Blind Tasting Competitions- Good fun unless you lose

I think that wine tasting competitions are a complete waste of time. The object of a wine tasting is to determine the quality of the wine and its fitness for purpose. Can the wine be kept for several years to improve in the bottle? Is the wine a true investment wine?  Should the wine really only be drunk with food. Is the wine a fake? You also want to find out if the wine is good value for money.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2016/10/chinese-blind-tasting-team-claims-shock-victory/

 A blind tasting is organised to make sure that the power of suggestion and brand reputation is eliminated from the taster's judgement. It should not be a competition to determine who is best as guessing where a wine comes from, what grapes it is made of and the year it was produced etc. You can easily find out this information from the bottle so why put yourself to all that trouble?

There are literally tens of thousands of different wines. If  you try and show off how knowledgeable and skillful you are then you can easily become a cropper in a blind tasting.


I know only one of the wines tasted in the competition - the Jurançon from Domaine Cauhapé: this wine is top quality. We have friends who live in the area which we visit regularly. My wife and I would have difficulty distinguishing this wine from other top quality wines from Jurançon. It would be down more to luck than judgement.

Under wine tasting or examination conditions stress can play tricks on you. On my wine courses I got acquainted with a professional wine taster who was spot on, when blind tasting in the classroom, but who confused port with a fortified wine from Australia under examination conditions.

Wine tasting competitions are good fun and help with publicity. They are not to be taken seriously.

Anyone for a white port and tonic?

There is supposed to a new trend for a summer drink of white port and tonic. All sorts of trendy people are supposed to be raving about it.

http://www.instyle.co.uk/lifestyle/white-port-tonic-london-drink-of-the-summer

Up until this summer most people couldn't have cared less about white port. White port never excited my taste buds and I refuse to get excited because something is trendy. Just because Portugal is a lovely place to go it does not mean that white port is a wonderful drink: it is not and it is not improved by adding tonic water to it.

What next, will Babycham comeback into fashion?

http://www.babycham.com/

London is a "hip" capital but that fact does not make jellied eels any more palatable. Why not wash down a plate of jellied eels with some white port and tonic? In this way you can be a real double trend setter.

The only mixed wine based drink that I can stand is sangria, in Spain, and then only after a decade or so of a break.

If you want to drink a really good white wine from Portugal, why not try a glass of cool alvarinho
straight and untainted by additions. It may not be trendy but you won't regret it and you will show that you are a wine drinker of distinction.

http://www.winesofportugal.com/en/food-and-wine/grape-varieties/white/alvarinho/