A blind tasting experience sponsored by Pol Roger Champagne House
Before me stand six unidentified red wines numbered 7 to 12.
Fortunately my flight from London was late so I have missed the whites, which I later find out were excruciatingly difficult, but still, the prospect of identifying each wine as closely as possible sends me into a mild panic.
Marks are awarded for the ability to identify grape varieties and to place the wines as close as possible to their origins. Additional marks are given for an intelligent explanation of how the tasters reached their conclusions.
Champagne Pol Roger
I’m late and time is short, so I run through the reds making shorthand mental notes: Burgundy, possibly Beaujolais, claret, Californian shiraz etc…In the end my performance isn’t bad but it’s hardly up to scratch. Blind tasting is, of course, the most terrifying and humbling experience any professional wine journalist can put themselves through. Success depends on having a startingly good palate memory or an encyclopaedic knowledge of the world’s wine-growing regions. It is, of course, preferable to have both.
But more often than not blind tasting is a humiliation waiting to happen. If there isn’t instant recognition, a laborious process of elimination is carried out which, in my case, usually leads to the wrong conclusion.
This particular match, sponsored by Pol Roger, has been held every year since 2005, inspired by a similar one between Oxford and Cambridge, which began in 1953. The format is simple. Each team has six students, plus a reserve whose score counts only if there’s a tie. Twelve unknown wines (six white and six red) have to be identified by their predominant grape variety, country of origin, main viticultural region and vintage, with comments required on how the answers are arrived at. There are 40 minutes on whites, a break, then 40 minutes on reds. Scores are judged by St Andrews alumni (Edinburgh).
