otto (09/20/82)
On Friday, August 27th, 1982, the Indian Hill Wine Club had a blind tasting of German white wines. The average price of the wines was about $9 per bottle, i.e., there were 4 bottles priced above 9 dollars and 4 bottles priced below. Fifty-five people participated in the tasting. To make the evaluation process clear, let me first describe the steps involved in our blind tasting, then give the results. First, all wines were poured in advance into identical 1-liter carafes and labeled with the numbers 1 through 8. All that the tasters knew of the wines was their number, and any information they could derive from their sensory evaluation of them. Carafe 1 was passed around and everyone sampled its contents, then wrote down their impressions of it. This was repeated with carafes 2 through 8 in turn. Second, side-by-side tastings were made. Each taster selected two wines for further tasting, and received a glass of each for side-by-side comparison. Wines that seemed to taste the same in the first phase of the tasting could now be critically compared for differences, and those differences written down with the original descriptions. Each taster could select wines as often as needed to sort out their tastes. Third, each taster was asked to decide for themselves which wines they liked the most, and which the least. Forth, the wines were identified, and the tasting became an open one from then on. -------------------------------- RESULTS --------------------------------- Number-who-liked Quantity best least consumed Year Wine Cost -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 0 1 76 Piesporter Goldtropfchen Auslese 8.99 17 1 2 76 Ockfener Bockstein Auslese 9.49 6 1 3 76 Hattenheimer Mannberg Spatlese 10.99 5 7 4 79 Schloss Johannisberger Kabinett 10.99 3 8 6 75 Bernkasteler Doctor Auslese 39.95 3 9 7 79 Johannisberger Klaus Kabinett 7.49 2 2 5 79 Kiedricher Wasseros Kabinett 5.49 1 27 8 78 Leiweiner Klostergarten Spatlese 8.99 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments: The "Quantity consumed" column indicates the relative ordering of consumption of the given wine at the moment the wines were identified, e.g., the Piesporter Goldtropfchen was the most consumed at that point, and the Leiweiner Klostergarten was the least consumed. What this means is open to interpretation. In this tasting the consumption order matched the rank ordering nearly exactly, but such is not always the case. The "Cost" column shows the regular price of the wines at the SavWay Liquor Store in Naperville, IL. I was somewhat surprised at the poor showing of the $40 Bernkasteler Doctor, but I think there is no question that the wine deserved the rating it got. It was clearly not as good as it should or could have been. Since the club tasted 4 bottles of each wine, I do not think the low ranking can be attributed to an individual bottle's going bad. In fact, I'm rather more tempted to believe that the wine was not doing well on the European market and it was dumped to the American market, since "Americans don't know much about wines and they will pay full price for it!" There is, after all, precedent for this kind of attitude. In the Sichel scandal of some years back, when Frence government inspectors examined one of Sichel's wine warehouses they found a crate of ordinary red wine marked "Can be sold as Beaujolais in America"! George Otto Chairperson, Oenophile Club Bell Labs, Indian Hill ----------------------