a white bordeaux taste different. Different white bordeaux's taste different from each other too. Is there some important "redness" that unites a weird late harvest sweet Zinfandel from california more with a dry red from the rhone than with another sweet (white) late harvest muscat?
I think picking the color of a wine blind (while quite possible) isn't really interesting or important. Certainly not as important as being able to tell if a wine is corked or not; and also not as interesting as being able to articulate why you like one red bordeaux over another red bordeaux.
It's sort of like accusing baseball fans of being fakes because they can't tell from watching a game blind whether or not it's played on artificial grass. Or whether it's an AL or NL game. Maybe an expert could use clues to guess - but it's sort of beside the point of whether or not it's stupid to be really into baseball.
My guess is that the color question is merely the only obviously measurable aspect to a wine, so a non wine appreciating scientist would come up with this as a test. I'll bet people don't talk about that UC Davis test (or say it never existed) because of embarassment over this point. The test doesn't come any where near the heart of the issue of tasting wine. Sure, you should probably be able to call the color if you claim to know about wine, but it doesn't seem like a really big deal if you can't.
(Well, that turned out to be way too long for the simple point I was trying to make in response to an article I only skimmed that didn't seem to matter that much. But maybe that's what the web is for. Posting away...)
- jim 8-15-2002 1:53 am