A cool New Yorker story on the ambiguity of the perception of wine quality:
But now, in an even more surprising turn of events, another American wine region has performed far better than expected in a blind tasting against the finest French châteaus. Ready for the punch line? The wines were from New Jersey.
The tasting was closely modelled on the 1976 event, featuring the same fancy Bordeaux vineyards, such as Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Haut-Brion. The Jersey entries included bottles from the Heritage Vineyards in Mullica Hill and Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes. The nine judges were French and American wine experts.
The Judgment of Princeton didn’t quite end with a Jersey victory—a French wine was on top in both the red and white categories—but, in terms of the reassurance for those with valuable wine collections, it might as well have.
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One Response:
June 18th, 2012 at 2:47 pm
The article reminds me of Richard Hodgsons experiment in which he poured 3 glasses of the same wine to judges for evaluation and fewer than 10% of the judges could judge the wines consistently as the same.
To quote the wine economist (my quotation button is broken) Even Two Buck Chuck wins gold medals… the Charles Shaw 2005 California Chardonnay aka Two Buck Chuck was judged best Chardonnay from California State Fair Commericial Wine competition with 98 points!!!
I think it adds to the argument of the insignificance of ratings, metals and all the other hype. Numerical points to something as subjective as wine is just wrong, just like Pitchforks numerical ratings are equally wrong. These intangibles make life wonderful.