Intro to Blind Tasting!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to this mini course on how to blind taste wine.

In this course, I’m going to help you understand why varieties taste the way they do and why they show up in the glass the way they do.

We’ll go a level deeper than the system we used in the beginner videos, and I’ll also help you build a personal variety framework that, over time and with consistent tasting, you can use to commit grapes to memory.

Finally, I’ll teach you the process of elimination you’ll need when you blind taste.

Throughout the course, I’ll reference a few materials you’ll want to have handy: a blind tasting guide and our variety framework.

Print them out and keep them with you.

The first time I ever saw blind tasting, I was working at a restaurant.

A bartender was handed a white wine, stuck his nose in the glass, and within about five seconds he called out the variety, where it was from, and the vintage.

I thought it was magic. It felt so cool and eventually I decided I wanted to learn how to do it too.

Over time, I realized blind tasting isn’t a party trick.

It doesn’t just come naturally, and no one is inherently an amazing taster.

It takes time, repetition, and a lot of practice.

So why blind taste at all?

There are a few key reasons.

First, it removes bias and preconceived expectations.

If you know you’re tasting Pinot Noir, and you already like Pinot Noir, you’ll often “find” what you expect to find.

When you remove that information, you’re forced to taste more objectively.

It trains your senses to focus on what you’re actually getting in the glass, without the label influencing your perception.

Second, blind tasting helps you recognize patterns. Across grape varieties, regions, and styles, and how they tend to show up.

That’s especially valuable in the service industry: if someone can describe what they like, you can translate that into better recommendations.

Third, it builds exam-level tasting conditions and helps you develop confidence under those conditions.

Over time, tasting something like Zinfandel repeatedly helps you understand how you perceive it and how it typically presents, so you can ask yourself things like, “Do I really know what California Zinfandel tastes like?”

One important note: blind tasting does not have to be performative.

You don’t need to sound like a robot.

What it gives you is a system to follow; starting points you can build on and adjust as you gain experience.

We’re going to do that together.

In the next video, we’ll take a white wine and run through the process while digging a little deeper into each element.

After that, I’ll taste another white wine and walk you through my process of elimination so you can follow along, make your own guess, and then we’ll reveal the wine at the end!